Superior AGP card for older system

Hi,

I've got an upgrading question.

The computer I'm working on is the following.

P4 3.0C
1GB DDR400 ECC RAM
Abit IC7-G 875p Motherboard
Windows XP Pro
ATi 9200 128MB AGP

I need to upgrade the graphics card to run flight simulators (Falcon 4: OF 4.7 and MS FSX Gold) and I was wondering if it would be better to have a faster GPU with less memory or a slightly slower GPU with more memory.

I'm comparing two versions of the ATi X1950 GPU, one with 512MB, and the slightly faster clocked 256MB.

I used to have an ATi 9800 Pro 128MB AGP card but it died (artifacts). When the system was new I was pretty close to having it run without any bottlenecks (all the bandwidth lined up) so I know any newer card will definitely be bottlenecked.

So is it better to have more graphics memory so the rest of the computer doesn't have to work as hard sending to the AGP card, or is it better to have a faster GPU so the rest of the system isn't waiting so long? I'm told the flight simulators use a lot of textures and a lot of CPU power relatively speaking. Would they make use of extra graphics memory?

I've noticed that they tend to load up the low end cards with a lot of memory so I've been assuming that it helps slower systems.

Thanks,

system requirements for FSX gold
PC Video: 128MB DirectX-compatible video card with Shader 1.1 or higher
(so for a while the 128 should function here) remember MS always requires us to download another CD of junk to fix and get the thing actually working too, so who knows what the changes fully entail for the memory usages.

falcon 4 (not sure if it is the right one)
64Mb 3D accelerated DirectX® compatible Video Card with latest official drivers

if the game/sim wants more video memory than you have available, it will either fail, which is not as often, or it will have to start tossing out texture stuff , and re-load them as needed. it is hard to say "slow" or "fast" in this situation, as the only slowdown is when it burps to load in more stuff , because it couldnt hold it all, and that sucks.

when they are THAT close to the same clocks, and these newer games with the amasing pictures VIA many higher resolution textures, IF you expect it to work with new stuff the extra memory could be usefull, if it is only for these 2 items ever, then your probably ok with the 256.

if it was a choice of the one with lower clocks , overclocked a little and having more memory , well then we know what that answer is.

.

Is the graphics memory situation similar to say for example the situation where Windows can't make use of high amounts of memory, or is the rule with graphics cards "more the better"?

i guess, like windows, the more the better , depending on the stuff you run on it.
and it Will be when some GAME wants to make use of the higher ammounts of memory, and because the game creators want thier games to run on as many systems as possible, most of them will still work, till you get the much higher expectation (system requirement) games.
.

Thanks a bunch. I've been wondering what the answer to this was for a while.