Making a flight from Houston (SimFlyers) and 737 PDMG, the frame rate was between 4 a 6. I got a MSI NEO motherboard with 2.8Ghz Intel Pentium 4 1MB FSB, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB, 60GB ATA 100 HDD, 512MB DDR 400. How do I get better performance with my machine and this airplane & scenery????Thanks.:-(

If you have the 800/900 start by read the introduction manual. It has a lot of tipses for performance. The 737NG is a well knowned fps killer though.Also you could try add Panelastexture=0 in the fs9.cfg file. Have helped some.

I had the same problem with my older Athlon 2000XP. If I switched to a full forward view (no panel) the frame rates leapt up. This lead me to conclude that we are asking the processor to do too much. The answer is to move the processing of the gauges to another PC freeing up your flying machine to concentrate on processing the forward (scenery) view.One of the best ways to do this is via Project Magenta's Boeing or Airbus glass cockpits with CDU (FMC) and MCP. This software is not cheap (280 UKP; 500 USD) but the benefits are enormous. Visit www.projectmagenta.com for more info.As long as 3rd party designers produce these really complicated panels (albeit excellent in quality) frame rates will take a hammering as they're being asked to do too much. Now that I have upgraded my flying PC to a P4 3.0 / Radeon 9800 Pro I am able to get frame rates locked at 25 and my old Athlon runs the Project Magenta software with full-screen displays of the PFD/ND - a far cry from the tiny displays on the PMDG panel.Cheers,

Sorry, but in my experience, the PMDG 737NG by itself is not that heavy on framerates. Try first of all to cut back on some of the scenery options. Turn off water effects and ground shadows for starters.Read the Hints&Tips section at the top of this forum for further tuning ideas.Make sure you have a solid 25 fps in default scenery and light or no clouds.Then go into the detailed add-on airports and heavy clouds... that will tax your framerates and only you can decide if the detail is worth it to you.

Only a 50 % performance drop in both 2D and VC for me ;)

Bert,Here are my findings. No opinion, just hard facts. All readings are taken at Meigs, Rwy 36.Default 737, panel visible - 45.5fpsDefault 737, full forward view (no panel) - 51.0fpsPMDG737, panel visible - 34.5fpsPMDG737, full forward view (no panel) - 51.0fpsThis proves conclusively the PMDG panel has a negative effect of 25%. That's turning a P4 3.0Ghz into a P4 2.25Ghz and the reason why I mave moved the processing of gauges etc. to a second machine. Those numbers where with light cloud cover and zero Ai aircraft. By the time your flying in medium to heavy cloud and with a package such as Ultimate Traffic those numbers will take a real hit.Spread the load over two PCs and things get a lot better!Cheers,

Yes and if you only have one pc the performance hit get closer to 50 than 25 % ;)I haven

Par,I wasn't running anything on the second PC. I didn't have the FMC showing so that could reduce the performance slightly. All my tests were using the 2D panel - maybe the 3D one has an even bigger hit?Cheers,

No I get equal fps at 2D as VC on my sig.2,3 Gig BARTON1 GIG Corsair XMS3200 at 210 FSB9700 PRO and 9800 PROAbit NF7-S rev 2.00Audigy 2I get about a 50 % reduction in performance compared to default FS aircrafts. Which makes it a bit worse than the Citation X in the VC and especially in the 2D cockpit.

Par,<>That's what finally made my mind up to go with Project Magenta and keep my old PC and network the two together. I was fed up buying the fastest PC available and still struggling to get acceptable frame rates with complex 3rd party aircraft packages. FS2004 is demanding enough with default aircraft without loading it down further with such complex software. Maybe one day the hardware will overtake the software and we can look forward to the day when we don't have to upgrade our systems evet two years to make FS enjoyable.Cheers,