Hi all -- I discovered it has 5 blown capacitors tonight on my 7600GT. It's served me surprisingly well in it's five-plus years of service, but it's time to move on.I'm looking for advice on replacing my relic of a card, , and about what other components I might upgrade in my current set-up (see sig), and then move to a new build, maybe around Xmas time (which would coincide with a move to the Win7 OS).My thoughts were to buy a replacement video card, along with upgraded memory and PSU (Enermax 565W)right now. Is that a sound approach?A couple observations:

• My MOBO will only take DDR2 memory. Is that going to be a performance issue when I do a new build? Maybe if I upgrade the memory, go with some cheaper DDR2 to get up to 4GB, and buy DDR3 when I do a new build? Any opinion on that, and associated recommendations on what memory to get?
• Any suggestions on a video card that would be a good one to serve in the current build, and then swap into a new build later. I'm assuming I should upgrade the PSU, because power calculator has me up over 500W with my current set-up (with only 256 MB on the video card).

Your opinions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Hi,If you can, try to save your $$ for a whole new system.Investing anymore money or time into a system as old as yours isn't quite worth it.For a powerful system to run FSX nearly maxed, you will need about 1100 US dollars.I personally would advise that you wait for the new Intel Ivy Bridge lineup of chips.I would go for the Intel Core i5 3570K. (Release pending)I would also go for an Nvidia GTX660 (also soon to be released)As for a motherboard, try to go for an Asus Z77 Deluxe motherboard. - This will come with all the bells and whistles necessary to push your hardware to the max.For RAM try to stick with 8GB of DDR3@1600. These are affordable but yet very fast.For a PSU, a Corsair TX750W will be sufficient.To cool your CPU for overclocking, go for a Corsair H60.Overall this is what your new system should look like:Intel Core i5 3570KAsus Z77 Deluxe MotherboardNvidia Ge-Force GTX660Corsair TX750W Power Supply8GB of DDR3@1600 RAMCorsair H60 Watercooling Kit

As benorg said, go for a new system with a 2500K/2600K/2700K. If you go for high-end, make sure the MB is PCIe 3 compatible (2x the BW of PCIe 2).Cheers,- jahman.

Thanks -- I don't have the cash to build new right now. Let me frame it up a little differently. Just to get me back up and running for the next few months, can you think of a card that would give me better performance than my 7600GT, but is cheap, so I can save $$ for the new build?Again, thanks for your input!

Thanks -- I don't have the cash to build new right now. Let me frame it up a little differently. Just to get me back up and running for the next few months, can you think of a card that would give me better performance than my 7600GT, but is cheap, so I can save $$ for the new build?Again, thanks for your input!

I'd recommend a single GTS 450. It gets the job done but isn't to expensive either. Just buy this card and use it until you have enough money for a new system.http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-nVidia-GeForce-PCI-Express-GV-N450D3-1GI/dp/B005H741J2

Thanks for the advice -- I bought a GTS 450 locally at Micro Center. But now I fear I've hosed things up a bit. FSX was running fine on the new card. I noticed I had multiple GE Force drivers on my PC, so I used Driver Sweeper to delete all Nvidia display drivers. After installing the 295.73 drivers -- I also deleted the old .cfg file to force a new one. Ever since, there are stutters, texture tears and lock ups in FSX. Every time I try to modify the display settings in FSX, the changes don't stick -- they automatically revert back to Ultra High across the board. I've attempted to revert back to the old .cfg file, as well, but with no better results. Any idea what's going on? Thanks!Any idea what's going on?

One additional note -- I also upgraded to Nvidia Inspector 1.9.5.11, because I was going to review my settings after the new install. It appears there were a couple of settings in Inspector that had some SLI settings that weren't default in the FSX profile. I don't have SLI, and I switched them back to default -- and things got a little better. Maybe there are other settings in Inspector I need to take a closer look at?