I see good FPS, but stutters suck and they have become more prominent. What should I upgrade?Asus K8V DeluxeAMD Athlon 64 3200+ Radeon 9800 Pro1 Gig Corsair 4200 RAMOnboard sound

Hi,what happens if you limit your frame rate to 25? Your machine should be able to run FS well, it

I've got pretty high settings, locked at 35. I'll try 25-20. After reading some of the AS2004 forum, I might try changing some of those settings. I just hate comprimising, I really love all the 3d clouds.

You could get rid off your onboard sound. For start you could experiment and disable your sound and see what happens.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Wow, does on-board sound make a big difference in sim performance?

Go up to tips and tricks and check out PC Latency. You will have to download a tool. I have a 9800 pro and the latency was factory set at 255. I dropped it down to 64 to match the others. It has to do with how everything shares the PC bus.

I did some experimenting on that and found switching from AC97 onboard sound to a SB Audigy II netted me about 10% difference in frame rate. At the time I was running at about 2880MHz. The frame rate limiter indeed must be set down just to the point where the min & max frames don't vary to awful much--not more than about 3-4 frames. Unfortunately, this is entirely situation-dependent, though you can opt to set for the very worst scenarios, this way you'll be "fine" in any situation. The problem is, of course, you will rob yourself of some fluidity (from smooth & faster fps)by tuning to the lowest common denomenator. I move my frame lock to about 3 different settings, which correspond to different add-on aircraft and situations/weather. Most of the time I'm locked at about 26, which seems a good, and almost always, effective compromise.Noel

>I see good FPS, but stutters suck and they have become more>prominent. >>What should I upgrade?>>Asus K8V Deluxe>AMD Athlon 64 3200+ >Radeon 9800 Pro>1 Gig Corsair 4200 RAM>Onboard soundMany times this can simply be a driver or other interfering program issue, check for any programs running in the background (Antivrus etc), even thermal sensing/polling software can cause stutters.On this FS Box, using any NV driver beyond 56.72 for this old GF4TI will induce lots of stutter (no matter NV-driver helper disabled or not) but running 56.72 or below is completely stuttter free.Moral? newest drivers not always the best...if it ain't broke...Keep your hardware and keep looking and trying, just take it one step at a time.

Done the PCI latency, bumped it from 64 to 32. I have the latest Omegas (.7s I think) I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the tips everyone.

I have limited the FPS at 22 and the result is very satisfactory for me. And all the options are on max except for a very few.But I admit that I already have a very good PC even if it is not the very upper end.Roger

Here are a few ideas: - Don't upgrade hardware in the hope of getting rid of stutters. It may not work? Perhaps get rid of your troubles first and then re-verify eventual upgrade needs? - If you have winXP-sp2, de-install the Via4in1 package and re-install it again (latest one is v.4.53 AFAIK), minus the AGP-bit. - Try FS without FastWrites - Turn on V-sync - Noel's numbers and suggestions look good too (10% perf-gain with PCI sound and locking frames @ ca. 26) - Install everything (OS and FS) in one big partition in their default directories - Set visibility distances to lower values - Make sure everything is properly set up (i.e. disable the '2T Command' in the bios of that mainboard)Hmmm, that should keep you busy for a while... Good luck and kind regards Jaap

I've had the same experience... after increasing the fps limit to 30 and liking the smoothness in flight, I was surprised to find stuttering on the ground. Especially noticeable when taking off in VC view. The runway was coming at me in steps... not good. I tried going back to 20 fps and the effect disappeared! Now, I have settled for 25 fps which on my machine gives me the best balance.. BTW, default aircraft are less demanding than add-on aircraft (no real surprise, I guess).

Well Paul, after promising myself that I would never again re-install older video drivers just because someone on a forum claimed they were better, I thought "what the heck", downloaded the 56.72 drivers for my Ti4200-128... and you are right! Visually, I actually like my standard 61.76 drivers better, but the 56.72 drivers seem to be less "jumpy" and handle a larger variety of situations without stuttering!They do, however, re-introduce a visual defect, which occurs when I push the ALT key and which was fixed in the newer drivers... do you have a way around this? See screenshot..

I've got a similar system, AMD 64 3200+, K8V deluxe chipset, Radeon 9800 Pro, and 1 Gig Mushkin 3500. I do have a Soundblaster Audigy 2 however. Stuttering in not too bad on my system but when it does happen it seems to usually happen during ATC speech. What type of hard drive do you have? If it is not an SATA, that could be something to upgrade. I run my SATA HD off the VIA port.Are you running XP service pack 2? I'll second the prior advice about making sure you don't have VIA installed for AGP in XP service pack 2.You said your FPS is good so I won't get into overclocking except that if you have an AMD 64 with good overclocking potential you can pick up a much better overclocking motherboard fairly cheap (approx. $100).

>Well Paul, after promising myself that I would never again>re-install older video drivers just because someone on a forum>claimed they were better, I thought "what the heck",>downloaded the 56.72 drivers for my Ti4200-128... and you are>right! Visually, I actually like my standard 61.76 drivers>better, but the 56.72 drivers seem to be less "jumpy" and >handle a larger variety of situations without stuttering!>>They do, however, re-introduce a visual defect, which occurs>when I push the ALT key and which was fixed in the newer>drivers... do you have a way around this? See screenshot..> Sorry Bert I haven't seen that problem in a while, Don't have it myself.All settings default?