At high altitude (airliner operation),FSX' landscape graphics simply do not matter that much anymore, from FL300 it just does not matter that much. And weather and clouds: you get VERY good images by using Flight Envrionment or something like that.
I would say if you prefer VFR and low level flying in sport planes, go with FSX. If you prefer IFR and airliner operation and complex cockpit modules and flying at high altitudes, go with FS9. After all, people report far less troubles with complex airliners in FS9, than in FSX where they hit hard ground more easily and more often - still so. And there must be a reason why they still develope dedicated FS9 airliners and scenery, and why the FS9 market after several years since FSX got released still is there.
If people do not know it: for FS9, get a socalled 4GB patch. It allows you to adress any exe (and so the FS-exe as well) and patch it so that it asks the system for more available RAM memory. This works around the inbuild RAM limit of FS9. Maybe this is a handicap for FSX as well. If the sim meets it'S inbuid RAM limit, you get the infamous OOB error and it shuts down (out of memory). I have 8GB RAM, but while I drove up all sliders with my new rig, I got greeted by OOMs in March and April after fresh install. The patch seemed to have been the remedy.
Windows XP needs to be told how to handle such a request for more memory. 64 Bit Vista and W7 should handle it all by themselves, you just need to patch the exe in question.
Does W7Pro 64 Bit even make use of 8 GB RAM? Any competent guy in knowledge? I was confronted with this question AFTER I bought my rig in March.
