I'm not a hardware expert so I don't know about the inner workings and settings of a PC or FS9. I just updated to a Radeon 9800 XT and loaded the latest drivers. I expected the same flawless performance that I read about on the forums so many times. The card seems beautiful, but I feel it's performance is being held back. My fps counter shows 25 - 27 avg. while sitting in the DF Cardinal at a small airport. Flight is relatively smooth, but I get pauses of a second or so while turning and a few times on final. I have read posts of not a single stutter or pause with just a 9800 Pro on systems less powerful than mine. I'm throwing up the white flag for any advice or help out there. My system: Gateway P4 2.8, 1 gig ram, plenty of HD space left, Windows XP, /radeon 9800 XT 256meg card. My FS9 settings: Display/Scenery tab: Terrain Mesh Complexity 75,Texture size - high, terrain detail - land and water, water effects - low, dawn/dusk text. blending-checked, ext. terr. tex.-checked, special effects detail-med, scenery complex.- ext.dense, autogen - dense, sun glare - checked, lens flare - checked. Hardware: 1024/768/32 resolution, render to text. - checked, transf. and lighting - checked, AA - unchecked (set to 2X in card control panel), Filtering - trilinear, Mip Map Quality - 4, Hardware rend. lights - 5, global max. tex. - high My XT control panel settings: Smartgart tab; agp speed - 4X, Fastwrite - on, Direct 3D tab: AA - 2X, AF - 4X, Text pref. - performance - slider on second mark from the left, mip map level - performance - second mark from the left, wait for vertical sync. - in middle, trueform - off. This is all I know how to set. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I want to start enjoying this sim like I know others are. Regards, Tom

Turn fastwrites off. Make sure you got the latest mobo drivers. Check to see where your agp aperture is set. Either 64 or 128 should work. You can run 4xAA & 16xAF in the control panel. Max out your texture and mipmaps in the control panel.