I have recently purchased a new pc specifically with gaming and FS2004 in mind. I was told that it would cope with any game out there the specs are as followsAsus p4p800 deluxe springdale socket478intel p4 3.2 hyperthreading 800fsbantecplus 1080amg server case 430w true powermaxtor diamond max plus 9sata 120g8mb cache1 g duel channel gold pc4000 ddr ramxp homehercules ati 3d prophet 9800xt classicWell this was true for all the games i tried except for fs2004. I tweaked the system overclocked it u name it but it still had poor performance 5,6,7 fps with heavy clouds and built up scenery or third party basicly its pretty unflyable in those conditions early twenty if im lucky when away from built up areas and no weather. I was very disappointed am am looking to replace this system with the ultimate out there , What i am wondering is is there actualy a system out there that can cope with this game with all the sliders maxed out or is the technology just not advanced enough at the moment. Is it a question of how much you have to spend ?.Having spoken too a fer performance pc specialist pc companys they are suggesting fx53 based systems with the geforce 6800 card, but i find it hard to believe such a system will be that much more powerfull than the one above, so does anybody know where to go to get serious performance cos i dont think most of these companys are familiar with FS2004 and just how demanding and resource intensive it really is and that is the only game i'm really interested in!. I,m not worried about the cost i just want the ultimate performance so u can play this game the way it way designed to be played with an addon aircraft like the PMDG 737. May be you guys at PMDG can advise me on this one are there professional systems out there, well any systems at all you can reccomend (in fact what do you guys use to test your aircraft?) that will leave the intel 3.4ht extreme's , athlon fx53's, geforce's and ati's behind if you have the money to pay for them?sombody please helpthanksKavan

Sir,Just for your info, i have been asked that kind of question few time ago on other forum, but according to one of the experience guy if i not mistaken, they ask me to wait maybe on next generation of PC which they also don't know, and the more PC system and it's hardware growth, it almost twice other complicated program or add on software also growth.so, in term of real feeling very hard to archived and make you keep thinking of your system. by right you should enjoy with this game. why not you just maintained whatever add on and it setting during your previous PC and for sure you can feel the improvement and slowly increase it, then you will proud with your current system.(that is only my personal feeling)

KavanWe have the same case and PSU. A good choice IMHO.I put together a new system about 4 mo ago. It,s an AMD A64-3400 w. 1 meg L2 cache socket 754. I Put it on a MSI Neo Fsr2 mobo along with 1 gig of Corsair 400 Mhz LL memmory. I went ahead and purchased a ATI 9800 Pro w/128mb memmory. I then added 2 74 gig WD Raptor HD,s configured raid 0. It,s pretty good, locked at 30 FPS and it stays pretty much at 30.I build a lot of machines. However a buddy of mine decided to try a Alienware AMD FX-53 or 55 forget which now, the new one w/400 Mhz unbuffered memmory. In any event I stopped over his place for a few minutes for a quick look. I have to admit his system blows mine away, not by a whole lot but you notice the difference. But it cost a hell of a lot more. The 3.2 P4 I put together for a guy seemed fine. I tried it with hyperthreading turned on but didn,t seem to notice much difference. One guy I know told me he turned Hyperthreadin off and FS run better? Perhaps you may want to try that.Lately most customers seem to be leaning toward the AMD A64 chip for gaming rigs. It does seem to run smoother, maybe it,s an illusion? Altho other have said the same.MS is sending me a new beta build of WinXP 64 bit. Im gonna throw it on and see whats up with it. Some claim an increase in performance? I.ll keep you guy,s informed.Good Luck

On my Athlon FX-51 and 9800XT I can easily get below 10FPS if I max out scenery detail and range, and use something like SimFlyer's scenery.It is quite easy to overwhelm the latest and greatest with polygon counts in FS (either using weather, complex scenery, or detail range, and max traffic). As a matter of fact, I maintain it's a secret plot by gaming manufacturers and hardware manufacturers, so that us unsuspecting suckers get that extreme hardware for extreme $$ only to buy the new game on the block, run it at max settings, see the slide show, and can't wait for the next hardware extreme...You can help by running add-ons for weather, traffic and navigation on a separate computer, or tuning down some of the sliders. Resolution doesn't seem to change the FPS much in FS with the latest cards, unless you really run very high.I personally set a frame limiter around 24FPS, which is the standard FPS you get at a movie house, while allowing for background processing and things like smoother VC gages, and tune down scenery detail.

Its a nice system :)Instead of going for PC4000 RAM, I would have gone for PC3200. Timings on the PC4000 RAM are quite loose. Quality PC3200 such as Corsair with timings of 2-2-2-5 will perform much better than PC4000 at 3-4-4-8. Not sure what the market is like for second hand parts, but I'd be looking for some RAM with Winbond BH-5 module. These things overclock very nicely, and you can still run tight timings.Maybe go for a higher end videocard too, like an X800 Pro or X800XT (If you can afford them, of course)

A number of posters in the hardware forum have recommended turning off HyperThreading. I do not have a hyerthreaded machine so I cannot comment on the impact, but the responses I have read appear to be quite specific about that. Its worth a try.

JohnYour right on regarding memmory. Corsair came out with the 2-2-2-5 mem right after I put my machine together.Thats what I would would have bought had it been availible.Best

This is a long question...and answer!The problem with FS2004 is that there are so many addons made by different people, one needs to evaluate how many addons they are expecting to run alongside FS2004.For me there are the following: 1) FS2004 Maxed out settings, low distance visible range. 2) PMDG 737 series - 2D Cockpit only 3) Ultimate Traffic - 80% AI traffic 4) FSNav - navigation and map tool 5) AS2004 - flight plan weather generator. 6) Modded default scenery and airport textures. 7) Addon airports and city scenery. 8) Addon radar, IRS and other Systems guages. 9) Modified aircraft and airport sounds.10) Modified aircraft panels and views.There are so many combinations of "experience" you can setup, it makes it a very hard question about a top spec system. Even with a very modern machine, you will still have frame rate problems running all of the above at the same time, but a little trial and error and selectively choosing some will bring you good results.Even with my quite high end system, I can smoothly run most of the above at the same time, the biggest hit being the addon airport scenery for me.Selectively choosing the above combinations will have to be trialled on your own machine to determine what suits you best, lots of testing to do!Armen L Cholakianwww.veryquiet.comRunning:Asus P4C800-E DeluxeIntel P4 3.2C overclocked to 3.6Corsair PC3700 RamRadeon 9800XT 128mb overclocked 10%Raptor 32 gigMaxtor 200 gigWindows XP SP2

Thanks you all for your answers i will keep yuor suggestions in mindKavan

i am runiing almost EXACTLY the same system as you, just a different GFX card (GF FX5950ULTRA 256mb) & 2GB DDR400 (PC3200) dual channel with heat spreaders.i would also recommend using DDR400 with that particular boad, i don't think you can do dual channel DDR with anything but PC3200 on this mainboard. i would also consider getting 2GB RAM, it does actually make a difference.i find the CPU, memory & AGP slot (& GF card) will happily overclock a lot just so long as you can keep them cool. i have had the CPU at 4GHz comfortably, but i keep it running at 3.5~3.6GHz mostly (you don't actually see any difference above that).i get steady nice frame rates, always over 20 in all areas (including simflyers scenery at dawn/dusk, somewhat watered down - no statics etc.) using the PMDG. when in the cruise i have seen up to 250fps! you can slow it down using some seriously detailed addons though.what i have recently been told first hand by the microsoft FS crew (as i am starting an internship with MS next year as part of my degree, so i've spoken with them at some meetings recently)is that you should NOT lock down the frame rates in FS2004 unless you are running a very slow system, as the porgramme will actually do it for you if you leave it unlocked, finding an optimum for every stage of flight (dunno how this works, but thats what i am told).other things you can do include various tweaks for FS (delete the autogen.xml file, tweak the fs9.cfg etc.)& if you fly online or use weather programs etc. use a second old PC or laptop to run these via a network using WideFS, works a charm & you really do notice a difference online!another thing that may be an advantage is Windows XP Pro, it handles hyper threading (DO NOT TURN IT OFF!!!) much more efficiently & you could well see a slight improvement in fluidity (i'm told XP Home can be a bit more stuttery).DirectX 9.0C is a MUST just make sure you can get 9.0C compatible GFX card drivers (don't know about ATI, being a NVIDIA man).further hardware changes could include a separate SATA HD for windows & any other programs & stopping windows services like indexing & don't use the FS drive as a page file, stop anti-virus software, don't use a screensaver, don't use a desktop background image etc...gimme a shout if you want to know anymore, i can tell you exactly how i've tweaked my system.

G'day,If you have a look at my specifications below, I can run FS2004 maxed out and it is very smooth.The new graphics card from ATI is fantastic.

I agree. As you can see I have a pretty "basic' system compare to what you can get out there today and yet I am able to run FS9 very smoothly wit FPS on umlimited.I have hyperthreading turned on then off,it made no diffrence to fps. I use PMDG 737NG without add ons and I mainly fly around New Zealand and the odd hop across the Tasman to australia so I'm not exactly straining the system but I do use clouds at it's maximum setting and terrain mesh on 100%.This gave me a lot of problems untill I replace my FX5900 card to ATI's X800 PRO and haven't look back since.P4 3.06 533 fsb1gb Ram120 WD 8MB HDWin XP Home

Speaking about top spec systems and performance in general in FS9, I'm thinking of buying myself a new graphics card but haven't decided whether to stay with Nvidia buying their new 6800-based cards or if it's maybe time to give ATI a chance and try one of their new x800 cards. Also I'm not sure which model to choose for any one of these different cards - GT, Pro, XT...Discussed this in another thread a couple of weeks ago, any new impressions on which one of these new cards are better suited for FS9?TIA,P.S Look below for my current spec D.S

FS2004 is pre-HT and wasn't really thought out well as far as graphics is concerned, blah, blah and blah. FS2004 doesn't run well on HT and you need to make a change so that only one CPU is used my FS2004. This does make a difference; it worked on my system.I have Falcon4-SP3 and it runs like crazy, 100 to 200 fps and this sim is older than FS2004. lolgo here and read --->http://www.reality-xp.com/support/knowledgebase/1006.htmAbout half way down read about the 'imagecfg.exe'.Even though you are not using their products this 'FS9.exe' hack should still be beneficial for you. Save a copy of your original 'FS9.exe' program and give it a try.Let's us know the results.Waldo

Hi, Just curious: What sort of frame rates do yo get with that system? I just yesterday gave in to my desire and bought the ATi X800 Pro (256 Mb). I am running a rig with 1.5 Gb RAM, 3.06 GHz processor (no hyperthreading for the moment). I was expecting frame rates that were pretty solid in the twenties range, but in the virtual cockpit it at times drops to 7-9 frames per second. I am pretty sure I just need to fiddle with the display settings, but I am not sure where to begin.Thanks,BoazEKCH