First off, I hope this isn't in the wrong forum. I am currently running FS9 with a Q6600 @3.5 and a Zotac 9800GTX card. I'm thinking of upgrading to a GTX650. I don't intend to go for FSX, but I do run other games. As the subject line says....? Thanks in advance.

FS itself renders 3D objects using the mostly the main CPU motherboard processor. Other games may make more use of the GPU processor on the graphics card. Since you are running your CPU at 3.5 GHz, that is pretty fast. Also FS9 only makes use of a single core so clock speed is the determining factor for FS graphics.

 

In a published series of FS9 benchmarks it was noted, however, that on Win 7 FS ran faster than other Win versions for the same CPU and GPU. It was finally surmised from whatever resources that Win 7 can trap complex math procedures (as used in rendering) and if the GPU is idle pass the processing to it since the GPU is an extremely capable math processor.

 

650 performance comparisons are here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/19-Tom-s-Hardware-Index-B-Performance,2976.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/19-Tom-s-Hardware-Index-C-Extreme,2977.html

 

650 review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-650-ti-benchmark-gk106,3318.html

 

The other benchmark index is here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/benchmarks,135.html

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2010-gaming-graphics-charts-high-quality/benchmarks,114.html

has game fps benchmarks of the 9800. This is the latest year for the 9800 GTX.

 

I think your decision will be based on your other games than FS.

 

Actually you might find more assistance in the hardware forum.

If you're using real weather like ASE, I think you should be able to get better performance in heavy cloud situations if you're running HD clouds like REX.

If I set my clouds to HD and there is some serious weather, I get a lot of fps drop and I can hear the GPU fan work a lot harder. With DXT compressed 512x512 clouds, I don't have this problem at all. So I'm thinking the GPU handle clouds in FS9. Just a thought. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm using a GTX560

Your CPU will run FS9 very well. In fact, you may get smooth performance flying general aviation in FSX.