I downloaded a program called dxtbmpx.exe from the AVSIM library. When you run this executable, it installs its software into a new folder but does not touch FS9. The new folder has loads of info about the various texture types used by MSFS and CFS and tells you why you may or may not want to uses each type. It also includes comparisons of file type sizes.It took some reading and a couple of false starts before I made it work for me but the results were worth the effort. Before I used it, I had some add-on planes that would stall at texture load for 3 to 4 seconds, each time that I went to spot view. Not only would the airplane be all white but big blocks of ground texture would often be missing too. I examined the planes that were causing the problem and found that they all had huge texture files which I assumed were 32-bit files. After converting the texture files of the offending aircraft, they load *almost* as fast as the default planes. R-

Ron - Thanks for the tip. I'll try to find it.My lags are about half a second going from cockpit to spot view, but I also get some terrain texture lags even with stock planes.Bruce

@ Jonathan, I believe Bruce is also in an offline environment. Case he still has Norton installed, it's indeed recommended to completely de-install it. If memory isn't failing, there are at least two methods to do so. Only using the the 'Remove' function in the 'Add/Remove Software' (in the OS' Control Panel) isn't enough. AFAIK there are special utilities which remove all the Norton remainders. Important: Even more interesting, Jonathan, what does your SmartGart tab report or do? Does it also just bump you back to the desktop like it does with Bruce? Can you alter any SmartGart settings? Which display driver version are you using? Perhaps compare your mainboard driver versions and readings too? I.e. in the 'Device Management' section. Maybe also compare your 'dxdiag' readouts, etc? @ Bruce, a little remark about ** texture lags: Of course my textures also lag a tiny (hardly noticeable) bit, specially upon the first load. Nevertheless and even then, the aircraft will not appear white or texture-free. The 'greatest' load occurs when going into the virtual cockpit for the first time and even this is completed within a fraction of a second. Now, I 'only' have a single RAM-channel socket-754 AMD64 3200-1MB (Clawhammer) and am running a much lesser display adapter than most of you (9800pro). Nevertheless, I couldn't complain about mini or mega stutters (w/ many sliders one or two notches down and the water slider to the left). On my end, only ATC speech can be problematic in the first 15-20 minutes into FS operation and maybe I should have mentioned it before? IMHO, the two of you should concentrate on driver and system details more than anything else. Provided your monitors are running at equal or higher frequencies than 75Hz, I'ld recommend to turn on V-sync (perhaps also consider locking framerates @ 25-27-30?). Finally, please don't neglect the previous tips, i.e. turning off HD-indexing, etc. IMHO, particular FS settings will only show positive results once your system details are sorted. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Jaap -I have no anti virus installed and I turned off the OS firewall.Let me clarify the smartgart thing again.In my Program Files there is an ATI folder---inside is a smartgart file which won't open ---it sends me back to desk top. However I have the equivalent of smartgart in control panel-appearances and settings-settings-advanced. It is a video card control panel(similar to smartgart) that allows certain settings configuration but doesn't show AGP setting or fast writes. Dell didn't install the VC with ATI installers so I have a different config or control panel that is about the same as smartgart. Jonathan must have the same. I sent him pix of it and all my FS9 settings as well.Maybe your AMD setup handles things better than the P-4?? My monitor runs at 85Mz. I have V Sync on 'application preference' and when I turned off indexing I had some problems undocking and moving to 2nd monitor so I turned it back on. I read in PC Pilot that frame rates should not be locked so I don't. I've tried it both ways and I have to agree with that. PC Pilot agrees.Bruce

Hi Bruce, let me clarify one or two things too. AIM, I don't have the slightest idea about PCI-e cards and it's pretty obvious you shouldn't have any AGP options. Besides, my system should perform less well in display arena and somehow it doesn't. All I wanted to say, is, concentrate on your system first. Compare your driver versions, etc. IMHO, fiddling around with your FS settings will probably get you absolutely nowhere. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Jaap - You are so right. "fiddling around" with my FS9 settings gets me absolutely nowhere!!! I have spent many hours on those to no avail! To be honest, I'm tired of the whole thing, and right now a half second lag in texture loading, for addon planes, somehow, just doesn't seem like a big deal any more(or so I'm trying to tell myself)! I think I'll just play the game and see what MS announces in July!Did I mention that this afternoon I spent an hour on the phone with a Dell tech and he assured me(I think) that I have the latest drivers for every component. He qualified that by stating further that I have the latest ATI drivers that have been certified and tested by Dell! He recommended NO changes, but suggested that I watch for future ATI driver updates for my system listed on the Dell web site.Thanks again for your interest and input!Bruce

Hi Bruce, I fully understand your feelings. And no worries, you're welcome. You can't believe how tempted I am to run and get a PCI-e sys! Anyway, since you do not seem to have the latest drivers for your display adapter (your screenshot above indicates v.4.10 max), perhaps also consider not giving up? To give you an idea, with Ati drivers, their numbers usually are a reference to the month and year they were released. I.e: 4.9 = 2004/month9; 4.12 = 2004/month12; 5.1 = 2005/month1; etc, etc. Ati usually releases one driver per month. You can find the exact version by looking into 'Options' under the display properties tab. Case you're using v.4.10, hey, that one's almost six months old and that's virtually light years in computing! Specially on newer platforms like the one you've got, newer drivers will often help to avoid oddities. If you don't feel like upgrading your drivers alone, perhaps contact fs-gs and arrange a session or ask friends? I beg you to do something and not just assume. You should be seeing an outstanding performance and after all, you've got one of the strongest and hottest combos out there. Another thought is, whether you can still return the box? I mean, you aren't totally happy and there are very good and probably even cheaper machines which could do exactly what you want. I guess you specified FS as app to run on it upon ordering? Personally, I don't understand why Dell is saying or insisting you have the latest drivers when they are clearly a couple of months old. IMHO, that's total B.S. and they have no foot to stand on. If they insist it's true, maybe try to get it in writing! Please note that on the other hand, it may not be the display driver alone. As Greg mentioned, there might also be an issue with the mainboard's chipset driver? FYI, today I installed win2000 on a spare HD. To satisfy my curiousity and verify my 'inbuilt memory'... Since I'd been using win-xp64 for a while, I wasn't 100% sure anymore, whether a similar OS to yours would show white textures when loading ** aircraft or not. The outcome was the same as under xp64. No white aircraft... They load a tiny bit slower than under xp64, but absolutely no whiteness appears. Closing, I guess there isn't much more I can do, other than to encourage you to not give up and wishing you all the best. Take care ,Bruce. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Jaap - Well, I'll say this! You are one tenacious, not to mention knowledgeable, computer junkie! I doubt there's much Zzzzzzzzzzz going on at your house! Long winter in Lucerne?To Clarify---Dell said I currently have the latest drivers tested and approved by THEM for my system. There are 5.3(Mar05?)drivers available on the ATI sight for Windows Media Center Edition, but the release notes don't seem to indicate any type of improvement in my situation. Dell has not, apparently, tested or approved them though! Here's the link--https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default...dge&folderID=27Dell's return policy has a limit of 21 days. I think my only real other option is the FS-GS thing. I'll contemplate that some more. I'll say this though, I probably won't buy any more OEM computers. These companies, like most, want your $, but don't want to talk to you after they cash the check!! You are right I could have gotten the same performance for half the money. In fact the computer I'm typing this on with half as much juice peformed only slightly worse! I could have saved my self about $4000!Hang in there, Jaap---Spring is just around the corner! :)Bruce

Hi Bruce,I'll add something to your discussion here, if I may...I have quite similar setup, and I'm experiencing (I think) the same thing. You load, and just on the load, there's a delay in textures, and when for instance switching to spot view, there's this annoying delay where you gotta wait. Sometimes it even takes longer than half a second or even one second. And that is happening on both ground and aircraft textures.Why is it happening? My explanation: HDD. I managed to see what is HDD doing at that point, and it's just reading (or writing?) - anyway, red led is on. So, if it's reading, it means it's loading the textures, and will display them when loaded. IMO, it's not the problem with the video driver.I'm wondering if two things are possible:1) to make sim not pause while loading textures2) to make loading of the textures fasterAs you can see in my hardware, I don't have really slowest HDDs. Although they also aren't 10,000rpm disks or SCSI.Anyway, I saw that you questioned if you should be running FS from first partition or the 2nd disk. I've been tweaking my system to extent, and this is what I found out:Either1) Disk1: C - System + separate partition with the swap file (NOT windows managed, custom at say 500mb or so), Disk2: one partition for ONLY FS2) Disk1: C - System, Disk2: one partition for ONLY FS, one partition for ONLY swapI still cannot decide which setup might be better :-) But definitely found out that running FS on the 2nd HDD gives much better reading performance. Please, keep away from the solutions "everything on one big partition" - I don't even wanna get into fragmentation subject... (default FS installation has I think roughly around 50,000 or so files, whereas mine right now has around 1,000,000 files). If you are serious simmer, you WILL install FS on at least 2nd disk, if not fast 2nd disk. Installing XP on the first disk with FS on the same partition will get you only into bad performance.Just to clarify something on which I'm not 100% sure, but I'm "pretty" sure, is that smartgart is ONLY for AGP. On the PCI-E systems like yours and mine, it's not working, and you can't call it up.I was already starting to think that my old 7200rpm IBMs were faster than these SATA disks, but somehow I cannot believe that. It's probably the thing that these disks just cannot keep with the speed of the other components, or better said, they are a bottleneck.I believe, that if you would like for HDDs not to be a bottleneck, get something like two 10,000rpm Raptors with each 36 gigs and put them into RAID 1 (errr...dunno if 0 or 1, share them, not mirror, u prolly know what I'm talking about). That would surely put you out of your ("our") misery.But if you don't feel like investing into another hardware (like me), "getting" software like Executive Diskeeper 9 (and defragmenting the disk) would definitely minimise your texture lag times!OK, and last but not the least, concerning drivers. Dell told you NOT to upgrade drivers??? I mean, pardon me, but that is BULL****!!! Either they have really bad technicians, or they just wanna sell you PC and not be bothered with future "problems" and questions, if some may arise. New drivers provide 1) better picture quality 2) better fps etc etc. I think when 4.10 were released, then X850XT card wasn't even out yet. Tell me, how can you make a good driver for a card which isn't even on the market yet? Not even 5.3 are perfect yet, which brings me to another question. A little problem of mine, I'd like to know if you also have it:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=7010&page=2All is explained there, plz if not much trouble, try checking this out!OK, so far, that's all. Fire the questions away, if any! :-)

Hehe. Zzzzzzzz in da head, not in da house! And indeed, I am something like a 'simtinkerer' (w/ a fairly limited knowledge). You should see my 'fly-by-

Jaap and Word Not Allowed -Jaap -The reviews and, at least one guru in PC World magazine, convinced me that the 32 bit Intel P-4 was the way to go at least untill FS and other games are produced for 64 bit systems.?? Then, after I got my system I begin to see a lot of others listing AMD 64 processors in their sys specs--- Like yourself.??Returning the Dell is not an option (too late) at this point, so I'll go on with it and maybe try the FS-GS as I said. Word Not Allowed may have something in the FS9 on it's own dedicated hard drive. However, I did have it on my 2nd(D) HDD all by itself, but moved it to the slower(7200rpm) C drive where the OS is at the suggestion/comment of either you or Greg (as I recall) earlier. I don't think there were any apparent benefits, in terms of higher FPS or the lag thing, of it being on it's own HDD.?? Maybe I'll go back and try that again.Regarding changing systems, I'll wait untill this Gateway runs out of gas then I'll get(or build) the latest 64 bit system --maybe sooner if FS10 has a 64 bit version!In reference to your XP MCE comment, I had wondered about that also. I didn't ask for XP MCE it was listed as the OS for the system I ordered and then modified with all the upgrades. Someone suggested that I could turn it into an XP Pro with a few registry entry mods, but I just don't feel good about that at this point.Word Not Allowed - Thanks for your input as well.Yes, it sounds like you have the same problem as I have, and so does JSacks. I don't know anything about seperate partitions, although I gather one can seperate a single hard drive into seperate partitions which, I assume are independent and don't interact with other partitions. If that is true---that's the extent of my knowledge. I would rather, however, just dedicate my second hard drive (D drive)to FS9 only, even though it is (I think) the slower(7200rpm) drive--- if you think that would be better. As I mentioned above, I DID have it on that drive all by itself and don't recall any higher FPS or less texture loading lag time.??The AGP vs PCI-E thing you mentioned accounts for no smargart, and someone else mention something similar. I don't really know the what/how difference between the two although I have read it several times in the past year. I think I could learn Greek faster than this computer stuff!Regarding getting a second WDR 10,000rpm drive, and linking them together in a Raid configurization, etc---here again I have read about this a number of times and I'm sure there are definite benefits and that it may even solve this problem, however I would have to have someone like Comp USA do it. I would no more try to do that than I would jump out of a perfectly good airplane! It is a good suggestion, however, and I will give that some consideration. Why don't you want to do that?Is Executive Disc Keeper that much better than XP's Defrag program? I use it daily.Back on the Dell Tech conversation. Dell didn't tell me NOT to update the drivers. He said I had the latest drivers that Dell had tested and approved! Dell has not tested the 5.3 drivers for MCE X850XT. Therefore they are not yet listed as an approved and available update on their site. I think I'll wait till they are. BTW, you DO have the 5.3 drivers and they don't seem to be helping your system much.Regarding your other problem, I looked at that post when you first placed it. I didn't really understand it then, and I still don't. I'll guess that when you use this MSFS Chat feature(whatever that is) the mouse gets slow and jerky when placed inside that 'Chat' window. I heard that was a side effect of the 5.3 drivers! ;-) Hey, I'm only kidding! I never saw the MS Chat thingie before so I don't know A.) what it is, B.) How it works, or C.)if I have the problem. Let me venture this though. I tried two tweaks offered by Jaap and/or Greg above. One was to turn off disc indexing, and another was, under System Performance - deselect 'Let Windows Choose Whats best' - select 'Adjust For Best Performance'. Then my mouse did what you describe when I flew in Windows Mode and tried to undock the gps,radio stack, throttle quadrant and ATC window to move them to the second monitor. So I went back to 'Let Windows Choose' and turned indexing back on. The jerky mouse got smooth again. That's all I know Captain!Good to hear from you guys as always! Thanks.Bruce

>if you think that would be better. As I mentioned above, I DIDInstalling it on one 7200 drive will not make it much better, as you see, I have it installed on one such drive, and I still have this problem. As I mentioned before, it's the thing that your system is extremely fast (and mine) and that HDD simply can't cope with the rest of the system, that is why you would need 2x 10,000 in RAID mode.>read it several times in the past year. I think I could learn>Greek faster than this computer stuff!HAHAHA!! Well, I learned Greek (old) - and believe me, it's more complicated :-)>I will give that some consideration. Why don't you want to do>that?Good question. Simple answer was - financial status. This config was with a limited money, and these WD drives just didn't count in any more. But I'm sure I'll get them pretty soon...>Is Executive Disc Keeper that much better than XP's Defrag>program? I use it daily.Diskeeper is way better. Better final overall performance.>till they are. BTW, you DO have the 5.3 drivers and they don't>seem to be helping your system much.Well, considering that I think ATI does know better than ATI concerning their own drivers, I think I'll trust ATI and not Dell. And I'm sure the drivers can only help and not make it worse. Some reported that 5.1 cause less stutters than 5.3, but IMHO, that's all bull... I didn't notice any change in stutters between those two. Only thing is, I did notice better picture quality from 4.10 to 5.3 (I changed directly from 4.10 to 5.3). But I guess you can also wait.>Windows Choose' and turned indexing back on. The jerky mouse>got smooth again. That's all I know Captain!OK thanks! I'll see what I can do about this!!Hope you sort it out Bruce!Good night, good fight!

"I am surprised why folks give you here a TON of advice, probably well meaning, but fail to tell you straight and honestly that most likley you will always have texture lag no matter what you do. There is no system in this world that would run FS9 with no texture lag."Hmmm, a rather bold statement. Even my nForce2 chipset based system handles the "texture lag" issue quite fine. No waiting here for textures to load. Worst I get is an occasional blurred ground texture, but even that is rare."Last, I would advise caution in experimenting with different Radeon drivers. It seems to me from reading this forum and other forum posts and PC websites that changing Radeon drivers is not as easy and simple as nVidia drivers."My experience has been just the opposite. I've never experienced a bad ATI driver install in more than several dozen attempts (ATI Cats and tweaked Cats from various modders). Done properly any driver install will work just as the programmers intended. Folks should not be deterred from updating drivers... they need only to do the upgrade correctly.Greg

Reluctantly, I'm going to jump in here on this discussion.Many of the comments in this thread have merit but some may have led you down the wrong path. I'm a retired software developer of operating systems, communications, simulators and other real time applications. I've had over 37 years experience in this field, a lot of it with various Windows versions (and DOS) so I feel somewhat qualified in the following paragraphs.I do not not think there is anything fundamentally flawed with your hardware, although I agree that the latest drivers should be used whenever possible.After reading through this thread yesterday, I ran some tests; I have a reasonably potent system (AMD 64, 3400, 1Gb Ram, ASUS K8N-E MB, full GoFlight systems). I used the Real Air Scout as this aircraft shows the texture lag very prominently. I ran this test in 2D cockpit mode, not VC.As one flies along in say, straight and level, in this mode the sim software design appears to perform pretty well in keeping scenery elements cached in advanced of actual need. This is because the expectation is that the plane will continue to fly in a straight line, as it does in most cases. When one toggles a side view, or a spot view, the needed scenery textures are not available in memory because they would be constantly changing. In every case I tried, the sim had to go to the hard drive to get the textures and this time delay (texture pause)is exactly proportional to the size of the data required and the speed of the hard drive access. This is noticed flying over mountainous terrain or cities where ground textures are changing. It also appears that, even though the aircraft textures (wings, etc.) were loaded from previous views, they are discarded after no longer needed when the view looks straight again. I assume that this was done as a design tradeoff for systems with smaller memories. I also am assuming the design makes some attempt to hold on to some textures as some aircraft with small textures do not appear to be affected; and, with 1Gb of ram, I have never found a situation where all of the memory was allocated to the sim. There always seems to be from 100 to 200 mbytes available.My conclusion: the sim tries to optimize memory usage for the most common current graphical viewpoint. When a different viewpoint is called for, the sim usually does not have the textures in memory and must go to the hard drive for them. Because of the constantly changing view environment, the data is not in any cache and a physical read from the drive is necessary. Also, one could reduce the size of the A/C data required such as using smaller textures (less detail) or the DXT format, if not already in that format. I'm not sure how one handles the terrain data, unless it is all photo enhanced bitmaps, but then, the offset is that a greater amount of data would be needed. Always, a tradeoff!Therefore, it would seem that the best solution here is to place the sim on the fastest hard drive available in order to reduce any time lag for obtaining the data. Now, with a VC situation, throw all of this out as a wholely different body of software is in use with different algorithms. Since in a VC, one is probably panning the viewpoint about rather often, my guess is that more of the surrounding area texture data is kept in memory for actual use in the display "window". Also, remember that the VC is a newer software technology in the sim and the implementation probably benefits from past experiences.Sorry for the lengthy discussion but we are talking about a very complex piece of software which has evolved over numerous releases.Larry S.

Hi Larry,The behaviour you describe is exactly what I have observed and the logic behind it seems very sound to me. I'm no expert in such matters but, over time, I suppose I have drawn very similar conclusions as you in the main body of your post. Following my experience with FS-GS and my general understanding has developed subsequently as to how this sim must be manipulating graphic data, I have grown more and more comfortable with the sim's performance on my rig. Continually agonizing over performance related issues falling short of expectations, that are frequently unrealistic, does nothing to enhance one's enjoyment of this sim.Thanks for setting it out so clearly. I'm sure many of us will benefit a great deal from reading your excellent contribution.Regards,MikeP4 2.4GHz (400FSB), 1Gig PC2100 DDR Crucial, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.6.05a), SB Audigy (5.12.0001.0443), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo, Ultra-Quiet PSU 400W, WinXP Home (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 128MB