We do get what we pay for but in general unless you can go 32x AA on newer cards i would not spend $400 on a video card that would only give me 3 or even 5 frames/second. Logically would you spend $100/frame. As for ram too, i guess it would work out to an expensive worthless upgrade. In general if i get better image quality 32x AA because of video card upgrade and smothness because of cl6 lower latency ram then i would make the jump. Question is at what price!So basically cl8 1600 to cl6 1600 ramand gtx 285 to gtx 480?THis is a hot topic i see!!

Are you tring to say that the made 4 new cards that are worse or equal to the previous ones, come on it's logic, there obviouly a bit better at least, and also image quality is much better!

no man, the cards keep improving for sure. it's FSX that is not able to take advantage of that because of the way it's programed. And drivers are not optimized or even debugged for games like FSX implemented on ancient tecnologies

Define "way better" Will it be an improvement? Sure, its better ram than what you have. Will it be 20fps? Mostly likely not but it might only be 3 fps faster but noticably smoother.

You said it yourself so why would anyone want to make this upgrade? It defies logic

We do get what we pay for but in general unless you can go 32x AA on newer cards i would not spend $400 on a video card that would only give me 3 or even 5 frames/second. Logically would you spend $100/frame. As for ram too, i guess it would work out to an expensive worthless upgrade. In general if i get better image quality 32x AA because of video card upgrade and smothness because of cl6 lower latency ram then i would make the jump. Question is at what price!So basically cl8 1600 to cl6 1600 ramand gtx 285 to gtx 480?THis is a hot topic i see!!

Yea, I won't back down Anyway your not taking 400$!! It's 230$ for a decent gain in FP/S but it's up to you, The RAM is for sure pointless

no man, the cards keep improving for sure. it's FSX that is not able to take advantage of that because of the way it's programed. And drivers are not optimized or even debugged for games like FSX implemented on ancient tecnologies

But the shear power of the card is greater, the plus it's DDR5 anyway it also overclocks well, besides you have it yourself, why did you get it?

well, besides you have it yourself, why did you get it?

Just to put it to the test :D

what was your earlier card(s)

1.- ATI 5770: no AF (until some magical drive sorted that out) ....... crappy performance in thick clouds (then ******* came up with his wonderful shader mod) ..... no vsync (again ******* the saviour came to the rescue hehe) .... no more than 4x FSAA 2.- GTX260.... I only got 8x FSAA3.- GTX285: didn't see no benefit and RMA'ed it4.- GTX465: thought it was a 460 revision but it was not so back to the store it went5.- GTX460: 8xSI still have my 260 for sell heheand don't get me started with CPU's (P2 x4 965.... x6 1090T.... and now my current I5 750)

Wow, that's a lot of cards and the GTX 460 is obviouly the best since you kept it, that's what I was saying, you'd proably get 5-10FP/S more which is good especially if your stuggling in places like NYC and plu simage quality is better. Nvidia 4xx for the win!

we all know that guide, but have you tested it yourself? memory speed provides little to no performance boost in FSX in my experience

+1 to the above. We messed around with our RAM on different settings and found no difference with timings, RAM freqs or number of channels. http://forum.avsim.n...x/page__st__100

Yes, I have tested it myself. Over the last 1 1/2 years I've gone from cheap 9 latency ram @1600 to low latency 1600 to 1800 to 2000.You want to know what I learned? You get what you pay for.

What were your results FPS wise and from a subjective smoothness point of view.? Have a look in the link I put above for our sort of standardised testing so we could compare different setups etc.. in our different systems

Wow, that's a lot of cards and the GTX 460 is obviouly the best since you kept it, that's what I was saying, you'd proably get 5-10FP/S more which is good especially if your stuggling in places like NYC and plu simage quality is better. Nvidia 4xx for the win!

No way. 8800GTS 320mb FTW!

No way. 8800GTS 320mb FTW!

hahaha good one bango, actually it makes little sense to upgrade from that card to any other one in the market just for a tad more antialiasing. The 8800 is basicaly a GTX260 with less memory for what I know.@luckyman: I posted the FSX benefit I saw with each card "upgrade" there, not a single frame between them!

+1 to the above. We messed around with our RAM on different settings and found no difference with timings, RAM freqs or number of channels. http://forum.avsim.n...x/page__st__100What were your results FPS wise and from a subjective smoothness point of view.? Have a look in the link I put above for our sort of standardised testing so we could compare different setups etc.. in our different systems

My old system was a 790i ultra/q9650/gtx285. I made the leap to what I have now and couldn't be happier. I only thru in my two bits into this thread because suggesting that slower ram won't make a difference is wrong. (In my humble opinion that is) Carry on. :)

You might want to look at these 3 links:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1209121/fps_updated.JPGAnd this:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1209121/graph_updated.JPGAnd then this:http://forum.avsim.net/topic/255816-effect-of-ram-speed-timing-on-fsx-performance/page__p__1610977__hl__tfm__fromsearch__1#entry1610977Tim

You might want to look at these 3 links:http://dl.dropbox.co...fps_updated.JPG

Hmmm, can't argue with those results. You've got a nice progression of FPS up the scale of RAM freqs and timings with the same CPU frequencies. What CPU do you have? i7 I presume? If that's the case then I suspect the main reason I can't get much FPS difference on my i3 is its widely regarded weak memory controller.I see from the other thread you linked to the discussion was in reference to the i7, which I am beginning to learn is a different beast in things other than pure clock speed and number of cores; its advantages I suspect are more subtle than that. As for NickN, I followed his FSX/Win7 setup guide and it works a treat, he certainly knows his onions!

Very much appreciated. That's very close to my results and a great analysis. and I agree with your following statement:"Nobody has ever said that faster or better-tuned RAM is a silver bullet for FSX. We all know there aren't any of those. And I am not suggesting that it's good value for money: that's a different debate and not a productive one, in my view" I admit there is a small impact so I was wrong in a way, but is it worth paying twice as much for a memory set just to get up to 5% perf boost? You answered that there ^^ It's up to each one, but it's important to know what one can expect when making the choice, especially if it's an upgrade like the original poster plans to doWould it be too much to ask you to do a Dual vs Tripple channel comparision as well please?

You might want to look at these 3 links:http://dl.dropbox.co...fps_updated.JPGAnd this:http://dl.dropbox.co...aph_updated.JPGAnd then this:http://forum.avsim.n..._1#entry1610977Tim

Exactly guy's there's like a 3 FP/S improvement with a tighter timming, who the heck would pay 250$ on top of the 150$ they allready payed to upgrade.@Dazz I still don't believe the the GPU is so unimportant. It's proably the reason why I got better frames than you during our testing.

I still don't believe the the GPU is so unimportant. It's proably the reason why I got better frames than you during our testing.

Well, I don't know what it is but I would definitely love to. It's just that testing the dual/tripple channel thing is a lot easier unless you have some spare GPU