I certainly agree with the decision to add more memory Steve. I just wanted to be sure that folks didn't get the mistaken impression that somehow adding RAM is going to solve the framerate issue(s) with FSX. You need to drop back here and let us know how the new machine is handling Vista and FSX. It seems, for the moment at least, that it's a mixed bag and more input is always a good thing. We've recently moved to Florida and I'm off the air for a while (probably a long while). Just too many restrictions on antennae here and DX has really been my only interest with the radios in the past 25 years. Off to the golf course now...73 - Doug

sorry, I have to react to this :"It would make no difference at all. Adding physical system memory has never increased the absolute frame rate in any version of MSFS running under any OS."Try FS9 or FSX with 256 MB of memory, then double that, then double again.Tell me if you did not see a difference ...I assure you, with only 256 MB of memory, you will see stutters and frame rates drop regularly into the single digits. In my experience, adding more memory has always sped up my systems.Too many people underestimate the importance of memory. I have friends who bought a power horse PC, but equipped with a minimum of slow memory, who had big problems running games. Installing additional memory always solved the problem. Adding a more powerful graphics card or processor did not do much (something, but not much) for them.For me, I can accept lower frame rates (typically between 15 and 20) to get better scenery, but only if I don't see stuttering.Just my 2 cents in this discussion. Of course, tastes are different, people flying IFR will require smooth gauges. For them higher frame rates are more important.Jan

People also need to remember that the "increased resource demands" of Vista are because it makes better use of the memory. It can and does free up that memory very well when an application loads and can make use of it.People tend to see the increased memory footprint of Vista as a bad thing when, in fact, it is a good thing because it is making use of the memory available for pre-caching whereas it would otherwise be doing nothing.

The "stuttering" and attendant framerate issues with lower levels of memory are due entirely to texture loading problems. They have nothing to do with the absolute framerate generated by the sim.Doug

In agreement with what Doug said,Adding more memory, whether ram or on the video card, will decrease stutters and increase smoothness when transitioning between different programs or using programs that demand high levels of memory, but only to a point. With more than roughly a 512+ mb graphics card and 2gbs of ram, on vista or xp, there will be little if any difference unless you're using photoshop or a sound suite for several hours, adding to the undo cache. 32bit FSX, without a memory leak, will pretty much never require nor benefit beyond 2gb of ram (in your computer, that is; the program itself uses less and windows/etc uses the rest).As far as xp vs vista, I have a hard time understanding why people can't grasp the simple fact (yes, fact) that performance is worse for all graphical programs under vista right now than xp - except directx 10 demos of course which won't run on xp. The immaturity of vista graphics drivers alone is enough to make performance worse across the board. You may not notice it as much if you have a very fast conroe processor, but it is there. The hit may be negligible to you, that is one thing, but don't say performance in vista equals performance in xp because it simply is not true and is misleading. The benchmarks above are evidence on top of an endless record of other benchmarks and more importantly user experience. Just pop over to the guru3d forums and you'll see what I mean.