I have a question for you regular simmers. Having spent years playing with PMDG 737 NG on FS9 I have finally bought 737 NGX and now I have had to obviously delve into FSX. The main reason I have avoided FSX and stayed with FS9 is that the performance was awful. Now.. I have got to the point where the NGX runs ok but its still abit stuttery and if I flick to the Outside spot view I will always get a skeletal view until the aircraft "builds itself again.. (I have added the text lines as explained in the intro guide.) Flicking over to the Virtual cockpit it always takes a second or so to load the panels. I have played around with the scenary settings until I am blue in the face and I can get a smooth run however The scenary ends up looking like a child painted it... :-) My question is Should I spend the money and update the Graphics card.The system as it stands is as followsWindows 7 64 bitIntel Q6600 Quad Core Processor8 GB RAMAMD Radeon 4800 Graphics.FSX SP2 installed in its own directory not default install directory.virus scans disabled on that directory.I was looking at the NVIDIA Geforce 560? There are many debates over the years online about whether graphics cards help or not or whether it is purely cpu. As far as I can see it the Graphics card is the weak link at the moment in my system. Any thoughts comments gratefully received before I spend money on something that may not help at all. ThanksAndy.

Honestly I dont think u would gain much unless u upgraded your cpu. I had a q6600 overclocked to 2.8 and a 8800gt card. I installed a GTX470 and there was no difference in performance. The Q6600 is holding u back.

FSX relies more on CPU, so I suggest upgrading that like Matt said. Also, GeForce 560 you mean GeForce GTX560?

I also have a Q6600 OCd to 2.8 with an 8800gts card and 4 gig RAM. I don't get those skeleton views anymore....I believe there's a setting in your fsx.cfg that fixes this. Do a search on the forum and you should find it.Did you follow the Intro guide w/regards to cfg changes and settings? Also, do a Google search on "Why I get 50 fps in FSX" and grab Mathijs' document. I'm very pleased with how the NGX runs on my "old" system. You typically don't need killer graphics settings when you spend 90 percent of your time cruising at FL380....and I'm too busy during the landing phase to look out the window much!

Also try setting your virtual memory to a higher value, and make sure the HIGHMEMFIX is implimented into the CFG

i agree its time up upgrade your system and apply a couple of tweaks and you will be ready. Its worth it though the ngx is a break through to absolute greatness.I suggest getting an nvidia card. that will save you one headache right away

I agree with everyone else - that system is ancient. The i5/i7 CPU architecture does a lot better than the Core 2 did in FSX (plus it's hugely overclockable) and a Radeon 4 series GPU is just super old at this point. Get an i5 2500K, P67 or Z68 mobo, 8+GB of RAM and a GTX 560 or better GPU and you'll see a huge improvement.

I agree with everyone else - that system is ancient. The i5/i7 CPU architecture does a lot better than the Core 2 did in FSX (plus it's hugely overclockable) and a Radeon 4 series GPU is just super old at this point. Get an i5 2500K, P67 or Z68 mobo, 8+GB of RAM and a GTX 560 or better GPU and you'll see a huge improvement.

This is exactly what I did, and, OP, I saw HUUUGE improvement even on stock speeds.

If u can stand to wait a bit maybe wait for Ivy Bridge to see if it will offer an improvement in FSX over Sandy Bridge.

My Core i7 2600K @ 4.5 GHz runs the NGX very nicely. I also have a GTX 570, but that's for other games. As long as I don't turn up the AI traffic I'm fine. As far as overclocking goes, they've pretty much made it super easy to do with the Sandy Bridge chips. I never touched overclocking until Sandy Bridge. All I did was raise the TurboBoost multiplier to 45, BCLK 100 MHz (default), and RAM set to 1333 MHz (my RAM's speed). Probably want to get a new cooler just to be safe too. I have the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus.

_{Thank you people. It kind of confirmed what I thought I knew, I'll try the overclock method that somebody mentioned. If not I guess its a new system. Trouble being its post Christmas, this is a bloody long month and money is a bit tight. I may just have to put up with a bit of stutter for a month or two.Thanks again.Andy.}

Edited January 4, 201214 yr by Andy764

OK, who let these power hardware guys into this thread? :( Andy, do those fixes Jamalje recommended--my skeleton models disappeared, and toning down some of my settings I get 18fps at any airport and 25-ish fps in the air. Not gonna impress the Sandy Bridge crowd, but definitely flyable.And....yes, I have built my Newegg wish list!