Hi Fellow PilotsI just upgraded my machine over the weekend and was wondering as to what realistic framerates to expect from this product. I am currently getting an average of about 15FPS allarounbd including virtual cockpit. Not really great, but then I don't know what I was expecting.My new setup is as follows:MS Flightsim 2004Creative GeForce Ti200 64MBAsus A7N8X-X nForce 2 400Mhz MotherboardAthlon XP 2600+ 333MhzTwinmos 512Meg 400Mhz RamCreative Soundblaster Live ValueWhat type of framerates should I be getting or is it correct as is?All help appreciated.ThanksGian

>Hi Fellow Pilots>>I just upgraded my machine over the weekend and was wondering>as to what realistic framerates to expect from this product. I>am currently getting an average of about 15FPS allarounbd>including virtual cockpit. Not really great, but then I don't>know what I was expecting.>>My new setup is as follows:>>MS Flightsim 2004>Creative GeForce Ti200 64MB>Asus A7N8X-X nForce 2 400Mhz Motherboard>Athlon XP 2600+ 333Mhz>Twinmos 512Meg 400Mhz Ram>Creative Soundblaster Live Value>>What type of framerates should I be getting or is it correct>as is?>>All help appreciated.>>Thanks>>GianHi, I have to say im getting +20. The patch has done great things for FPS. See my sig for specs.Jason>>

Don't you think it's pointless comparing frame rates when everyone has different MSFS performance settings, Gian? My computer is slower than yours, but I'm getting 50FPS with the virtual cockpit.......... with every FS performance slider at it's absolute lowest with the aircraft parked in a barren field ;-)Regards.Ian.

No Ian, thats just what Aussieland looks like once you fly past the city a few miles :-lolConpletely valid point though ... I get between 50 and -5 depending on my settings. The -5 was because I forgot to turn 4xAA off before starting FS9 ... Playing around with sliders around medium and no video kill modes enabled, I get between 10-20 in the FS9 snowstorm weather at 1280x960 ... I'm happy enough to not run out and buy a new machine this week.Ray

Gian,As others have said doing this without care is just too unscientific and won't help. However, I have compared frame rates with the default 737 and the PMDG737 at Rwy 36 at Meigs both with and without gauges visible as I wanted to assess the impact of the many gauges in both panels.Here are the results...Default 737 with gauges = 20.8Default 737 with no gauges = 21.0PMDG737 with gauges = 12.4PMDG737 with no gauges = 18.1As can be seen the PMDG737 panel has a severe impact on performance but it's no worse than the 767PIC panel. The gauges on the PMDG737 are clearly responsible for the reduction in frame rates and not the bitmap comprising the main panel.The default 737 panel has much less functionality and it may be these specialist gauges on the PMDG737 that are responsible for the performance decrease.Cheers,

<>Ray,What exactly did you mean by that? 4xAA? I am having a dickens of a time with stuttering and am pulling my hair out. I've tried about every tweak there is. So one more wouldn't hurt! :-jumpyI get between 3-7 fps in the 2D "W" full panel mode, but it jumps up to 15-20 fps when I switch to forward view "L" mode. Outside the aircraft I see fps in the teens and twenties as well. But whenever I enter a turn, both on the ground and in the air the stuttering sometimes is unbearable.Thanks in advance.ATI Radeon 128mb 8500 LE512 SDRAM1ghz PIIIDell Dimension 4100 systemWindows XP w/SP-1

512 megs of ram is not enought for this addon. You are probable like me swapping out to hard drive. Get more ramDennis

>The default 737 panel has much less functionality and it may>be these specialist gauges on the PMDG737 that are responsible>for the performance decrease.Because the PMDG sim is doing so much modelling of advanced systems, the gauges are MUCH more complex and take up more system resources.For default aircraft, the gauges are pretty dumb - just pull data from the core sim and display it.On the PMDG, the guages have to do all that, plus maintain state information about systems that aren't modelled in the sim, like the electrical system, the FMC, etc. Put another way, PMDG is really a sim on top of a sim, with FSUIPC allowing them to interact. The MSFS provides the weather, aircraft handling, visual display, etc, while the PMDG provides all the advanced systems - which means those gauges are doing a lot of work.MSFS will benefit most by upgrades in these three areas listed in order of importance.Video - a new video adapter can make a lot of differenceMemory - FS9 will easily take up 400+ MB of RAM to run - so having 1GB allows your system to run without much swappingCPU - faster is always better.for my system specs and performance, see my post (#14) at http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...mID21/5886.html

Thanks guysWill defininately upgrade my RAM. Thanks for the advice.RegardsGian

What specific ti card you have? you say Geforce Ti200 ??? Geforce 3 Ti-200?If thats where you are at, make sure your are not running any form of anti-aliasing, videos just not up to the task.Memory will help a little bit but sliders in FS will help a lot more 8-)Ray

Hi Timothy,Put another way, PMDG is really a sim on top of a sim.I agree entirely. I was initially very pleased with frame rates in FS2004 with default aircraft and default scenery. However, the PMDG737 is not very happy on my system (details below) but you can't have your cake and eat it.Athlon 2000XPCreative Ti4600 128Mb running Omega 6.14.10.4403 drivers.1Gb PC2100 RAM1280*960*32 on 19" CRT display.Your processing power is 50% greater than mine. I am due an upgrade probably in the spring. It's the clouds that are the greatest killer and living in one of the cloudiest regions of the world doesn't help either. Maybe I should setup base in California or the Gobi Desert!Thanks for a very professional and helpful user guide for the PMDG737. Have they sent you the cheque yet? ;-)Cheers,

Have you run the system monitor while flying? I have 764 megs or RAM and the system never usese more than 500 megs. I'm not sure that ram above half a gig makes any difference. Colin

I'd go with a good video card first. Adding a Radeon 9700 Pro to my system, despite the flashing and other minor annoyances (like I can't figure out how to get the bloody multi-monitor set-up to save itself between boot-ups) gave me a huge boost in performance. Far more than I expected. Your video card is a bottleneck on your system for this sim and this airplane. Before buying Ram, run a few flights with the windows system monitor and see how much RAM you are really using. I have never seen FS9 go above half a gig. Colin Ware"You have never been lost, until you have been lost at Mach 3"SR71 Pilot

Well stated Ray and fellow 737NG users. I'm not sure what we are trying to accomplish here. What FR we obtain is so dependent on our particular system and how we have both MSFS and our video resolution set that we ignore the fact that we never state our complete setup exactly and are thus talking apples and oranges. In the words of Lord Kelvin:"Unless we speak in numbers we cannot exactly understand each other." Lord Kelvin's quote has been revised by me a tad bit simply because I forgot his exact words. My main concern is how the overall image appears to me, ie, does it look realistic? I'm not really concerned about the framerate because of the factors I have mentioned above. Just my two or three cents worth folks.Regards

Hi again, I forgot to enter my system specs:CPU 2.53 GH Intel P4FSB 350+ MHz (Forgot the exact figures)RAM 1 GB RDRAMVideo GeForce T4 128MB Video RamThat's the essentials.Regards