I've been surfing this forum for the last few days trying to get some answers about the poor framerates i'm getting in FS 2004. I've been flying Flight Sim's for a very long time and with every version I always have to upgrade my PC so FS would run better. My current spec's are;2500+ XP AMD w/ a Asus A7V8X mainboardRadeon 9600 Pro w/ 256mb of Ram1 GB of RamMy FS9 settings:FS9.cfg has been tweakedEverything in scenery is max'd except the water textureAircraft is set at highMy MIP is at 5 and my lighting is at 8. AA in FS9 is turned off. And I have trilinear set, global texture is max and my res is 1280x1024x32 and framerates are locked at 30.Traffic is set at 35%Weather is 80-100% 3D and med to max density. Sight and draw sliders have not been moved.My ATI settings are;4xAA and 8xAFNow the problem. When im flying above the clouds I get 30+ fps no problem. When im on the ground at a airport like Seatec im getting 20 fps which isn't bad. Now once I start flying closer to the clouds my fps drop from 20 to 10 to 5 and back upto 10. Basically its jerky and non playable. Once the clouds are out of my sight or im flying at 30,000 ft my fps come back. One thing I want to point out is, i'm using cloud textures which are 64x64 and im having these fps problems. If I have the normal cloud textures at 512x512 my fps on the ground are around 15 fps and cloud fps with normal FS 2004 clouds, around 1-5 fps! I've decreased the scenery and i've played around with the settings on the ATI control panel but as far as my fps go, it seems like my video card and cpu can't keep up. I know this post is starting to get long so i'll cut to the chase. Here is what im looking into buying, keep in mind I only need the CPU, mainboard and a video card because I have everything else. I need something what will give me better numbers then what im getting now. I don't want to go to over the edge and buy a $5000 with a chance of FS 10 been released. CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 939 pinMainboard: I'm confessed on what mainboard I need but from what i've read it should have a PCI-E slot? I'm guessing PCI-E is better then AGP? Which one from these two would be ideal for my set up? ASUS A8N-SLI- DELUXE SOCKET 939 NFORCE4 SLI, 3PCI/0ISA/2PCI-EX 4D.DDR SATA or the ASUS A8N-SLI- PREMIUM SOCKET 939 NFORCE4 SLI, 3PCI/0ISA/2PCI-EX 4D.DDR SATA?Video card: Ati Radeon X800L This is basically my budget as far as a new PC for FS2004 goes. If you guys can please give me some helpful input or suggestions on what spec's I need FS 2004 to run smooth on that would be great. I know I won't be getting 60 fps but as long as im getting more then 10 fps on a cloudy day i'm happy.

LOL. You're exactly in the same situation like me. I have a Barton 2500+ as well with a 9800Pro and I am experiencing exactly the same issues. I am generally happy with my FPS performance and the level of detail - I just want to run it a tad more smoothly.From what I have read in here, a CPU upgrade would show the best benefit for us. I think I am going for the MSI Neo2-F, because it still have an AGP port, so I don't have to spend another $250 on a new graphic board that probably wouldn't increase the performance dramatically after all.For what I have read there is still little performance gain from a PCI Express board compared to AGP.

I'm facing exactly the same dilemma, yet what makes it easier for me to make the right decision is a fact that I need to build another PC from the scratch for my son who just starts his school education.He's been drilling my head for his own PC for months so I guess we can both benefit from my upgrade.Thus far I am going new Athlon 64 3500+ on ASUS mobo NForce4 and PCI Express graphics.Due to apparent shimmering problem with GF cards I am leaning towards X700 card by ATI.Good luck with your upgrades.Dom