upgrading hardware

[Meso]

I have a short question. today i found out that it is actually possible with my current mobo to use 1600MHz DDR3 DIMM ram.

i havan MSIX48C Platinum mobo with a intel core 2Duo e8400 @ 3.00GHz.

http://motherboards.productwiki.com/msi-x48c-platinum/

At the moment i have 4GB DDR3 1300MHZ corsair memory. Is it worth the trouble of purchasing, installing 8GB 1600MHZ memory? would FSX benefit from it?

Or would it be if i go for a bit cheaper solution buy an extra 4GB of the same 1300MHz memory?

at the moment i use tileproxy for the scenery, would it help FSX to load things faster? Or does the extra memory not help at all?

kind regards,

Meso

[stansdds]

The amount of RAM depends upon your operating system. 32 bit operating systems cannot address more than 4 GB of total system memory; that's CPU cache, video card memory and system RAM combined.

Faster RAM is important, so is low latency RAM.

[Meso]

That is why i have a 64bit system

[stansdds]

I'm still using Windows XP Home, which is a 32 bit operating system, so I can't tell you if going beyond 4 GB of RAM is going to help or not. I can tell what helped my system. I started with a Core2Duo E8400 CPU operating at 3.0 GHz and 2 GB of RAM. I found that FSX, especially with add-on weather programs, would eat up all of the RAM and FSX would crash. Going to 4 GB solved that issue. Overclocking my CPU to 3.6 GHz really helped with loading, frame rates, and smoothness. FSX was finally usable, but it lacked when I installed an AI traffic program. I swapped out my Core2Duo CPU for a Core2Quad Q9650 at 3.0 GHz and found that FSX was much smoother and faster, then it became really usable when I overclocked the CPU and RAM. My CPU is now at 3.8 GHz and my DDR2-800 RAM is running at 845 Mhz.

Honestly, my advice to you would be to overclock your CPU first and look for improvements. You can also download freeware programs that will track your memory usage. I use MemStatus, but it has not been upgraded to be compatible with Vista or Windows7. If you are using more than than 3.5 GB of RAM, then installing more RAM may be a benefit. If you are not using more than 3.5 GB of RAM and you still want to spend some money, upgrade to a Core2Quad, then overclock it.

[Meso]

Thanks for your reply. Actually the xtra ram only cost me like 30 euro's so i will do that for sure. the CPU's are still quiete expensieve at least the quad cores for a 775 socket. still arround 500€ for a good one. maybe i save some money.

on the other hand i thought FSX would not really benefit from multiple cores, it is quiete an old code or am i wrong? I thought it liked fast memory and a really fast CPU, but not really multicores?

anyway ill see what the extra ram will do. actually i too startedw with 2gb of ram then ended up at 4 now going to 8. lets see.

kind regards,

Meso

[stansdds]

FSX is a 32-bit program, so it cannot use more than 4 GB of RAM, but when you add in third-party AI traffic and weather programs, those programs will also need RAM, hence 4 GB working for me when 2 GB was insufficient. As for FSX using multiple cores, in it's original form FSX would only use one core, but with SP1 multi-core support was added. This is why FSX was such a poor performer when released, but SP1 was applauded for it's seemingly magical improvement in how the sim ran on most computers.

[Meso]

ok that makes sense. At the moment i use tileproxy to supply the scenery, so i fly with accurate ground texutres. to me makes sense i fly VFR most of the time so i want something that looks nice and changes from time to time. not VFR like standard fsx which basically means visualy following roads. i hope tile proxy will use the extra memory sufficiently.