Video upgrade for early '09 iMac

I'm running the X-Plane10 flight simulator and am looking for a more powerful video card. (MY machine is an early '09 24" iMac 3.06 & 4gb.)
Will the ATI-Radeon-HD-4850-512MB-RV770-PRO-DVI-DN-DVI-PCIe fit? Also is it possible to improve video performance for this machine?

Any thoughts on the subject will be appreciated. Thanks for looking.

The topic area of upgrading the video hardware on iMac's is something not discussed often…so information is thin. Many iMac's have their graphics hardware soldered onto the logic board…so not upgradeable.

A very few iMac models have their graphics hardware on a socketed card. But even this info isn't easy to come by. So the first thing you need to do (if not done already)…is to open up your iMac…and see if the video hardware is on a socketed card.

Even if the graphics hardware is socketed…information is very very thin on what graphics cards you can upgrade to. Especially since that "better" video card most likely needs to come from another iMac with a socketed video card (which even then may or may not be compatible).

Here's a thread from iFixit.com that goes into more detail:

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/152110/Can+I+upgrade+early+2009+iMac+Graphics+card

- Nick

In addition to what Nick provided for you..... High end Flight Simulator programs such as X Plane 10 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X require a fast discrete graphics card with at least 512 MB of memory. That's the minimum in my opinion. A graphics card with 1 GB or more of memory would be desirable. You really need to look at getting a new iMac rather than trying to replace the card in your iMac which may or may not be possible.

Thanks all for the response(s). I have a better understanding of the situation and will research the issue further...