Well I got the card installed... and everything set up, its got the drivers from the Nvidia site for it, im leaving it at stock clocks for now and I went into FS to test it out and for some reason my add on clouds were like extremly high detail and it was ovecast at Seattle with moderate rain and I had my settings maxed out and I was getting 45-50 FPS I thougt that was pretty good but I thought thes 2d cluds were stupid so I put all clear weather with a few clouds and my frames dropped like a rock! I was getting 25 FPS max on the runway of Seattle in the Citation X Deluxe and (i did restart FS to get better clouds) and the flight took forever to load, well as Gixer said 25 FPS is alot to get get in dense areas but it was not going smooth at all(well my crap ram could have play in that) now here is my real problem....when I go to higher alts the textures start to look kind of like uhh colord garnular sand type stuff like this:

From VC, the runway...also the sky...


Can You Spot the Cessna? Look at the taxi ways...


Another look (knowtice the sky; not related to the card but its another prob)



If thats what FS looks like with an 540 dollar video card then well im goin back to Mr. MX because this just sucks...

Somthing is not right there!!

Possibly a driver issue, though you say you got the latest form the Nvidia site so that shouldn't be a problem.  Did you use Driver Cleaner 3 to get rid of old reminicents of old drivers?

Your drop in FPS was to be expected when you switch from 2d clouds to 3d clouds do not worry about that.  What you need now is to get that ram sorted and get your system setup right!

I would suggest a re-install of FS2004 possibly unless you backed up your original textures before putting in the new ones??  That problem in the sky I am guessing is either your addon textures or a driver problem.

What level do you have Mip-Mapping on? dont set it higher than 4.

If your monitor can do it 1600x1200res or use 1280x1024.  Set 4xAA and 8xAF.  There are a few other things you can play with in your graphics cards settings via the control panel, i.e. Image Sharpness (I notch it up a bit) and Digital Vibrance, both of these are on the Colour correction bit.

In the game under graphics on the Hardware tab is your card being picked up as a GF6800 Ultra?  If not go delete your FS9.cfg and re-start sim.  Do this first as when you do this you will have to reset your sim up.

Short of that I would wait until you get new ram.  Download all the latest drivers for your system.  Re-format (I always do when I do a major component change anyhow, just my preference) Once XP is installed install SP1 and all hotfixes.  Then go ahead and install your drivers, mobo/DX9c/Vid card/Sound etc etc.

Well I will do what you said, and yes I did use driver cleaner but there were some files it could not fid to delete ??? Im shure my RAM is holding me back big time but well look at the bright side, RAM dosent cost 550 bucks...

Yup, I bet it looked like the ground was alive too if you set it much higher than 4!  you get a sparkly type effect.

Hopefully you backed up your texture folder before you installed the new clouds?

If not they will be on one of the disks, though I do not know which I am afraid.

No there is a folder called 'Texture' in your main FS9 folder.  This is where the cloud textures are as far as I am aware.

Force mip-map Trilinear.  Leave the v-sync application controlled (Though if you get ghosting due to your TFT then turn V-sync on all time)

Uh-oh, this does not look good for the BFG 6800Ultra I was considering getting for my system which is not yet ready.

It's back on the list.

Looks like the video card and the CPU will be the most expensive out of a complete system.