I was looking at my computer configuration (P4 1.6ghz, Geforce 3TI200 and 512mb ram) and I was surprised at how slow fs2k2 runs on it. I have trouble maintaining 15fps most of the time.Then I noticed my motherboard will only run at a front side bus max of 100mhz. If I get a better motherboard, with say a fsb speed of 533mhz, will that make a big difference?thanks!

It should. The 2.53 PIVs are only about $250 bucks now. Course you'd also need a new mobo and maybe ram to take advantage of it. You must be running SDram, huh? That Video card may hold you back a bit also. But you already have a decent rig. Hard decision unless you have a lot of dough$$ laying around.

nope, I'm actually using DDR ram. I've just read about people pinning at 25fps with lesser rigs than mine, and I can't even reach 25fps except in very rare instances. And that's w/o anti-aliasing on and having things like reflections, texture detail etc. pulled back some.Seems to me taking a P4 and only allowing it to run at 100mhz is kind of like running an Indy car on a mud track, no?

The FSB speed has nothing to do with what you're seeing. You have to remember that the P4's are quad-pumped. The 100Mhz FSB is multiplied by 4 to yield 400Mhz. The 533Mhz boards are a quad-pumped 133Mhz. The early P4's are also limited by a 256KB L2 cache (the newer chips have 512). There just isn't any way that the 1.6 will run well with the sliders very far to the right - it just isn't fast enough to do that. And be careful of framerate comparisons. There are so many variables in FS2002 that FPS comparisons are almost meaningless. Trip

Very right trip. Don't feel bad about 15 FPS. That would be quite normal, especially if you're running FS2k2 at a high res and with FSAA on.Ryan-Flightpro08 :-cool VATSIM Pilot/ControllerZLA ARTCC Senior Controller (C-3)SAN TRACON Lead [link:www.taxiwaysigns.com|Taxiwaysigns.com] Scenery Designer-----------------------------My "Home Made" System Specs:Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz ProcessorTurbo Gamer ATX Mid-Tower with 420W Power SupplyEPoX 4G4A Motherboard with Intel 845G ChipsetVisiontek XTASY GeForce4 128MB Ti4600 (Det 41.03 Drivers)512MB PC2100 DDR RAM40GB Matrox 7200RPM Hard DriveWindows XP Home Edition SP1*No CPU or GPU Overclocking*3dMark2001SE Score: 11298-----------------------------Click [link:ftp.avsim.com/library/esearch.php?DLID=&Name=&FileName=&Author=Ryan+Fretwell&CatID=Root]Here to Download my New American Eagle POSKY CRJ-200!

hey Trip,15's not so bad, but it's the stuttering that makes me crazy.So the only solution is to jump up in the 2.6ghz range to see an increase in smoothness with the sliders up, huh?

This of course just my personal opinon. I would not want to spend 200 dollars just to get 5 more FPS .Even if you jump up a whole 1 gz you are still not going to get what you want and here is why.If you want to run FS2002 with everything full you are still going to kill all the CPU power because the more eye candy you use the more resources it will take to run that every frame at the same ammount of detail.I get a solid 25 FPS with my machine and the only thing I do not have maxed are the clouds: (65)(which mind you looks no different than at 100% and cloud spites are resource hog)Visability 70: it's not worth losing the extra video ram for extend textures that are just going to be blurry even with Antisotropic texturing at 32AI 70: While having alot of traffic is nice to look at it's not worth my resources loss espically if i do most of my flying on VATSIM.FPS: locked at 25 anything higher does not work will for meI run everything else max at 1152x864@32 FSAA 2X Antiostropic texturing 4X vsync off on a ViewSonic 19" refresh rate [email protected] not only looks good but is very smooth for the most part.I do not think i would want to spend the money just to have the much extra eye candy.If i were to do a upgrade I would get a nice 128MB vid card and maybe another stick of ram.For me the CPU is not my bottleneck.Granted it is only a 1.4ghz it still does a great job.It's in my opinon that FS2002 was not designed to be maxed out even though the option is there.It's just my opion .I would rather spend money on something I think will really make a dramatic differnce for me it would be a nice 128MB vid card :) Capt.Richard Dillon (KATL)www.jetstarairlines.com"Bill Grabowski's"ERJ-145 panel Beta TeamMD-11 panel Beta Team-----------------------PAI beta team -----------------------"Lets Roll" 9/11 -----------------------Specs AMD 1600 XP MSI KT 266t pro2 512MB DDR 2100GF3 ti 200 64MB SBliveCh Products Yoke and Pedals(usb)Windows 2000 Serivce Pack 3

Unfortunately, it does, indeed, take 2.5+ Ghz before everything starts to really look good. I'm running a P4 OC'd to 2.72Ghz and, for the most part, I'm happy with it. But even at that speed things will bog down a bit with really dense add-on scenery and the AI at 100% ("bogging down" being 10 FPS, or so). This machine is only six months old and it's already badly out-of-date. I've seen FS2002 running on a friends "homebrewbeast" at 3.7Ghz and can say that it's really good at that speed :-) .Trip

I'm always surprised by the variations, of course its not easy to be sure we are running apples against apples.I have my fps locked at 20fps, and it stays at 20 almost all the time, even at my new airport (Bowerman) which was made with nearly all gmax objects. At my other fs2k2 airport (Tacoma) I drop down to 15 or so, that airport was made with all scasm based objects.And I'm only running at 1.4ghz with my AMD xp1700+. I've got most of my sliders maxed, except visibity is down to 20 miles, & water effects is down a notch, running at 1024x768x32.Bob Bernstein Edmonds, Wa.

I think you've hit it exactly right Bob. We're never really talking apples-to-apples. There are just too many variables involved for most any framerate comparison to be meaningful. As an example, if I push all the sliders to the right, use the default scenery, no FSAA, use the default Cessna 172, and put the aircraft on Meigs 36 the framerate counter is going to read something around 60-65 FPS. But if I leave the sliders all right, load in some 38-meter mesh and SimFlyers LAX, set the FSAA to 64-tap, bring up the DF734, and put the aircraft at any LAX runway the framerate will read something around 12-15 FPS. And all the other scenarios are somewhere between. It is, indeed, really hard to get apples-to-apples. On this CPU (P4 2.2 OC'd to 2.72) I can honestly claim a framerate as high as 278. And as low as 7. Those are the two extremes I've seen under varying circumstances. But what does any of that mean to anyone running some other machine? Probably absolutely nothing. I don't even turn the framerate counter on anymore. Too depressing. The more FPS we can get, the more we want. It's a never ending cycle. My fervent wish for FS2004 is that there be no way to even see the framerate. That way we can all get back to the flying and stop all tweaking :-) .Trip