Advice needed

[newberiffic]

I have an old 1.3ghz gateway with a geforce 5500 256mb pci 512mb ram this computer has nothing installed accept a barebones xp, fs9, and thats it, all I use it for is my cockpit setup,

I have a few questions,

[Groundbound1]

Howdy, and welcome to SimV!
Well I guess lets take these in order.

1) 6-20 fps sounds about right for you system.

2) See if the manual talks about maximum amounts of ram per slot. Even if you do have and empty slot, if the book says your machine won't use more than 512, it's probably right. SOMETIMES, a BIOS update might be available to change these kinds of things, but that's not for the inexperienced.

3)On your system, your processor is probably hurting your performance the most. Processors (depending on what kind of course) for older machines are becoming quite affordable these days. But do your homework! Just because the processor will fit on your motherboard, does not insure that it will work correctly.

4)Given the fact your are using two monitors on that card, the performance you're getting really isn't all THAT bad. A newer card would help out a lot though.

I would hate to recommend something to someone, then have it bite us BOTH in the backside, but EBAY!

[newberiffic]

Yes that helps and thanks,
I too figured that with settings at both extremes and no change in fps that it was likely the ram or cpu.

I would spend 2-300$ on a used machine/mobo and processer ram upgrade,