ok ok, I know there is a hardware forum for something like that but I remember that tabs once posted something about gfx cards, possibly in the light of the ngx, had to do with their memory size and memory fsx can handle. reason is that I am about to upgrade my 260 to something will will most likely be a evga560ti. does 1gb ram make sense? or does it actually harm as my pc already has 8gb (maybe too much for fsx but just enough for other programs)? would 512mb make more sense?cheersphil

512M GPU's are ancient history would would just cause you avoidable bottlenecks. There is debate ongoing about whether 2G and 3G memory cards are better or worse in FSX then 1G but it is generally accepted that 1G is the normal safe minimum for a graphics card.

I have a GTX295 and I'm really considering buying a 580. But to answer your question - Yes, memory size matters, but also clock and shader size matters etc etc.Here's the config for an EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3072MB GDDR5:Features:-- Core Clock: 772MHz (Fermi GF110)- 64 TMUs (GTX 480 had 60 TMUs)- Memory: 3072MB GDDR5- Memory Clock: 4008MHz (Effective)- Memory Interface: 384-Bit- Processing Cores: 512- Shader Clock: 1544MHz- Bus Type: PCI-Express 2.0- Display Connectors: 2x Dual-Link DVI-I & 1x Mini-HDMI 1.4a (Includes HDMI & VGA Adapters)- SLI Ready (Upto 3-Way SLI Supported)- HDCP Capable- DirectX 11 Support- OpenGL 4.0 Support- PhysX Enabled- CUDA Enabled- 3D Vision Enabled- NVIDIA Surround Enabled- Lower power consumption compared to GTX 480, only 244 watts- Warranty: 10 Years (Requires registration within 30 days with EVGA)And here's for a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti OC 1024MB GDDR5:Features:-- Core Clock: 900MHz- Memory: 1024MB GDDR5- Memory Clock: 4000MHz (Effective)- Memory Interface: 256-Bit- Processing Cores: 384- Shader Clock: 1800MHz- Bus Type: PCI-Express 2.0- Display Connectors: 2x Dual-Link DVI-I & 1x HDMI 1.4a (Includes HDMI & VGA Adapters)- SLI Ready- HDCP Capable- DirectX 11 Support- OpenGL 4.0 Support- PhysX Enabled- CUDA Enabled- 3D Vision Enabled- NVIDIA Surround Enabled- Warranty: 3 yearsBoth Gigabyte and EVGA are the best in the market right now with Gigabyte only recently started to produce graphic cards with amazing quality and EVGA being a traditional big player in graphic cards. Of course the biggest factor here is the price and there's a huge difference of about 250-300 pounds between the two above. You can always go for a between (GTX570) or ATI cards.

1-1.5gb seems to be the best balance point for fsx.

thanks. I will go for the less expensive 560TI then . money matters, too :-). but I need to replace my gtx260 which behaves more and more crazy with NGX, ORBX and REX, yesterday all clouds were just black rectangles. niceee!I need a real quiet gfx card, heard only good news about the evga with its reference design. do you know any others which are quiet under (FSX) load?

560ti is an excellent card for fsx & I would definitely recommend evga.Your cloud problem sounds a lot to me like a driver issue (providing your card isn't getting too hot). What version nvidia driver are you using?

Kenneth, it is the 270.61.

ordered the evga 560 TI version with 2GB ram. will see :-)