I've got $200 bucks to spend at Best Buy, and I'm looking to upgrade my home built PC specifically to get better performance for Flight Simulator X.My current set-up includes an E6600 OC'd to 2.99 Ghz (Stock cooling, so haven't pushed any higher), a Nvidia 7600GT, 2 Gig of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (running XP). Flight Simulator X runs on its own 10K RPM drive.My goal is, whatever upgrade I make, to not be bottlenecked by the other remaining components. (For example, if I went to something like a Nvidia 250, I wouldn't want the CPU and/or memory to hinder it.)If a $200 upgrade doesn't get me significant improvement, maybe I'll go for a wide-screen monitor.What do you think?

You need to upgrade your GPU. $200 @ Best Buy should net something like a GTX 260, and as long as your power supply is up to the task, that is the card I would recommend. Anything less than that will under-perform.

Power Supply is an Enermax Whisper 2 535W

Well, it's a little low on the +12V output but it should still be enough for a single 260. Anecdotally, I've heard of people running 260 SLI on similar PSUs, but I wouldn't trust that for too long.

I've got $200 bucks to spend at Best Buy, and I'm looking to upgrade my home built PC specifically to get better performance for Flight Simulator X.My current set-up includes an E6600 OC'd to 2.99 Ghz (Stock cooling, so haven't pushed any higher), a Nvidia 7600GT, 2 Gig of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (running XP). Flight Simulator X runs on its own 10K RPM drive.My goal is, whatever upgrade I make, to not be bottlenecked by the other remaining components. (For example, if I went to something like a Nvidia 250, I wouldn't want the CPU and/or memory to hinder it.)If a $200 upgrade doesn't get me significant improvement, maybe I'll go for a wide-screen monitor.What do you think?

HelloA GTX 260 and a better cooler, then push that E6600 to 3.2ghz or higher

I've got $200 bucks to spend at Best Buy, and I'm looking to upgrade my home built PC specifically to get better performance for Flight Simulator X.My current set-up includes an E6600 OC'd to 2.99 Ghz (Stock cooling, so haven't pushed any higher), a Nvidia 7600GT, 2 Gig of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800MHz (running XP). Flight Simulator X runs on its own 10K RPM drive.My goal is, whatever upgrade I make, to not be bottlenecked by the other remaining components. (For example, if I went to something like a Nvidia 250, I wouldn't want the CPU and/or memory to hinder it.)If a $200 upgrade doesn't get me significant improvement, maybe I'll go for a wide-screen monitor.What do you think?

Please don't shop at best buy for a graphics card, unless you want to be ripped off. They are good for software and other things, but their hardware prices are very inflated.

Here's the deal you want (don't worry about the name, it's a gtx 260 core 216):http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_...duct_id=0312750Ready to go right now, or if you are lucky enough to live by a microcenter store there's a good chance you can get it there. I got my BFG GTX 275 via microcenter online with no problems at all, ripping great deal for $204.

I guess you guys missed the part that the money has to be spent @ Best Buy... Likely he has some gift cards to use.

I guess you guys missed the part that the money has to be spent @ Best Buy... Likely he has some gift cards to use.

Affirmative -- Best Buy gift cards. I got all the original components from Newegg. For next year ... I wonder if Newegg or Microcenter do gift cards?

They most certainly do!