Ok first things first $%

Well my system specs are a pentium 4 2 ghz, 512 mb ram, with a ge force 3 ti200 graphics card and i am able to get fps in the 40s (locked at 48) My best advice would be to upgrade to 1 gb sdr ram and maybe get a ge force 3 ti200 or a ge force 4 mx for a "quick fix" then upgrade to a ti4200 later on. Personally i don't see the Geforce fx 5600 as a ground breaking card it seems deemed to be. Well that is my two cents. :) Hope that would help.

Hi Greg,I see 3 "red flags":1. "Celeron"2. "MX" (GeForce 2 MX...)3. Win MEI'm not PC expert, but every one of these variables spells performance issues- and you have all 3 in the same PC.This is probbaly not the answer that you wanted, and there may be ways to make these components work in FS. I have never had any of them in any of my PC's, so I have no first hand experience.Good luck.Bruce.

hey, okin general, i know alot more about Computers, hardware etc, than i do about FS9, as i have yet to get my new computer and install it (fingers crossed)so, firstly, three issues, your processor, your G-Card and your Version of windows, in short, your Version of windows doesnt matter to much with regards to the performance of games, its just general software, and apart from odd crashes/errors (as with ALL software, its not a problem), although i recomend upgrading to XP when you CAN!!!secondly, processor!!, 'Celeron' is not a very flattering name for any piece of processing material to have as its name!! its a 1.7 GHZ, but due to its make, it undoubtly runs much poorer, and 1.7 GHZ isnt really suitable anyway!!and your graphics card is not really suitable for running this type of game, (yours - 32 mb) 64 is barely good these days, as most graphics cards come with 128mb as STANDARD! (there are 256mb out there, but we dont want to create Toy Story 4 on our computers just yet)!!!so your problem, is processing power and G-Card, its up to, both these things combined will add to your poor performance, my suggestions - get a 2.GHZ processor (prefably AMD or Intel)and 128 MB Nividea (or eqaul) graphics card, these are on a budget, but as you say, your not splashing out!!! either way, a new G-Card, will mean better scenery and display generation rendering, but it will in effect, mean more processing power, and vice versa!in a nutshell, you MUST by both items suggested above, which one comes first will not matter, as one of the above on its own, will make no significant difference, DO NOT expect miracles buy just getting ONE of the above, get both!!keep saving, and be patient,good luckhappy flying-Rob

Yes unfortunately your bottlenecked the 3 way's mentioned above.- There are noted problems W/ WinME & FS9. Basically it just doesn't run well on 'ME" for some reason. WinXP is your best bet but 98SE or Win2000 should do.- The Celeron is Intel's low end processor. A 1.7Ghz Celeron does not run as fast as a 1.7Ghz P4. Thus you should be looking @ a CPU upgrade. Something in the 2.0Ghz+ range. My guess would be a P4 since you obviouslly already have an Intel based motherboard. You may be stuck w/ an older generation P4 tho. (but it's better than nothing).- Your videocard is generally a lackluster performer in most gaming situations. You simply don't have the ability to run @ higher resolutions or enable FSAA / Ansio; without having major performance hits.Any of the 'MX' series of cards from Nvidia are really nothing more than GeForce 2's. Thus any of the Geforce 3 line would be an improvement while not costing too much. You can look & the GF4 line (again stay away from the MX series!!) Or the newer FX line. But there I only recommend the higher end cards of that line which also cost alot more. The other option is to look @ ATI. They make some great cards & are very much worth a look! Image quality is amazing & price generally good. Look @ the Radeon 9500Pro as a good price vs. performance card. It won't be as fast as a 9700Pro or 9800Pro, but it can hold it's own quite nicely. Best thing to do is go read reviews on the net. Look up each card & do comparisons on features offered, performance, cost, image quality, driver support, etc.....Good luck :)

Hi fellows,Greg obviously is not telling us something. Is he flying through dense thunderstorms or using some high end AA option. With the same computer you can get between 60 and 4 fps depending what you throw at it.In fact I run Win Me, have P3 500 Mhz, 192 MB RAM and Matrx G400 Max card and have fps locked at 19 and I am often getting close to it. But I have no AI, so far did not try any clouds, water options off, aircraft reflections off, autogen off but all ground textures/ground shadows maxed out. I also have extended textures and 'smoothing' ON.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

Don't know if you are running nView (From Nvida) but when I do it wrecks my normal good frame rates. I lock at 25 and maintain them at that except for heavy clouds, but with nView desk top manager turned on the frame rates drop into the single digits.

Thanks guys,I don't think I will bother with a CPU and OS upgrade. Just the Graphics card. :-)>Greg obviously is not telling us something. Is he flying through dense thunderstorms or using some high end AA option. With the same computer you can get between 60 and 4 fps depending what you throw at it.I've tried it with NO clouds before now. And I have no AA either.>Don't know if you are running nViewNope. But there's somthing in my system tray called NVIDIA Media Center. Dunno if disabling that would help me along a bit?Once again Thankyou all. :-)Cheers,Greg Willshttp://publish.hometown.aol.co.uk/pilotgre...im%20banner.jpg Good day from England! :-wave

Just wondering about your opinions, I have:1.7Ghz P4512MB SDRAMTi4200 XP HomeI'm getting a maximum of 15 fps in general, and that's with just a tiny bit of AA. Mostly around 10 fps. Meanwhile, I get 25 or so in FS2K2 all the time.

Thanks for the reply.I never even went over 20 fps in FS2002 :-erks and the max fps I got in FS2004 was 19.9 which only stayed for a second until it dropped to 5 then 3 then 1 then 5. :-lolI think i'm gonna get a TI4200. It seems to be the popular one around here. I also gonna get more another 512mb ram card. I hope that helps me? :-shy But I reckon it's my CELERON. :-(Cheers,Greg Willshttp://publish.hometown.aol.co.uk/pilotgre...im%20banner.jpg Good day from England! :-wave

Yup, your Celeron is bad. Get the R9500 Pro or 9600 over the Ti4200, much better performance, nearly the same price.

Greg,Don't waste your money on another graphics card unless you're going to upgrade the Celeron processor. You will just be throwing good money away. Frame rates are determined by processing power. The graphics card draws textures but only as fast as the processor send the info. So, there's no point in the graphics being redrawn quicker if they're only being sent 10 times a second by the processor.It's time to bite the bullet and upgrade your processor.Cheers,