I am currently using an AMD Phenom II x 6 1090T machine with 4MB of RAM along with a ATI4870/512K video card. FSX frame rates are OK but bog down at times. I am also using a TH2G and three 4x3 monitors. Will a video card update make very much difference?

Hello, anyone home! I'm a casual simmer and developer that is looking for some updated recommendations. Suggestions are appreciated.

Hi Mike,1. FSX is very CPU bound, so you'll gain a lot of performance by overclocking your current CPU.2. FSX does not run very well on ATI GPU's, especially while rendering clouds. Upgrading to a nVidia GPU will help in those situations. You'll find a lot more info on the above two topics here in the Avsim hardware forums.So yes, upgrading to an nVidia 560TI, 570 or 580 will help your bogged framerates, especially while flying with real weather.Hope this helps.

Mike,In partial answer to your question....Last week I replaced my Sapphire Radeon 4870 512MB card just like yours with an XFX Radeon HD 9650 2GB card to see if it would improve performance and texture loads.............. The answer was no, I saw absolutely no improvement in performance or visuals using the newer more powerful card...... My overclocked dual core E8500 at 3.8GHz appears to be the bottleneck....... The 4870 512MB is still an outstanding card, just check the internet for prices on them and you will find everyone wants more for them than many of the newer cards....... I reinstalled my old 4870 and will be content with it until I build a totally new system........ As Lenny in the above post indicated, nVidia may be the answer............. I will go with nVidia in my next build.......JayDub

2. FSX does not run very well on ATI GPU's, especially while rendering clouds. Upgrading to a nVidia GPU will help in those situations. ...So yes, upgrading to an nVidia 560TI, 570 or 580 will help your bogged framerates, especially while flying with real weather.

No hard feelings here buddy, but this is a statement that is starting to sometimes get me a bit aggravated... -_-First let me tell you that I am in no way an ATI or Nvidia a really excited user. I couldn't care less which brand I am using as long as it gives me the best possible gfx performance (within a reasonable budget ofcourse)Secondly, are you speaking out of own experience about that so called ATI allergy which FSX is suffering from? ^_^I was able to compare both my GTX570 and HD6970 (on the same system) and all I can honestly say is that the HD6970 came out with better results (smoothness/fps). It is ofcourse perfectly possible that the HD6970 is a bit different from the previous ATI models in that aspect... but my old HD 4870 512mb has always been able to supersample REX HD clouds @ 2048pixels. Now @4096pixels my HD6970 renders weather perfectly and (to my impression...) better than my GTX 570. Therefor at this moment the 6970 is the card I am using 24/7 !