What graphics card are you using?

If you want to improve your frame rates a grafics card is not going to help much. You need memory. A grafics card does what it says, the grafics, it might improve the frame rates a little, but not a ton.
You don't need 40+ FPS, it's a waste of system resources, you won't notice a difference between about 30 FPS and 70 FPS, you really don't want to run it at anymore than 30 FPS.
What are your system specs?

SamIntel is right. A graphics card will improve your scenery in that you can turn the sliders up to max without it affecting your FPS, but it won't necessarily affect your FPS if you keep sliders the same. Funnily enough, I have all of my sliders maxed out, and my graphics card...leaves a little to be desired 🙄 (Nvidia GeForce 5200) and I have FPS of around 20 which suits me fine, but I have 1.5 gb of RAM.

As SamIntel has asked, it might be more beneficial for you to give us your system specs 😉

I agree with what SamIntel and 99jolegg say's get some more ram first then see how it goes.

I keep my FPS at 25 as anything over that is a waste of CPU rescources. As you can see from my sig I'm currently running 2gig of ram with a nvidia Geforce 6600GT (pci-e) card.

I still get 25FPS in the PMDG 600/700 in the VC with no lag at all.

Goto crucial to check how much RAM your machince can take.

I agree with all the people above.Spend some money for Ram and you will notice difference.My old card was an Nvidia GeForce 5700. When i get my first 1GB stick of ram i had very good performance,when i finally manage to reach the 3GB it was great.Now i run an 6600 256RAM and im more than satisfied.

If you give us your specs we will be more precise. 😉

Adding to what Greekman just also the make of your motherboard as well if possible so we can tell what memory you can take.

The perfect tool for finding out exactly/everything in your pc, you want this....(Belarc Advisor). For those that have used it, they'll know what I mean. 😉
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

I'd also suggest AIDA 32

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html

Hey Peeps,

Thanks for the reply guys, I am currently running an 2.6AMD 64bit processor with 2gig of ram and a 6600 graphics card.

I would have thought that was enough? 🙂

My machine can take up to 4gig of ram

With that setup, a better graphics card would suit you nicely. Have a look for compatibility here: ➡ www.crucial.com and see which you can have. Your computer could easily handle a 256mb graphics card which would mean that you can max most of the sliders out with no lag at all. Good luck! 😉

Without wanting to play one-upmanship, I'm running an AMD 4600 X2 with 2GB RAM and an Nvidia Ge-Force 7800GTX.

I'm actually glad I melted my bank account to future proof my PC as this should be sufficient for the next version of Flight Simulator as well.