OK guys surely somebody has a good idea on this. I read all the press and I still can't decide. I seems I have been on a quest for years now looking for the elusive FPS. I currently have a P4 3.2 with a gig of memory and a gforce 6800gtoc. I figued I had finally reached the goal, but much to my suprise, I found my system slipping down to the old 3's 4's and 5's when in fairly heavy weather and traffic. I have added nothing to my system, just addon AC, Cap sim 707 F104, Flight one Baron, FSS Skymaster so on and so forth. Yet I listen to everybody on these forums, and it seems guys with similar systems run everything wide open with now prob.Searching for the perfect setup>>>Thanks guysBrian HassettPalm Desert, CA

With your setup, all you can use is AGP. You would need to change the Motherboard and then it makes sense to go with a new CPU. Lot of work and cost. At this time neither AGP or any of the newer video boards makes a difference. It is the future that counts. I just upgraded to a "hot" AGP board(ATI X800XT PE) and don't notice a world of diffence but then, my performance is good even with all of the heavy duty add-ons I have.You probably need to clean up your system and the performance should go back up. Defrag, get rid of some of the programs running in the background, turn off autogen and maybe drop the traffic by 10% or so.

SLI/PCIExpress won't give you any performance boost in FS9. Actually PCI Express without 2 SLI board won't give you more performance over AGP. PCIExpress, granted, is the faster bus, but even the most advanced video boards cannot take advantage of the new technology, because the AGP bus speeds are sufficient at this point.

>future that counts. I just upgraded to a "hot" AGP board(ATI>X800XT PE) and don't notice a world of diffence but then, my>performance is good even with all of the heavy duty add-ons I>have.>From which graphics card did you upgrade from?

My old card was a gforce 5200 I think.

ATI 9600XT

Hi Brian, you have something gravely wrong with your setup if you have this sort of performance. I am using a very similar rig and use PMDG's 747 & 737, ActiveSky V, FSCENE, FDC, ActiveCamera, USA Roads. I am running at 1600 x 1200 x 32 x 4xAA x 8-16xAF, full 3d clouds, 70m vis, dense to ext dense autogen, and otherwise everything is full right. Coming into LAX this evening with low marine layer n fog, it is almost locked at 25 fps, and ultra smooth. In the VC after takeoff with moderate to heavy clouds just out of KLAS it was hovering around 22-24. At one point it went to 16-17 briefly, but otherwise was close to the frame lock. What the heck is out of kilter with your setup?Noel

Hi Noel, Boy I wish I knew. I've been talking to other people on other forums, funny as it may seem I've been talking to a guy named Noell on the flightSim forum. He also has the same rig we have. Do you think Dell sold me a lemon with some antique mother board, I think its an 815 or something like that, but I truly am clueless.Brian