Hi everybodyJust been allowed to upgrade my PC (only for FS9, God bless it), I've bought an E8400 with 2GB 800MHz ram and a 9800GT card. My FS9 runs all the usual addons (ASV6.5, FE, GEPro etc), I'm flying PMDG iron into major cities and would like sliders maxed. I'm guessing this new machine will run well, but I can't find any direct comments on this configuation.Soooo, how do you think she'll go with FS9? Apologies if this should have been in the hardware forum, but since I only run FS9 and FSX seems to be dominant these days I thought I'd hear from us FS9 die-hards. :)Cheers, SLuggy

Hi everybodyJust been allowed to upgrade my PC (only for FS9, God bless it), I've bought an E8400 with 2GB 800MHz ram and a 9800GT card. My FS9 runs all the usual addons (ASV6.5, FE, GEPro etc), I'm flying PMDG iron into major cities and would like sliders maxed. I'm guessing this new machine will run well, but I can't find any direct comments on this configuation.Soooo, how do you think she'll go with FS9? Apologies if this should have been in the hardware forum, but since I only run FS9 and FSX seems to be dominant these days I thought I'd hear from us FS9 die-hards. :)Cheers, SLuggy

Are you running all this on an XP, Vista, or 7 machine? The OS choice might give you more free RAM to play with. Vista is a pig with RAM so might see a performance hit with just 2GB of RAM.I'm just going to judge based on what I know from my hardware setups currently, and from the past:I have a 8800gt on my desktop and a ATI mobility HD3450 on my laptop. From what I know they should be inferior to your 9800GT, so you should see no problem with running high resolutions with Anti-A., but higher resolutions I sometimes would just drop Anti-A.. It is just a personal preference. With a 9800GT I would go with Anti-A. and see how it works.Your CPU should be more than enough for FS9. It doesn't take take the same advantage of multicores like FSX does, but it does help some overall. I have both Core 2 Duos iterations on my systems.What I do foresee still happening is if you have an extremely dense city area that you will still see frames drop. I have an extremely dense Tokyo area and I would see a drop from 60fps to 30fps. While 30fps is still more than adequate I did notice the change. I'd suggest limiting the max frames in FS9's settings so you would not notice the difference. Limiting the frames is ok. On my laptop I limit to 20fps default.Other than that you should be good to go with your setup. Don't be afraid if the frames drop, but you should be good to get a min avg of 30fps. If you start dropping below 20, then ... something must be taxing your system like cloud densisity or auto0gen density.Oh YEAH!! watch out for the option for Ground scenery casting their own shadows. This was always a bug for me.Hope some of my opinion helps you out. (^-^/

Sorry, I'm running XP SP3, although I have tried Win 7 RC and came away pretty impressed. Sadly it doesn't seem to support my gameport yoke and pedals, otherwise I'd probably update my OS. At the moment I'm running a Pentium D 945 at 3.4GHz with an AGP X1950Pro, so I'm pretty excited about the new PC. Thanks for the reply.Cheers, SLuggy

I have just a slightly faster system then you. I run all major add-ons with high graphic settings. Going into major add-on airports with heavy traffic in PMDG737, i usually get about 30-40 on approach, and as low as 25 taxiing on the ground. If light clouds, or immediately outside of the major areas, fps remains v-sync locked at 60fps for the most part.I do not recommend you lock your fps, esp at 20fps, as that's extremely low. Now that I have been playing at 60 fps, I find 30-40 a major difference, not sure why anyone would lock at 20. Oh and, learn to overclock and get the clock speeds up a bit on the 8400.

Hi everybodyJust been allowed to upgrade my PC (only for FS9, God bless it), I've bought an E8400 with 2GB 800MHz ram and a 9800GT card. My FS9 runs all the usual addons (ASV6.5, FE, GEPro etc), I'm flying PMDG iron into major cities and would like sliders maxed. I'm guessing this new machine will run well, but I can't find any direct comments on this configuation.Soooo, how do you think she'll go with FS9? Apologies if this should have been in the hardware forum, but since I only run FS9 and FSX seems to be dominant these days I thought I'd hear from us FS9 die-hards. :)Cheers, SLuggy

FPS should be okay. However, you will likely have problems with Out of Memory (OOM) errors. I had crippling OOM problems with the combination of Ultimate Terrain, PMDG, AS6.5, FSGlobal Mesh, and high quality add-on airports. I took the following steps:1) Upgrade to 4GB RAM , and2) Use Nick N's performance tweaksThis has pretty much remedied the problem. I rarely get random OOM errors (the OOM errors I do get are predictable; i.e. they happen at the same place.)One piece of advice I have been given is that 4GB RAM and a 64 bit OS should completely solve the OOM issues. Haven't done it yet, so nothing to report on that.Hope this is useful info.I'm using FS9, Windows XP Home 32bit, E6850 @ 3.6ghz, 8800GT 512MB @ 1900x1200, 4GB DDR2 at 800mhz

Mine is almost the same except with an ATi 4850 512Mb card. I have all sliders maxed and fps locked at 25. The only time I've even seen it budge is flying into New York with La Guardia, Newark and JFK payware installed. Never had OOM errors. Oh, running a modest 1152x864 on a CRT with AA 4 and AF 16.

Here is my rig. E8400 o'ced to 3.78Ghz, 4GB 1066 RAM, 9800GT, XP SP3. It handles all addons well for me, including complex planes and difficult weather. But that's not to say that you don't need to keep your computer well toned and clean. A clean and streamlined system is far more important than it being ever more powerful.

An E8500 @ 3.16 (not OCed) with 4GB ram and 9600GT 1GB Windows XP. All sliders maxed plus a few extra tweaks to the cfg file runs very well. Most of the time at 60fps (monitor refresh rate so can't go faster) but at detailed airports with traffic and PMDG 737 will drop to as low as 20-30fps. If I turned aircraft and scenery shadows off it would probably go a lot faster. FS9 will only ever use one core so your clock speed will pretty much determine your framerate.

An E8500 @ 3.16 (not OCed) with 4GB ram and 9600GT 1GB Windows XP. All sliders maxed plus a few extra tweaks to the cfg file runs very well. Most of the time at 60fps (monitor refresh rate so can't go faster) but at detailed airports with traffic and PMDG 737 will drop to as low as 20-30fps. If I turned aircraft and scenery shadows off it would probably go a lot faster. FS9 will only ever use one core so your clock speed will pretty much determine your framerate.

Hi, I am no genius when it comes to specs but I have gone though several PCs trying to get the ultimate performance and get rid of the problems you describe. Eventually I went for an MSI motherboard, 16GB of RAM. an nNvidia 9800GXT2,X2 SLI 2 TB of Hard drive, an Quad 4 Intel processor. I run PMDG 747s mostly and I never get under 60 FPs wherever I fly, no matter what add-ons I use. I also have every slider maxed out. I have a lot of add ons! My FS is up to about 40GB so far. My advice: if you have it spend money and the best you can afford but be aware to pay for the consequences. I mucked about for years trying to get where I am now.Best of luckPaul

Hi there!I have an E8400@3GHz (no OC) and a GF9600GT (no OC) 4 gigs of RAM xp32bit sp3That machine can handle fs9 with all stuff maxed up, except the visibility range, which you won't need over 80miles anyway, even at 1600x1200 AA and AF at 16x.My problems are with my graphics card overheating, but performance is not an issue. (damn passive cooling).Peter

Hi, I am no genius when it comes to specs but I have gone though several PCs trying to get the ultimate performance and get rid of the problems you describe. Eventually I went for an MSI motherboard, 16GB of RAM. an nNvidia 9800GXT2,X2 SLI 2 TB of Hard drive, an Quad 4 Intel processor. I run PMDG 747s mostly and I never get under 60 FPs wherever I fly, no matter what add-ons I use. I also have every slider maxed out. I have a lot of add ons! My FS is up to about 40GB so far. My advice: if you have it spend money and the best you can afford but be aware to pay for the consequences. I mucked about for years trying to get where I am now.Best of luckPaul

That is def a nice computer, but certainly overkill for FS9. Unless you're doing hardcore processing and coding in 3D, you will never need more then 8 gigs of memory. Also, SLI does not give fs9 any benefit. I'd say a nice 8000 series, 4 gigs, 9800s card, you're good to go.

I had thought of going to a 64-bit system, but my RXP gauges won't work in XP-64. I certainly don't rule it out in the future. What's the max ram XP-32 can address?Cheers, SLuggy

alittle over 3 by default.

Got a E6600 oc'ed to 3,24 on air, XFX 9800 GTX+, 2x 2GB Corsair XMS, Windows XP SP3. Got all sliders to max. With the Nvidia desktop tool, AA override ect. Lets say Hong Kong ( Kai-Tak). when i fly with the PMDG 747 3D from Chep Lap Kok to Kai Tak i have an average of 20 frames. But...as soon as i install My fraffic 2006...the frames drop. I a bit sad about the progress around FS9. With FSX more and more add ons will only being produces for FSX, which is in my eyes just as good (or bad) as FS9. FSX eates much more frames. The difference for my rig is about 10 to 15 frames! Can't imagne that all FSX users have a I7 975 extreme with tripple crossfire or SLI with 18 GB DDR 3 1600 + ram...i mean....FSX runs fine when i don't install any add ons, just sitting a Cessna on a simple runway. But don't talk about add ons and PMDG 747 3D..the frames drop to an average of 7.Hopefully Mathijs de Kok from Aerosoft will succeed!Gr. B.

Well, after reading your replies (thanks guys!) I bought another 2GB stick of matching Kingston RAM, the bits are coming in dribs and drabs through the mail. Gotta wait until Sunday arvo to screw it all together (I wonder what dramas I'll have, these rebuilds always seem to have some unforseen problem...), and then start rebuilding FS9 again. Might sneak a quick MD-11 flight in once the 'essentials' are installed.Hardest bit is waiting for Sunday! New PC, new PC! :( Cheers, SLuggy