Hi folks,<Please note this is an FS9 system / question. Answers relating to FSX are not of any interest to me as I have invested far too much in this sim and the scenery etc I would want to have available if I were to change does not yet exist>I have the following question: What is the best available graphics card for my FS9 system. I have a C2D E8600 @ 4.33GHz with 4Gb DDR3-1600 and currently use a 1Gb EVGA GTX285 card. I run a dual monitor setup with resolution of 3840x1200 and my FS installation has "all the trimmings".I have noticed that in most cases, as expected, any drop in frames is CPU limited... ie. the GFX card is not running at capacity and the CPU is at 100% on the core running FS9. However, in some situations, especially heavy cloud, I see that the GFX is limiting me (GPU-Z tells me it is maxed out and the fan is audibly working more than usual) so I wonder if there is room here for upgrade..? Perhaps the other die-hard FS9 users can can chime in and say what they are running?I have looked at the GTX285 offerings on the market and they are certainly faster than my card. Especially interesting ar e the watercooled versions (I already have watercooling so adding to the loop wouldn't be hard) but these seem to be universally out of stock! I believe (and please correct me if this is wrong) that the dual-core cards like the GTX295 are not as good as the single-core ones. I also know very little about the ATI options here...Any advice appreciated!Merry Christmas!Geoff

Your only answer is to wait for NV's next card or o/c the snot out of your current card. Multi-GPU solutions do absolutely nothing for MSFS.

Your only answer is to wait for NV's next card or o/c the snot out of your current card. Multi-GPU solutions do absolutely nothing for MSFS.

Thanks. For now I overclocked the card to 667MHz Core, 1505MHz Shader and 1257MHz Memory (5% below the EVGA GTX285 SSC), updated REX for FS2004 with the new SP1, updated the nVidia drivers to the latest ones and carefully checked through Nick N's nHancer settings... One (or a combination) of those got me up to speed again - now mostly locked at 23 fps with a few flutters into the mid-teens when there is a lot of cloud cover!Geoff

Hi Geoffco,Im not one to throw water on a blazing system like yours....but being new to FS9 ( 5yrs ) I recently read from some quite respected FS9 gurus that anything over 2GB RAM was overkill as FS9?Happy New Year,Berne :(

Hi Geoffco,Im not one to throw water on a blazing system like yours....but being new to FS9 ( 5yrs ) I recently read from some quite respected FS9 gurus that anything over 2GB RAM was overkill as FS9?Happy New Year,Berne :(

Hello BerneBut who runs just FS9, here on a typical flight there will be Radar Contact , AS6.5 , my voice coms software (shoot 1.6.4) and TrackIR running.now throw into the mix Ultimate terrain , Rex HD clouds and the Leonardo MD or LVD 767 and that 2GB is getting tight.

Multi-GPU solutions do absolutely nothing for MSFS.

I know that

Hi Geoffco,Im not one to throw water on a blazing system like yours....but being new to FS9 ( 5yrs ) I recently read from some quite respected FS9 gurus that anything over 2GB RAM was overkill as FS9?Happy New Year,Berne :(

I built the system with 4Gb RAM for two main reasons, firstly because I wanted to use a 1Gb PCIE graphics card (so 1Gb of my memory is automatically mapped there) and secondly because it is a 64-bit OS and as suggested in other posts, I'm not just using this system for FS9, it even gets used for work from time to time :(Having said that, I can only imagine that the extra RAM helps with running all the other applications that often are associated with FS9 - personally I have all those running on an old PoS Pentium3 in the background...Geoff

Now who of us uses 16xAA? right, but it speaks of thos situations...

... Who wouldn't if they could!?

Sorry disregard.

Hello BerneBut who runs just FS9, here on a typical flight there will be Radar Contact , AS6.5 , my voice coms software (shoot 1.6.4) and TrackIR running.now throw into the mix Ultimate terrain , Rex HD clouds and the Leonardo MD or LVD 767 and that 2GB is getting tight.

Hi,Sure any addons will perform much better with more RAM, we are slipping into a world of addons, for me though if the ride is smooth without stuttering ect and the flightdeck is realistic and calibration true to the real thing it makes my day. I mean if the learning enviornment is sufficient to educate ...this is my intention for 2GB ram....sure and 1GB GPU