Hi, the 8800gt is better than the card you have, however, i would go for an 8800gtx, which is the best for FSX.

Dont expect the sim to change dramatically by upgrading cards.
It'll certainly run and look better, depending on your other hardware also.

Think that was me, unless there's another one too.  Upgraded from a nVidia 512mb 8500GT to the 1gb 8800GT last week and saw a huge difference.  So far FS9 hasn't had a frame drop from 32 since it was installed no matter what weather I'm in.  Really a great card and a pretty nice price, $180 with shipping, after the mail in rebate.  

Have no clue what it would do to FSX, nothing can max out FSX smoothly just yet to my knowledge.  Tempted to download the trial version and test it out just for the hell of it.

Main reason for dumping the 8500GT was to support the new 20" LCD monitor, my old one had a low resolution of 1024x768 and the 512mb card was perfect, but now running a high 1680x1050 resolution I needed the boost to keep things smooth.  

No matter what the monitor it is a great card for the price.  Wish it would have been around when I built this system.  Or at least in the budget back then

Unfortunately I must have been one of the last few to get this card from Tigerdirect as now they claim to be out of stock

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=36804...

Edit...

PS...be aware, it is a pretty large card, not so much width but in length.  So if you are dealing with a smaller case you could run into some issues

eddywinch82 wrote on Sep 21^st, 2008 at 6:52am:

No it is not. Hardly any of the 9Series perform better than the 8800 (or at least GTX for that matter) in FSX but some of the 9's (though I am not familiar with all of them) especially the crazy expensive ones, perform a bit better but for way less the GTX and GT slaughter to 9's.

PS, I don't even think the 9500 512mb outruns the 8600GT or GTS...
My 8800GT 512mb at 1680 (22") runs all games pretty much maxed but my processor is bottleneckin me a bit.