Simviation Forums

Right now, I have a great PC which runs FS9 at maxed out graphics, but it only has 512MB of ram.

well if your pc runs fs maxed out with no problems and you only care about fs you should invest in some new scenary or aircraft instead as nethier will improve your sim experiance that much if you already get super smooth fps... although with 512mb of ram I doubt it's compleatly smooth, personaly I think upgrading to 2gb is a great upgrade that helps all aplications run better and will allow you to task switch alot more effeciantly.  Unless you have a particularly bad onboard sound chip it shoulden't effect your fps more than a few frames a second.

ram

ram

Definitely

What are you using for speakers?  If you're using a pair of POS $15 computer speakers then I doubt a new sound card will make much difference for you.  If you've got decent speakers then you'll hear quite an improvement in sound quality.  I know that going from onboard sound to a sound card made a world of difference in sound on my system.

But if you're looking for frame rate then RAM is the way to go.  Sure a sound card takes some load off the CPU but unless you're running software with some intensive sound processing (real time pitch shifting, EQ, reverb, acoustic environment simulation, etc) then there really isn't much processing to do.  Certainly FS9 doesn't use any fancy audio effects to bog down a CPU.

RAM by far RAM. It should remove some of the bottolneck between the GPU and CPU, but by far the best ting you could do to improove your system is get a 650 prescott processer.

The thing about the sound card is that unless you are useing 7.1 speakers or your intagraded sound is really that bad, your not going to notice the difference.


Cheers
Cameron