I still haven't pulled the trigger on a mainboard and cpu and drive system. I have a shiney new sweetly modified all Lian Li case, with speed controlled fans, Enermax Whisper PSS, and pre-cooled air, and the promise of a 2.8 P4 or a 3000+ Athlon has me staring at this lovely case waiting to be completed. Well that's not true I found a nice Yamaha CDRW and Toshiba DVD, but the real guts are still lacking.For any with the most top end systems available, are you seeing ANY microstutters, for example when taxiing around terminals, etc, with your machines? If the answer is a clear YES, then I may not plunk down mega bucks on a Cheetah X15 drive system. And it will be some serious $$. Truth is since lowering the AGP down to 32 (16 I found worked good but would lock up) the dang thing (ie my P3 1GHz, old ATA33 drive) is running good enough to make me guess the highest end machines will possibly not benefit at all from an ultra fast scsi drive system as far as FS2K2 is concerned.Noel

I wouldn't bother using SCSI for FS2002, it's really not worth the $$ for the maybe a slight performance boost. With serial ATA very close you may benifit from moving to that.I don't notice any stutter with my system and I'm still using ATA drives :)

Did you try to disable the AGP completely in DXDIAG? It worked perfect for me, no microstutters anymore.Alex

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum from the system described above [PIII 450, Win98, 256mb RAM, Leadtek T1-500, 19 GB Hard drive, Phoenix BIOS [does not allow me to adjust the AGP Aperature size]].I have tried every suggestion posted on this site to improve my systems performance. Lately I have seen many instances where you have posted the suggestion to disable AGP texture acceleration in DXDIAG. I have DirectX 8.1, and have disabling this feature, but have seen no discernible change in frame rate or stuttering.What does enabling or disabling this feature in FS2002 do? I don't run any other gaming software, and so don't care about the implications of turning the feature off. I have even used NVMax to disable the AGP port [as it states that you are doing], but have not seen any change at all. What am I missing? On a separate note I have disabled all but the absolutely essential programs from start up in MS Config, and do not run an active desktop. Available system resouces at game start are 88% [whatever that really means]. I may have resource conflicts, but haven't a clue as to how to find or correct them.Any help on the AGP textures acceleration question, or any other issue would be greatly appreciated. I have considered replacing my current system with one blazingly fast, and am intrigued by the fact that even the owners of the fastest systems are still grappling with these same questions of smoothness. If I can optimize my system to mitigate these problems, I should be able to make a new system very smooth indeed.Thanks, Rick

Hi Rick,about all your questions ahould be answered here:http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...ewmode=threadedIf you still have more let me know. I will help you to the best of my limited knowledge.By the way: yes you will also have problems with a high end system sooner or later. you know why? Because it is in the human being to want more all the time. When people with a real fast system like me say they have stutters or do not get 30fps it is because we are runnign all maxed out + serious other stuff mostly.My software setup when flying:FS2002 all maxed out except mesh (87%).Resolution 1600x1200x32 (32-tap AF)FSMeteo + AOL7.0 in the background for weatherFSFlightmax loaded with charts running in the bakground on a 2nd monitorRealityXP runnign in the background on a 2nd monitorFDC running in the backgroundSoftware for trackIR running in the backgroundSonner or later you will bring every hardwae setup to its knees. Alex

Don't forget the your GoFlight units Alex... I have 7 units and with them plugged in the CPU ticks over at a constant 30% on WinXP with no programs running. This must detract from the performance of Fs2k2.They are a joy to have though so it's worth it :-)PaulEGJJ

Wow, I did not notice that. I also have 7 of them. I have to check that. I had the feeling I have seen some slight performance degrading when I plugged no.7.Yes, the are great I am a happy camper as yourself.Thx Paul.Alex