I am not upgrading to spend $600 for a $40 program unless I see a significant performance gain. I am also NOT interested in tweaking my computer to death with folder compression, driver, BIOS tweaks and overclocking, because... everything else just works FINE. Or why is it that I am getting 50fps with Half-Life - a program whose texture size is significantly more diverse and detailed??I suspect that the FS engine is simply outdated, because even Half-Life or other more modern games would surely NOT run as smoothly as they do now, if they were based on an engine that is more than 4 years old. Agreed?I have searched for days in the various forums, but most of the posts are absolutely useless unless there is a complete spec of the workstation and FS settings.Upgrading to get a few more FPS out of FS, because ALL other programs (and games) run as smooth as they can? I don't think so. With FS10 maybe, but then MS has to walk the fine line of totally revamping the engine WITHOUT making it backwards compatible - 3rd party developers would have to design complete new aircrafts and sceneries. The hardware is there, but the engine cannot use it, because of code limitations. So simple is that. Or am I wrong?Come on: my FS texure folder is just about 140MB big, I can swallow a lot more and load it directly in my RAM and the 3rd party aircraft are 100MB at best. Sure my scenery folder is 4GB, but I use at best only 10%. Sure, a fast processor would help, because there is a fair amount of data to process, but not as much that it cannot be streamlined. I have actually never run my taskmgr or perfmon to see how processor intensive FS REALLY is. Now I would start this thread for everyone to post their specs and their FS9 experience. Include CPU, RAM, graphic board type and addons that may effect performance.--------------------My setup:AMD Radeon 2500+ Barton1GB Non-Dual Channel DDR RamRadeon 9800 ProFS Settings:Everything maxed out, except dynamic scenery and cloud density, AI traffic at 50%Addons:Ultimate Traffic 2005PMDG 737-600PSS Airbus 319/320/321FSGenesis 76m meshActive Sky 5Flight Keepervarious freeware airport sceneriesExperience:generally happy, 20fps, few stutters in VC or at busy airports - fairly long startup time

Dell XPS Inspiron LaptopP4, 3.4, 1 GB daul channel DDR ram, Radeon Mobility 9800 256MB RamFS SettingsMost maxed except scenery and autogen at Very DenseDraw distance 70m, Cloud draw at 40m, Clouds Maximum, 100% 3DMip Maps 6Card, 4x AA, 8x AFAddons:FS Auto startFS NavigatorAll DreamFleet a/cFight One Meridian, ATRMiscellaneous mesh, little add-on sceneryGet about 10fps in ATR in 2D view, 20fps outside. Would love to bring the 2d view up to 20fpsDave BarnettStouffville, ON, Canada