Dear flightsimmers,I am going to buy a new pc. The current pc I have is suffering from strange ATC pauses (stutters) everytime the ATC interacts since I bought FS2002 last year in November. The pauses are very evident at low altitudes. Well, I have done literally everything (newest BIOS, removing SB-Live, new Harddisc, changed a lot of BIOS and Windows settings without any succes etc....) and now I am so fed up... :-newburn .... that I am going to buy a new Mobo, Proc and Videocard. But I must be sure that the new rig will not suffer from these strange ATC pauses again.So, my question for you will be, are you having similar issues with a similar configuration that I would like to buy???? New config :-coolAMD XP 2000MSI KT3 ultra ddr333512Mb DDR, pc2700Leadtek gforce 4 ti4400 128mbOld configAMD T-bird 800Mhz....................................will be replacedASUS A7V rev 1.02 (VIA 4.40, BIOS 1011)......will be replaced512 Mb, pc133..........................................will be replacedAsus Gforce 2 mx200 (DET. 12.41)................will be replacedMaxtor 20Gb & 40Gb both 7200rpm and ATA-100Aopen CD-ROM 52xLiteOn CD-RW 24x10x40 Dynalink ISDN-cardWINDOWS 98SEPlease guys, can you give me any advice? Or should I go for a Pentium-4 to prevent those pauses?....if yes....aiiii...my wallet will hurt... :-ukliamBest regards,Frank, from Amsterdam in Holland.... :-wave

I had this prob regularly with my old PIII 1GIG / GF3 SetupI am now running an Athlon XP 2100 with GF4Ti4600 and still have the prob but only very rarely. Usually when I experience the prob I defrag my harddisk and it is gone. It is my strong believe that this prob is caused by a fragmented HD resp. long access times. What is backing up my thought is that I never had the problem when running my system as Raid0 (which I cannot do at this time because I sent my 2nd HD in for guarantee).Alex

You ought to try the WD 120MB hard drive that has the extra cache attached to it. It is really supposed to fly and one member awhile back said it helped in the overall smoothness of FS2002. I often wonder if the ATC pauses are cause the lag time of retrieving multiple sources of information from the hard drive. The enhanced WD 120MB should help in this regard if my hypothesis is correct.

Hi guys,Thanks for your quick reply! I was also thinking about the harddisc causing the nuissance little pauses. As a matter a fact, I can clearly see harddisc-LED lighting up, when the ATC is being used. But is strange that the graphics process is briefly touched when the harddisc is being accessed. I was considering a SCSI-drive since SCSI does not interfere with the main processor but.....my wallet... :-ukliam..ouch again!! This would cost approx. 690$ with controller....that is nearly the price of my complete upgrade!!!! But would RAID give me an improvement? Hmmm, actually, I am not too familiar with RAID, to be honest...... :-zhelpBut from your answers I can deduce that buying an Athlon XP or Intel P4 will not improve the issue with the ATC pauses......I keep my mind open for other ideas and/or suggestions.Regards,Frank

I have had "0" ATC pauses with this system since purchasing it in Dec. 2001. My old setup (PIII600) had a few ATC sound glitches. I'm even running ATC at full "steam"!!L.AdamsonAthlon 1900XPGeforce 3Ti500512 DDRramWindows XP (home)Soundblaster Live

I have not seen any major stutter with my new CPU that I installed yesturday...but there are some minor ones....at dense airports.Regards,Bill

I too had the ATC studdering problem. I upgraded from a Sound Blaster Live to a SB Audigy. You may also want to insure your sound card is not sharing an IRQ with another device. My SB Live card was sharing an IRQ. I've had no studders since I changed the sound card and corrected the sharing problem.Richard