I guess this post is for the hardware experts out there. I got FS2004 on the release date and have been borderline good performance so far-an average of 15 fps in most areas unless over dense buildings and autogen scenery, then about 8-9 fps. To get even this good I had to tweak down some sliders but for the most part, they're in the mid range. I went into "slide show mode" while in some overcast thus I had to disable those nice 3d clouds and go back to simple clouds. Then I read a post on the Dreamfleet site where a guy only getting 5 or 6 fps got a Gainward FX Powerpack Ultra 780 (Nvidia5600) 256 mb DDR 8x/4x AGP1 card. The card sold for $150. His system is an Athlon 2 gig system with 512 DDR ram. He jumped to 70-100 fps at medium sliders and with everything maxed out including clouds, he is avraging around 30. I thought my ship had come in so after a few questions to him, I decided to order one myself. I have a Gateway 700x, with a P4, 2.8 ghz, 1024 mb RDRAM PC 800 ram system with a 128mb NVIDIA GF4 Ti-4600G card, and DirectX9. I figured if he got those results with a 2 gig Athlon and 512 meg ram, even if I am really unlucky (which I usually am), I should still improve on my 8-9 fps in dense areas. Wrong! I loaded FS04 and eagerly checked my framerate. 1 0r 2 frames slower in some areas to the same as the old card in others! Not at all what I expected. I called Gainwards tech support and the guy told me performance wise, I was better off with my 4600 card. Now I'm really confused. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? How is this guy getting those fps with less memory and a card that I assume is a little slower than my original. Can I do anything to improve my performance with this card and if not, is there a card out there that can really boost performance of FS??? Thanks.:-hmmm

The simple answer is that he's not getting anywhere those framerates. Sometimes these guys get a little carried away in their enthusiasm and zeal to see improvements based on their new investment :-) . As far as the top card goes, it's probably the 9800 Pro or XT.Doug

Doug,Can you tell me who makes this card and about how much is it? Thanks. Tom

I bought that 5600 card you are talking about. cost me 280 canadian and i brought it back the next day. didn't give me much improvement at all. i traded it in for the 9800 pro and WOW. i can hold an easy 30 FPS with the pmdg 737 or pss 330 with ALL sliders maxed. costs me 550 canadian but well worth the money.

Check out www.newegg.com . All the card's are good. Check www.rage3d.com and ask in the forums. I'm sure you'll get some good advice as to which card to get and where you'll find the cheapest ones.

I agree...I've seen some claims here in this forum that just can't happen !!!I don't know why people do that, but I take them with a grain....Bob (Lecanto, Fl)

Tom - The chips are made by ATI and the actual cards are made by a variety of companies. My personal likes are GigaByte and Sapphire as brand names. I'd agree with the advice to go to www.newegg.com and check out what's available from them. Here's a direct link to the 9800's http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?...escription=9800 . (If you're going to buy anything for the computer on the web, newegg.com is the place to look first. Great prices and even better service). Doug

Thanks for all the advice guys. Regards, Tom ;-)