Generally, it helps to know what your price range is when it comes to 
recommending components, since more money will get you more rendering power. 
As a minimum, you want to make sure you have enough graphics power to run 
your game at a particular resolution.  With LCD monitors, this is almost 
always the native (max.) resolution of the monitor.

Although Flight Simulator X has been out for a while, I believe this game 
still has a pretty hefty demand on the hardware requirements (ignore the 
minimum requirements that MS lists, those are pretty much a joke).  Also, 
you shouldn't overlook the processor with flight simulators, as these tend 
to require some hefty CPU processing power, as well as video.

Without knowing more about you requirements, I'll just throw out a few cards 
to look at.  These are in the $150 to $300 range, I believe.  From Nvidia, 
look at the GTX 275 and the GTX 260.  From ATI, look at the 4870, 4850, 
5570, and 5550.  (The 5500 series is a replacement for the 4800 cards.  They 
are built on a smaller die, meaning they use less power and produce less 
heat.  Unfortunately, they tend to underperform the 4800 series; so, take 
that into account when comparing prices.  I suspect that anything with at 
least 512mb of video memory will work with FS-X, but extra memory beyond 
that minimum will help future proof your card for newer games (I'm guessing 
at this requirement, since the game was released in 2006).

Anandtech did a nice summary/round up of recommended cards in various price 
categories back in June.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3588&p=1

Since the new ATI 5800 and 5500 cards came out in the meanwhile, you'll 
probably want to look at the numbers in their article on the 5500 series, as 
well.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=1

A couple of things to beware of if you are thinking of buying a computer 
without a gaming video card and upgrading it yourself: make sure that the 
power supply has the capacity to support a high end video card and make sure 
that the case has room to accept what can be a relatively large card (both 
enough slots in the back and enough length from front to back of the case). 
Don't skimp on the system memory for a gaming computer, either.  Max it out 
to at least 3GB on a 32 bit system, and use at least 4 GB on a 64 bit 
system.

As a starting point, I hope this is helpful.

John Sproule

------ Original Message Below -----------

Subject: [PCBUILD] Video Graphics Cards


*I'm planning on getting a new computer and want to get a good video
graphics card for Flight Simulator X Deluxe.  I found a computer with an
NVIDIA nForce MCP61 Chipset, but I don't know how much memory it has.  It
was recommended that I get one with at least 1 GB of RAM.  It was also
recommended that I get an NVIDIA Geforce 9800 GTX or above.

Does anyone know about graphics cards?

Thanks.

Diane Kroeckel*

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