Thanks again all of you,I'm not likely to do overclocking or anyhting like that either.I met with success this morning: I set aperture size to 32mo assuggested, and the incredible new is that I gained 2-3 fspon most of my heaviest sceneries, like JFK of LAX.Nobody could reach 30fps with 100% of my own traffic while taxiing.But 15fps with the PMDG at JFK is already very satsifying.Just for test purpose, I switched off the traffic, and even aboveManhattan, the fsp will go up to 25-30 as well.As soon as I switch the traffic on, the fps fall at 15.I think that's the whole story.Setting aperture size to 32 instead of 256 makes a big difference(and my 9800XT has its own 256mo though)What is also very noticable with AGP aperture set to 32 is theimpact on the FPS with the display of the 3D clouds: improved a lot. As for the crackling again, i'm about to let it like that,since it's not that much anoying: I still have some doubt on XP SP2here.The chipset of my mobo being the Intel 875p, known to be the best onearound, I dont think it has to do with it: the drivers installed for it are the latest intel drivers.So now I'm ready for going back flying and spotting my AI traffic!Last, the textures loading are MUCH faster now than before.Thanks to all of you for your kind and wise posts,and again thanks to PMDG for providing us with the very bestaddons ever produced for FS (...and I sim since fs3!)Regards,Arnaud Solvay (France)

I apologize but I must come back in here and report what happened again:I've been testing and testing again, and I feel like my Radeon 9800XThas just rebirth: I had always been a bit disappointed by itsperformance, till I tried to lower this famous AGP Aperture size to 32Mo, instead of -who know why?- 256mo.Now it works like hell, even on the heaviest tasks.So whatever the AGP aperture size is, I have to say it changed myexperience! And sure thing, lowering this setting in the bios has a tremendouseffect.It's as is setting this value to high sent the data to the RAMinstead of the graphic card memory itself, which is much fasterthan the DDRam.What is amazing, and understable at the same time, is that eventhe image quality has been improved.The subject is now closed, and a happy guy I am, untill next issue.And now I cant wait the 747 the mind in peace, and keep on flying mybeloved 737NGs...Regards,Arnaud Solvay (France)

Hi Arnaud,I just wanted to say a big "Thank You!". Your enthusiastic report on the results of changing the AGP aperture size prompted me to try the same on my system. I am amazed by the improvement. In the past I had tried different settings but, for some reason, I had never tried setting it below 64mb. Based on your findings I set it to 32mb and the results are remarkable.I don't know the gain in "FPS" since I never look at the framerate counter but I can say that the textures reload much faster and the overall smoothness of the sim has been greatly improved.Also, I was having a problem with the sound "stuttering". I noticed that it would happen when the textures were reloading when I would change views. The improved texture reload performance after setting the AGP aperture to 32mb has eliminated the sound stuttering problem.Thanks again! My simming has never been better!

hey Don,Well I am really happy if my enthusiasm helped you to experiencea better sim.Even today I'm still amazed about the improvement that it made for me.I think reading you I realise that the sound crackeling has stopped for me too!Have a great day,Regards,

Just a note for you guys who do a lot of tweaking and no overclocking. Excessive tweaking is far more hazardous then overclocking ;). Tweak a system to much can mess things up big time and you may not even now how to revert it.Overclock your systems not only are the performance gain way way bigger then changing Aperture from 32-64 or 256 or disabling/enabling hyperthreading it

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>I have to disagree: setting the AGP aperture size to its>correct>value is not a tweak, is just the fair setting.And everyone should carefully try it on his own system. For example on my system 32 MB for AGP aperture size did not give me good results. 64 MB gave me clearly best overall performance.Michael J.WinXP-Home,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8, Radeon X800 Pro,WD 36GB Raptor,1 GB PC3200 http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg