I have had my system for almost 3 years now - a Gateway P4 2.8 with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9800 XT 256 card. FS9 has been OK but lately I noticed that while flying (more in turns) I get those "hiccups" or quick pauses. They seem to be occuring more than before and I can't figure why. I checked my frame rate counter and I generally have a fps of 19 or so, but when the stutters occur it drops to 2 or so for a second and then is back to normal. I don't know if more memory will help. I currently have 4 256 RDRAM modules and don't know what my options are there. As far as a video card goes, I paid $499 for the Radeon 9800XT almost 2 years ago and it was a significant improvement in elliminating almost constant stuttering that I had before. I am not familiar with the latest cards or how good or advanced they are. I also make sure I "clear the taskbar" by going into MSconfig and making sure nothing loads on startup. Any ideas on how to eliminate the stutters and increase performance? I also noticed that in XP my CPU usage shows 100% usage when FS is running and drops to 2% when I close it down. Thanks. Tom

New memory will help but only slightly..... you have a reasonable setup which is more likely to benefit from having background programs stopped whilst running the sim. I would suggest using FSAutostart to eliminate background processes. cheerseno

Thanks Eno for the help. I guess even though I disable all the checkboxes in MSCONFIG on startup there is still something disturbing FS in the background. Where do I find FSAutostart? Regards, Tom

Flaps30,While not directly addressing your problem, this site may be of interest for overall better performance. Scroll down to Nov. 2, 2005 'The Blurries'.jb

FSAutostart ...... can be found at this address http://www.kensalter.com/fsautostart/...... it's written by the guy who manages these forums.It'll give you a better idea of what's running and what is safe to switch off.