I'm looking to get a bit more performance out of my system I just bought last summer. It's a Dell 630i with a Core2Duo E8500 @ 3.16 ghz / 4 gigs Corsair Dominator ram / Geforce 8800 GT 512mb / Soundblaster xFi and an Nforce motherboard (630 model? not sure).I'm just curious what kind of upgrades I could do. I'm considering replacing my video card with a GTX 260 or 285. Should I look at a new CPU too? What CPUs could I use? (based on the E8500 it has now). An i7 would be nice but I'm assuming it would require a new motherboard and would be quite expensive, I'm trying to stay in the $500 CDN range (keep in mind our prices are generally 30% if not more than US prices and NewEgg doesn't ship to Canada).I'm running Windows XP SP3 right now, the system came with Vista 32 which ran like crap, switching to XP gave me a good 30% boost in performance, would Vista 64 make a big difference?

Short of a massive overclock you're not going to get significantly more performance in FSX. Unless you want to crank up all the graphical settings including resolution and AA, then you would benefit from a new video card as well.

I'm looking to get a bit more performance out of my system I just bought last summer. It's a Dell 630i with a Core2Duo E8500 @ 3.16 ghz / 4 gigs Corsair Dominator ram / Geforce 8800 GT 512mb / Soundblaster xFi and an Nforce motherboard (630 model? not sure).I'm just curious what kind of upgrades I could do. I'm considering replacing my video card with a GTX 260 or 285. Should I look at a new CPU too? What CPUs could I use? (based on the E8500 it has now). An i7 would be nice but I'm assuming it would require a new motherboard and would be quite expensive, I'm trying to stay in the $500 CDN range (keep in mind our prices are generally 30% if not more than US prices and NewEgg doesn't ship to Canada).I'm running Windows XP SP3 right now, the system came with Vista 32 which ran like crap, switching to XP gave me a good 30% boost in performance, would Vista 64 make a big difference?

David , maybe just stick with what you have. Your CPU is fine being over 3GHz, and if your running 1650x1080 or less the 8800GT will perform fine too.Since its a Dell machine you cant overclock it.This time next year SSDs will be half the price of today, and i7 systems much cheaper.If your not getting out of memory errors, then XP 32 is fine and probably faster than Vista 64.

David , maybe just stick with what you have. Your CPU is fine being over 3GHz, and if your running 1650x1080 or less the 8800GT will perform fine too.Since its a Dell machine you cant overclock it.This time next year SSDs will be half the price of today, and i7 systems much cheaper.If your not getting out of memory errors, then XP 32 is fine and probably faster than Vista 64.

Thanks guys. The main reason I'm looking to upgrade is that when I switched from a 22" to a 24" monitor and to the higher resolution (from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200) My performance suffered a lot, it seems as if my card just doesn't have quite enough video memory for the higher resolution. I'm aware FS9 and FSX are both always processor hungry, hence why I got the E8500 last year which was the fastest processor I could afford, I also went for the Core2Duo with the higher clockspeed over a quad as FS seems more interested in GHZ than cores. A full computer upgrade is out of the question right now - would I be better upgrading the processor to another 775 socket processor such as a Q9650, or try out a slightly faster video card? What about a 9800 GTX? http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetai...9251&catid= I'm basically just looking for the extra bit of power needed to run smoothly at 1920x1200. Any thoughts much appreciated

Thanks guys. The main reason I'm looking to upgrade is that when I switched from a 22" to a 24" monitor and to the higher resolution (from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200) My performance suffered a lot, it seems as if my card just doesn't have quite enough video memory for the higher resolution. I'm aware FS9 and FSX are both always processor hungry, hence why I got the E8500 last year which was the fastest processor I could afford, I also went for the Core2Duo with the higher clockspeed over a quad as FS seems more interested in GHZ than cores. A full computer upgrade is out of the question right now - would I be better upgrading the processor to another 775 socket processor such as a Q9650, or try out a slightly faster video card? What about a 9800 GTX? http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetai...9251&catid= I'm basically just looking for the extra bit of power needed to run smoothly at 1920x1200. Any thoughts much appreciated

A bit more power: Water at 1X and traffic at zero! Good starting point and work your way from there, especially freeway traffic is a frame eater!