Hi friends :-wave My system is the following:Pentium III 2.5, RAM 512, Radeon 9700 Pro latest drivers, W2000pro, FS9Overall good performance, but blurry textures and stuttering at very dense sceneries are still visible and annoying.Can I expect a distinct improvement if I upgrade to RAM 1024? :-hmmm Thanx in advance for your precious help and Happy Christmas!Rino

"Hi Rino",Just done what you are asking. I`ve now got 2x sticks of 512 of 2700 (333) ram. It didn`t make as much of a difference that I would have wanted. But the overall computer speed has improved on all programs. FS9 has improved slightly, views load slightly quicker & is slightly smoother. Image quality is exactly the same. At current prices I think it`s an excellent move.Hope this helps. Rob

Buy more ram if your hardrive is going nuts during flights. im gona need more than 512 for PSS and PMDG products. more ram wont improve your visual quality though.

I concur with the above...I went from 512 to 1.5gb (it was on sale) and I noticed the same benefits as above...Sim views changed much quicker, the sim was overall more smooth, and the hard drive was able to take a rest in the flight. Image quality did not change a bit. It did NOT enable me to change my sliders, although I currently have my texture size sliders at the max - which is probably the one most impacted by memory. (Others are at a variety of places)-Greg

Greg, I know you said that it made the sim smoother, does that mean it was less jerky when you look out the sides and when you taxi and such? I'm also in the market for more RAM, but don't want to spend the money if it's really not going to improve my sim by $200 worth.

You will notice the difference at the major airports like LAX and ORD. Especially if you use a high volume AI traffic program like Ultimate Traffic. (Which I do.) With 512MB when I panned around the HD was going crazy to keep up slowing the sim to a snails pace while the scenery and textures loaded. I have upgraded to 1GB and now they load effortlessly. General Frame rate won't increase but you won't see the drop caused by the scenery load (Down to 1-2FPS)!! Thereby making the sim smoother. I average about 8-9 FPS at LAX with the lowest about 6FPS. This is with scenery and autogen maxed, as well as 100% AI traffic. With UT thats about 100+ aircraft sitting at the airport while others depart and arrive. Most other areas in FS9 I get about 20fps(lOCKED) This is on a P4 2Ghz with a GeForce FX 5900.

Thanx a lot to all of you. I think I'll make the step, all in all.rino

I don't know about Win2000, but Win98 can't use more than 512 Mb of RAM, and adding more can actually slow your computer down.WindowsXP seems to like all the RAM it can get.

nothing ever seems to use my full 1gig of ram not even fs

Try this simple test, stick only 256 megs in and start flight sim, go to spot view and circle your plane. Do the same with 512, you can almost go around now with no stuttering with 512. Try the same with 1 gig and it is smooth. Remeber that ram is sooooooooooooooooooooo much faster than your hard drive, of course it will preform better because the loading times are reduced. What factors? Not just any ram will mark such a marked improvent, if possible go for 333 400MHZ DDR ram (If your MB chipset supports this) and you will be in heaven ;)........... [h4]Best Wishes,Randy J. Smithhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/betaimg.jpg

Win2k is the heart and soul of your beloved XP. XP is nothing but a few trinkets and a pretty face on Win2k.Just thought you'd like to know...Let the flames begin:-lol

I have a AthlonXP 2400+, GeForce4 Ti4200 and 512 MB SDRAM - no big problem with the default FS9 planes and AI traffic. But I also have Ultimate Traffic 2004 installed (love this real world traffic!), and just purchased PMDG's fantastic 737NG. Oh, and I have addon mesh for about every area that I visit in the sim.512 MB is simply not enough for this combination. While the task manager displays between 300 and 400 MB of RAM used by FS9, the performance monitor shows lots of paging activity whenever I switch views or get close to a detailed airport.Try using the task manager and performance monitor to watch your memory and page file usage, this should tell you whether to upgrade or not. I'm already comparing prices ...Just my 2c (EUR),VOlker :]

512 isn't bad at all. And more memory probably won't remove 'the stuts' in certain areas. But just an idea, and an alternative manner to get rid of your hard earned money: Buy a second hard drive and isolate OS and games from eachother. The investment is more or less equivalent. Anybody who manipulates his own 'Flytendo' should own two drives at least. You've got many more heads reading data... Jaap