I`m thinking of upgrading from AMD 1.7 to 2.4 and video card fromgeforce3 ti500 to geforce fx.What is the lowest fx card to give mea framerate of say 20 in dense scenery with all display items onfull, also ! have wind98 would XP be any advantage ?Maybe I should upgrade the processor first before spending too muchCan anybody help please and are there any other points I shouldbear in mind ?thanks a lot eric

That's a tough question. Frame rate will vary greatly depending where you are flying, at what altititude and with what aircraft. Then there is the weather you are flying in, any add-ons being used and the time of day you are flying and what screen resolution you are using. For that matter, what frame rate are you getting now for comparison's sake?Some harware issues/limiters include the amount and type of Ram you have, speed of your hardrive and even type of motherboard. In otherwords, your question is almost impossible to answer. I suggest reading the forums here in detail. There are many reports of what performance folks are getting and what hardware they are getting it on. That said, I think you will get more bang for the buck in just upgrading your CPU. The TI500 is still not a bad card. I still use it. A better card would probably allow you to run at greater resolutions, but I don't think you would get dramatic frame rate increases. If you still want to upgrade to a FX card, I myself would go for the FX5600 as it seems to be a good price/performance ratio. Don't bother with more than 128MB ram on the card, unless you are going to be big into some of the next first person shooters like Half-Life 2, as it does not appear the extra memory does anything for Flight Sim, at least from what I have read.If things are working well on Win 98, then there is probably not a big reason to upgrade to XP. Some reports say XP runs Flight Sim slightly faster, some say slightly slower, and some see no difference. XP, if you use your PC for more than just Flight Sim, is generally more stable and handles memory better. There are some third party commercial add-ons that don't get along very well with 98, as I can personally attest to. In the long run, XP is the way to go, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't get it expecting big performance increases. And if you do go the XP route, be sure to do a hard drive format and fresh install, don't upgrade over 98. Good luck in whatever you decide to do. Tony

Thanks Tony,If I do go for a fx 5600 these are agp 8x whereas my motherboardis agp 4x,will this make a big difference and will I need a newmobo.eric

You should be able to use a 8X card in a mobo that only supports 4X- ( I do),you just won't get the supposed advantages of 8X.I've seen it said that the benefits of 8X are minimal- perhaps someone else could comment on this?Dave

I'd spend the extra money and get a Radeon 9700 Pro - probably the best bang for the buck. You will be very happy with the results. If you get the Fx5600-get the new true "ultra" card. It is supposed to be better than the past generation of 5600 ultras.

thanks Colin,but what`s a true " ultra" card and how would I recognise it?eric