Hello fellow pilots,Trying to reach the Holy Grail of today's flightsimming (that's running FSX more or less smooth), i came up with a bit of dilema. My current specs are:Asus Rampage FormulaC2D E8600 @ 4.0 GHz2x2GB GeIL 800MHz Black Dragon 5-5-5-15ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB30" LCD at 2560x1600Vista 64Should i replace my GPU with:BFG GTX 285 1GB OCXfor a better & propably smoother cloudy scenarios, or should i go fori7 920 (and try to get it running ~4 GHz)Asus Rampage II GENE3x2GB OCZ 1600 MHz 7-7-7-20and pray for smoother experience in general + better FPS?P.S. That's for exploring ORBX FTX scenery with A2A B337, A2A P47, RealAir Duke or PMDG 747/MD11/JS41 short and longhaul routes within Europe/NA with addon sceneries.

Note: If you for the i7 Your whole system is being changed. Basically building a new rig.If your hobby is flight sim, and you fly a lot in virtual world. Then yes.., i7 is the way to go.Even if you get the graphic card, you will still have stutters/ lag issues on dense population regarding with your high-end graphic card.i7- o/c that baby to 4ghz and you have smooth scenery's even on ultra high.

FWIW, I'm very happy with the recent i7 in my sig below. NickN helped me with a lot of the decision processes and you can find links to several of those converstations in the links at the bottom of my sig. If you have any questions, just send me a PM and I'll try to pass along the wisdom bestowed on me by those fellow simmers in this forum.