Hi!today i bought a new graphicscard. A Geforce 4 Ti4200 8X with 128MB DDR ram. I had a geforce 2 MX400 with 64MB. In Adition i bought 256Mb ram , so that i have 512MB PC133 now. I still have my old Athlon 1.33 Ghz processor.I thought that i would have much efort on graphics. But i have only 3-5fps more , i'm more than disappointed. What can i do? i doubled the Ram size and i have a much better gcard ,but almost nothing happens! Please helpthanx( i used German Airports with the PIC767 and Aitraffic, the DF737 is not possible to fly!)help!!!

You don't mention what Motherboard your running so I can give you basics that may help. One must realize that a newer Updated Video card is not a magic wand that will work wonders for a system unless the system is also brought up to snuff. I am by no means saying your setup is not a good one just not good enough to fully utilize the newer card within FS. Although a great card for the money it will still fall back on your CPU and memory to help render the graphics within FS. Yes, increasing memory will have a positive effect on performance up to a certain point depending on the OS being run. Anything below Win2KPro really doesnt fully utilize anything more than 384 megs of ram as far as addressing goes. 2KPro and XP will allow for I beleive up to 3 Gigs but I digress.First, are you running the latest Bios / Chipset / and video card drivers for your system. What version of DX are you currently running?. The latest Via Chipset drivers are the Hyperion 4.46's and for intel it would depend on the motherboard manu.If these are all up to snuff and updated try running the latest Omega drivers for the card or the latest series of Nvidia Drivers. Also, you may be running 512 megs of memory but what is ruuning in the background killing off some of it.Please remember that a 5-7 FPS increase is a very good increase for the jump in cards that you made. It is enough to make the difference between flyable and enjoyable. You may be able to squeeze a few more FPS out of it with the settings I speak of but at this point the amount of aftermarket add-ons, your cpu and your memory Speed are whats limiting your Framerates.Try defragging your hd or the drive that FS is on.Also, try setting the Target framerate setting to around 25 FPS. No more with your setup.Bobby

well i thought about buying a complete new pc , but not in a package like packard bell or dell. Is it important to have Win xp? i have Win me and i always thought its better?! So what i need is a complete new one!and a new OS?!thanx

Windows XP is much more stable than Windows ME..although I don't like the activation, it is a better product. At the MSI conference MS admitted Windows Me was bad!

5-7 fps additional is not too bad, quite frankly..To get significantly better framerates, you need a faster processor..the good news is that your new video card is just fine.As you realise, the faster processor probably needs a new motherboard and new, faster memory. Although you can continue to use ME, XP is the better and more stable operating system.. it will NOT give you better framerates than ME, however, just better stability.Try to price out: Asus P4PE m'board, P4-2.4 processor, and 512 Meg of PC2700 memory, add XP, and you know what you may have to spend to get the next jump in fps.

I think you need to review what you might have running in the background, visit http://www2.whidbey.net/djdenham/index.htm for ideas about turning off unneeded programs.Scan your hardrive, then defrag it. If your hardrive is getting full or your swap file is getting small then you might be slowing your self down.Make sure you have all the updated drivers for your controller chips and diskdrive accelerator, graphics card, sound installed.The items you indicated you are using are big FPS users. Your only option is to turn some of the graphics items down a notch or two.