well, I just got a new computer, and I'm not really getting that great of performance. especially when i'm in FS flying, and I like ALT+TAB to get to, say MSN or Internet or Photoshop!my new computer:Pentium 4: 3.0ghz HT512MB DDR pc3200 ramRadeon 9800 PRO 128 mbalso...anyone have any tips for making FS a bit faster?

Hello Mr. Earhart,Sorry to hear it isn't performing quite like you have expected. There are a couple things I have to say. I'm assuming this is FS2004 you are talking about and not FS2002.First, and foremost, you would probably get a smoother experience from this... not running Photoshop while FS2004 is running! Especially with 'only' 512 MB's of RAM... hehe. I leave a few things running in the background when I run FS2004, but I make sure they are minimized to the taskbar. I believe they take up less ram when they are minimized to the taskbar and I think you can see this if you look at the difference in memory usage between minimzed and restored states by using the task manager. BUT, I also have 1 GB of RAM, and even then I can tell that if I ALT-TAB back to an app and restore it to the desktop from the task bar(while FS2004 is running of course) that it is being swapped back from the paging file(WinXP name for swap file).Secondly, you would probably wouldn't get more FPS performance by having 1 GB of RAM instead of 'only' 512 MB's, but it would probably be a smoother experience. I recommend you get yourself a total of 1 GB of RAM if you can. Although I'm not going to guarantee you'll see any difference at all if you do get yourself another 512 MB's(bringing it to 1 GB total), I certainly wouldn't doubt if it does make a nice little difference.Third, have you seen all the kudos, and controversy, about the service offered by 'Flight Simulator Graphics Solutions'? www.fs-gs.com If not you might want to take a look at this thread...http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...&mesg_id=188156You pay some bucks, but it might be worth it. I wouldn't know as I haven't tried their service.Lastly, as a freeware alternative to fs-gs I do hope you took a look at my 'FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2'. I don't know/have all the answers to perfomance tweaks(there's just so many out there!), but a lot of people have said that the guide helped them. I'm kind of proud about the fact it's been pinned to the top of this section of the forum. ;-) I only did it to try and help others out and I think from the number of hits it's had it and people's thanks that it was worth the effort I put forth to make it!Again, give thought to that 1 GB of RAM suggestion and not running Photoshop along with FS2004. And when I said 'only' 512 MB's, I'm not trying to make it out like 512 MB's of RAM is a mere pittance. 512 MB's is a fair amount of memory and that was kind of a joke by me. But I have seen a quite a number of favorable reactions by folks who said they went from 512 MB's to 1 GB. It would be cool to see some posts by folks who did just that in this thread and what they have to say about it so that you can see if you think it would be worth it for you.My final suggestion, so that others will be able to make more informed suggestions to you, is to list more detail on your specs and your sim settings. For example, exactly what make and model of motherboard you are using and it's BIOS revision(version). Your FS2004 settings and experience... here's mine as an example...-----------------------------------------------------------------My settings are 1600x1200 resolution, 4X AA(in-game AA unchecked), and in-game Trilinear Filtering checked. I use MyTraffic 2004 with AI Traffic at 100%. Everything else in the sim is turned on and up all the way, sliders full right except the following...Terrain Complexity(Mesh): 85%Scenery Complexity: Very DenseAutogen: Very Dense (I'm also using a file in the Avsim library named: fs9xml.zip)Not all my Weather sliders are full right...Sight distance: 100 mi.Cloud draw distance: 60 mi.(The following are turned on and up all the way. I use Chris Willis 32-bit clouds FPS fix v2)3-D cloud percentage: 100Detailed Clouds checked.Cloud coverage density: Maximum(100%)My average FPS is usually 23.6. I have it locked at 24. If I lock it a little higher I get some more FPS but then the FPS jumps around more. I do not get an average of 23.6 FPS when I am around large cities with complex airports(dense scenery), but it is still not too bad even in those areas, certainly flyable for me. Simflyers airports and even FlyTampa's Miami(KMIA) are another story.-----------------------------------------------------------------System Specs:Intel 3.4C(C = Northwood) on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, 1 GB Muskin '222' Special PC3200 RAM, NEC MultiSync FE2111SB 22" Monitor, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Videocard with v4.6 Catalyst Drivers, DirectX 9.0b, Creative Audigy2 Soundcard, 250 GB w/8 MB Cache Western Digital HDD, WinXP Pro SP1Whatever you decide and whatever you do, good luck to you!Jim

thanks a lot jim!what do you think of the new 4.6 drivers, especially compared to the Omegas?i did buy a whole gig more of ramm so that will bring to about 1.5gb! i don't know how much it will help, but I'm sure it will a little bit!also, could you tell me a good method to un-installing and adding new drivers?another thing, is there a way to turn off Hyper Threading? I think that may help a little!

Hello Again,I haven't tried the Omega's nor I have used Omega's for very long time. So I can't answer you there.Cool to hear you bought more RAM. With 1.5 GB's you might even be able to run Photoshop in the background. :-lol But Photoshop is pretty resource intensive and it may be best to not have it running even with a large amount of RAM. You can always try it out and see if you notice any difference in FS2004 with it running and without. ;) Just to let you know, anything running, even minimized to the taskbar, takes up some kind of resource however small it may be. I try to keep background apps to somewhat of a minimum when I run FS2004.I'd still be interested in hearing what motherboard you have. For instance, if you have a motherboard capable of running RAM in Dual-Channel mode there may be reason for you to not have 3 sticks of RAM. If you have 2 sticks of RAM, and I think they have to be the same size, then your RAM will run in Dual-Channel mode giving you slightly better performance. It may only be like a 5% or so difference in RAM bandwidth throughput... but every little bit counts if you ask me. With that said, assuming your motherboard supports Dual-Channel mode, if you would rather use 1.5 GB's of RAM rather than get Dual-Channel operation it's no big deal. I also urge you to find out if there is a newer BIOS for your new system, and if there is that you update your BIOS to the newer version. Performance problems have been know to be solved with BIOS updates believe it or not.I'll tell you how I uninstall my Video Card drivers. First I go to 'Add/Remove Programs' in the Control Panel. Then I uninstall the 'ATI Control Panel'. Then I click 'No' to the question about rebooting now. Then I uninstall the actual ATI driver itself. Then I click yes when prompted with the question about rebooting now. Then I go into 'Safe Mode' on that reboot. When I get into Safe Mode I run the ATI Uninstall utility --> Start --> Run --> Browse --> C:ATISUPPORTwxp-w2k-catalyst-8-02-040515a-015958cAtiCimUn.exe. Then I reboot. When Windows XP fires up I am prompted, 2 times, to install drivers for new hardware that was just found. I click CANCEL both times. Then I pull up a Windows Explorer and browse to the location where I downloaded the newer drivers, which I downloaded before I started all of this, of course.As far as Hyperthreading(HT), you turn it off in your BIOS. In my BIOS it's under the 'Boot Options'. But I seriously doubt you'll see any difference with turning it off, unless..., you use the RealityXP 530 GPS. But, by disabling HT you disable a good thing and an expensive/useful part of your CPU chip. I recommend taking a different course of action. It does require a an extra step every time you want to run FS2004, but it doesn't take long. What you do is set the affinity of FS2004 to one of the CPU's in the task manager. Start FS2004, and make sure you are starting it up with an aircraft that does not have the RealityXP 530 GPS installed to it. Then ALT-TAB to your desktop and right-click on the task bar. Select 'Task Manager'. It will come up with the 'Applications' tab open. Find 'fs9.exe' and highlight it, then right-click on it. Select 'Set Affinity'. Leave 'CPU 0' checked but uncheck 'CPU 1'. Close out the task manager and you're done.I have spent a fair amount of time typing my replys and trying to help you and explain stuff. No big deal and I hope it helps. But I am about to poke you in the ribs a little, lol.I think it's high time you answered some of the questions I have asked! :-8 ...Hehe.Ok, I hope I didn't bruise your rib cage, haha! Questions like what is the make and model of your motherboard? Are you using the latest BIOS for it? Do you know if it supports Dual-Channel RAM mode? Have you looked at my FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2? If you want you could also list some of your sim settings, including the resolution you are running, AA settings, ect. What kind of performance are you expecting fomr your new system? I don't have a clue yet as to what you are getting. Believe me, listing such things can help other folks who read this thread try and help you out too. ;-) And I hope you understand where I am coming from by giving you a little poke there! :-lolCheers,Jim

Well...here are some answers for ya!1. As far as using Photoshop when I am in FS2004, I don't do that, I was just making an example. The only things I leave run at the moment are MSN Messenger 6.2, FSScreen, and MAYBE Internet Explorer.2. My motherboard is a Gigabyte (GA-8IPE1000 Intel 865PE Chipset). It can and does run (I think it does run, don't know for sure, and don't know how to check) dual channel to get the 800mhz FSB. I just recently (right after I started my PC) went to their site (tw.giga-byte.com) and found my motherboard and downloaded and installed the newest INF files. It has 4 memory slots, allowing up to 4GB maximum, or 2GB maximum running dual channel. Right now I have 2 sticks of 256MB pc3200 (Totalling 512MB pc3200) which will allow it to run at the dual channel. The 1 GB pc3200 I am getting will be 2 512MB pc3200 sticks (totalling 1024mb pc3200), and will also run at Dual Channel 800mhz. So I will be running a total 1.5gb at the dualchannel 800mhz. I will have the 2 512mb sticks running together and the 2 256mb sticks running together (thank god for the colors so you don't mix it up). Here is the link for the motherboard I have: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-128-232&depa=0 .3. Thanks for the info on drivers. I just got the new 4.6's (have you tried them yet) but have not installed them. I am currently running the Omega 4.4's, and they do pretty good for me. Once again, thanks for this valuable information!4. I'll take your advice on this HT and not disable it, though I might have to try that affinity thing for FS2004. I do not have any reality XP things, but I do have the Flight 1 Piper Meridian, which uses that. I have heard the things about the GNS530 and HyperThreading however. So I may have to try that when I use that plane, which is not installed right now, so I'll worry about that later.5. "I have spent a fair amount of time typing my replys and trying to help you and explain stuff. No big deal and I hope it helps." Yes you have, and I appreciate VERY VERY much!6. My ribcage is fine (lol) and I answered the motherboard questions above. I did take a look at that guide, but It is so long, and I did not have time to fully look at it. I'm thinking about printing it and doing all that when I get the rest of my memory, and will be running at 1.5gb dual channel.-My card settings are at 4xAA, 16xAF, and most others at high quality-My sim settings....hmmm....I'll try to remember from off the top of my head. SCENERYTerrain Mesh Complexity: 98Terrain Size: 100Land OnlyWater: Hightwo boxes checked (extended terrain and dusk shading)special effects: highscenery complexity: denseautogen: sparseAIRCRAFTUltra HighWEATHERSight Distance: 803D clouds:80HARDWARE running 1280x1024tri linear filteringAA box uncheckedmip: 4lights: 6global texture size: maximum(Not too shabby for remembering off top of head)Once again, thanks for all your help,Kreg

Howdy Mr. Earhart,1) First I just want to let you know one thing I had wrong about setting the Affinity of fs9.exe. It's the 'Processes' Tab in the task manager, not the 'Application' Tab.2) Ok, I see how you'll have 1.5 GB's of memory in Dual-Channel mode. Cool! Seems that you know what to do there. :)3) Yes, I have the Cat 4.6 installed. I didn't like the 4.3's, 4.4's, or 4.5's. The 4.6's are better and seem to agree with my system pretty well. The reason I didn't like those earlier versions is because I would lose Anti-Aliasing(AA in the sim almost as easily as I blink my eyelids. With the 4.2's I hardly ever lost AA, and if I did it was easy to get it back(without restarting the sim). The 4.6's are better but I still lose AA, just not quite as easily. But it's a little harder to get it back than when I used the 4.2's. I am would like to get an ATI Radeon X800 XT, perhaps the Platinum Edition. I wish I could get one right now but I can't afford it atm. If I could it would be interesting to see what it would do for my performance in FS2004, and the issue of losing AA.4) Yep, you'll want to set the CPU Affinity to one CPU when using the Piper Meridian. ;)5) "Yes you have, and I appreciate VERY VERY much!" I appreciate that and You're welcome! :D6) Yes, the guide is fairly long, I know. I highly recommend going through it though and see if it helps your performance. With a 9800 Pro I would think you could get pretty good performance, especially with Autogen at 'sparse' and resolution of 1280x1024.Thanks for listing your motherboard's make and model. I see it has an Intel 865PE + ICH5 chipset. I'm not trying to discourage you, but I have seen it mentioned by a few people that it's best to get the Intel 865PE + ICH5R chipset. I have a P4C800-E Deluxe mobo and it has the 865PE with the ICH5R. I forget what the difference is with the ICH5R, maybe that the NIC has it's own dedicated bus thereby freeing up some bandwith on the main PCI bus. I don't really know how big a difference that makes. Thanks for listing your sim's settings, yes, pretty good remembering all those settings off the top of your head. :) Have you always run with your Water slider to 'High'? I have the bump-mapped water by Bill Lyons installed and with the high settings I use my system can't handle the Water slider set to high. That is one thing I need to change in where I state what my sim's settings are.Last thing I'll mention before I go. I discovered saomething recently thatI should have realized a long time ago. Which is, if you check 'Trilinear Filtering' in the sim, it overrides whatever setting you make in your display settings(3D Tab). Even if you uncheck 'Application Preference' in your display settings. So, that means you are using FS2004's filtering and not the ATI's driver 16x AF. I tried unchecking the 'Trilinear Filtering' in the sim, which forces it to ATI's Filterting, and using 16x AF Performance(not Quality). My performance dropped significantly. And I didn't like what I saw either. It was like ants were crawling all over my screen(tiny black pixels swimming around all over). So I dropped it down to 8x AF. My performance was better, but I had a somewhat less stable FPS than when I use FS2004's Filtering. AND, it was still like ants were crawling all over my screen. I didn't like it so I just went back to using FS2004's Texture Filtering(Trilinear) which works good and looks good. I put my display setting back to 16x AF though because another game I play once in a while(Battlefield 1942) which works fine with 16x AF and doesn't have the crawling ants effect.Good luck and I hope you can figure out what the performance problem with your new system is. What kind of performance are you currently getting anyway? Perhaps it will better when you install the extra memory? And go through my guide if you can get the time. Anyway, Let us know what solves it if you get it figured out! ;)Cheers,Jim

Jim, I was one of those rambling about the ICH5-R. I believe the 'R' stands for the raid capability of the - is it? - southbridge. AFAIK, your board should have an i875 chip and not a 865PE which is Asus' 'P' series. You've got the 'C' right? AFAIK, the reason for this 'ICH5-R business' is, there aren't any Intel tools/utils available, to EASILY initiate the various interfaces incl. P-ATA, provided, your board doesn't include the ICH5-R. BTW, I'ld be very happy if somebody could indicate such a tool for the i865PE mainboard. Personally, I definitely couldn't find any Intel tools at all to date. Maybe this is why i865s are so much cheaper? Trying to install some Intel tools nontheless and just for the heck of it, would always result in messages like: The software isn't supported by your hardware... Jim, if you have the ICH5-R and you haven't installed an Intel tool or utility, do so ASAP perhaps... I'm very curious... My personal solution has been to go back to the latest i845PE (Asus P4PE-X/TE), which supports 512kb/800Mhz-FSB Northwood CPUs (board only lacks S-ATA really, since dual channel and 8xAGP don't seem to have much of an influence IMHO). For the a.m. board you'll find the 'Intel Application Accelerator' (IAA) which is perfect for anybody not wanting to go too deep into FlyTendo or OS. Thus, all one needs to do more or less, is, install the OS, the OS-updates, the 'infs,' then install the IAA over everything to be followed by the other drivers... AFAIK and as far as WinXP with SP1 is concerned, this is all one needs to do... With Win2000 a few additional steps are required. All in all, I'm more than happy for having 'downgraded' to this combo! Mr. Earnhardt, my best FS experience was with 768 MB of RAM. 1 GB seemed to make things slightly slower again. Perhaps this is due to more addressing becoming necessary..? Therefore I'ld suggest, stick to 1 GB and don't go above it. There are also 3-4 practicle reg-tweaks which increase MS's 'miserable' default memory settings (i.e.). Since I use Win2000sp4, I don't know whether this is also 100% valid for WinXP? But if you can find reg-values like 'DisablePagingExecutive' 'IOPageLockLimit' etc., these are usually items, which have a substantial influence on the way your FlyTendo will use the 1 GB of RAM in the first palce. But this is 'hardcore OS stuff' and I won't take this further for now. To be honest, I didn't like the i865PE board at all. Even felt like a second class customer a bit... And before plonking down a lot of money to get the i875 with ICH5-R, I went ahead to get the one I mentioned. If this wouldn't have done 'it' (which it didn't!), I would have probably gone ahead to get an AMD64 on a VIA chip. A platform I know relatively well (I mean the VIA, not the AMD64! Hehe). Hope this adds food to thought. Good luck, cheers and kind regards everybody Jaap Please excuse folks, this has been edited quickly... My ribcase is well protected! Hehe Interesting mention about the 'trilinear' filtering... Thanks

Hello Jaap,I don't if really know that I want to install the IAA, if that's the Inel tool you are suggesting I install. Everything works pretty darn good for me as it is. Not sure I want something to mess with my setup. If all this tool does is tweak stuff I usually do that manually. I suppose I'm not totally against trying it out, but I don't know. I guess I'm just not convinced either. Everything works great right now like I have it and I don't want something screwing up my system!But yes, you're right.. I goofed! :-dohMy chipset is an Intel 875P + ICH5R. Thanks for pointing it out!Cheers,Jim

Hi Jim, no worries, mate! And thanks for your reply. Personally, I'ld say, if you can get a Intel tool, get it and use it! Why? The following was copied and pasted from the Intel site (and perhaps is capable of encouraging you more coherently): Do I need the Intel