My 1.4 Athlon, 512MB DDR is coupled to a ATI 9000 PRO 64MB. I am trying to minimize the fairly regular pauses (2-4 seconds in duration) when scenery is loaded into memory and the flight can continue. Where will I realize the best bang for my buck...increasing RAM or VC memory? I know doing both is optimal. Which one is more critical?Thanks.Chris

Remember, VC is just space set aside on the HD. As fast a HD's have become, they crawl compared to physical Ram. You don't mention what OS you have, With WinXP I let it decide the VC memory...it, compared to old MS OS's does a great job of it. If you have XP, you might be (depending on textures and your XP setup) exceeding the 512Mb of DDR you have. (XP generally takes 100-140Mb...what is left is what you have for any other programs...anything over and the program starts accessing the HD....and pause...pause...pause.) I run 1GB now though for FS thats overkill.....

JETninja:I should have clarified the VC, as Video Card. I am referring to the onboard memory on the video card! My OS is WIN XP. I just had another source tell me that he didn't see much of an improvement upgrading from 512 DDR to 1 gig DDR RAM, and he thought increasing the card memory would yield more tangible results. What are your thoughts?Thanks.

I can give you anecdotal information... I upgraded my video card from a GeForce 4 Ti4600 to an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and also my RAM from 512mb to 1gb at different times. For my money, the video card upgrade offered much more tangible performance increases than the RAM. That might not be the case if you were upgrading from, say, 128mb of RAM to 512, but the switch from half a gig to a gig is much less of a dramatic upgrade, IMHO. thanks,

I run an old Gainward GF2-T1....only 64MB of DDR. I do overclock it big time (right now 310/510) and I run FS2004 almost maxed out. I only get fps issues at my two way too detailed airports by Shev. (KSNA / KLGB) I get no pauses..........I plan on upgrading it, but the current VC world is still a mess...I'm waiting for it to work out a bit. (NVidia's lower performance vs ATI still crappy after all these years drivers...)

Bill:Your specs bring up another question. I notice you have DX 9.0b which would be compatible with your 9700 PRO. With my 9000 PRO which is compatible only for DX 8.1, would I be waisting my time installing 9.0b?JET: Thanks for your info. The consensus seems to be with upgrading the card for a more noticeable difference. I'm also starting to entertain a new Mobo & processor as well. Chris

The cpu can access the ram 60,000 times faster than the HD and the upgrade to a 128mb video card or even a 256mb will only give you that additional ram (give or take). From what I have read on these forums the last two months, it appears that 768mb of ram is the minimum that FS9 likes to have. 1gb of course would put you over the top. Ram is alot cheaper than a top end video card. I think you ought to add 512mb of ram to bring you up to 1gb and see what happens. That upgrade would be alot cheaper than the card. Obviously, doing both is what we are all after! My two cents.Miller

Hi Chris,I know that your card will work fine with DX9.0b, but obviously it won't be able to take full advantage of the new capabilities. I've suffered no ill effects from upgrading my DX, and I doubt you would either. If I recall correctly, wasn't DX 8.1 a problem release? I know it shipped with CFS3 and a lot of people reported problems with it. The very least I'd recommend is upgrading to 8.2, but I don't think there's any harm in moving to 9.0. If anyone else had had this cause them problems, perhaps they'll speak up.thx,

Quite often my FS9 reads max usage of 508 Megs with Win XPHowever, once on a flight btwn KJFK and KBOS with VM turned off I saw the max climb to 730This using the task managers' performance graphs.Nothing else was running.Allen

I have 1 Gig of RAM and when I fly with a complex panel in bad weather and try to Alt-Tab to the Desktop, I get a long pause, before things load up properly (I kill most all applications before starting FS9). So 1 Gig is not overkill by any means.With kindest regards,

Hello,I run a P4 2.4, 1 Giga ram, GF4 TI4600.I decided to REMOVE the Virtual Memory or also called the Page File. Now the system use the RAM instead of the HD and this makes a big difference....

Chris,I am running a 1.2 Athlon with 768mb of PC133 and an (is anyone else still using one of these) 3dfx V5 5500 under Win98se.I am not experiencing ANY pauses for scenery loading. I have to ask since it was not mentioned in this thread, did to you do a complete install loading all the scenery off of CD4 onto your hard drive?If not the pauses would be when the system has to go to the CD for scenery. If all the scenery is on the HDD then you probably experiencing some other system overload which more system memory may fix.One way to check this is notice if you HDD activity light is on for the entire length of the pauses which would indicate memory swapping. The other would be to download a memory monitor utility that gives you real time readouts of memory useage.Hope this helps.Sskoup