I just purchased a new computer (spec's below) and installed FS9, a few free add-on planes and Traffic 2005. For whatever reason my FPS were between 10-15 fps no matter what the settings were. I tried everything and earlier today I used the "q" key to turn the sound off in FS9 and all of a sudden my framerates jumped to 30+ in heavily dense airports with 70% traffic and with all the settings maxed. I then turned the sound back on and my framerates dropped by 15. I went into dxdiag and turned down the acceleration to basic and my framerates are now a steady 30+ with 6xAA and 16x AAF. I had a few questions about setting up a 5.1 speaker system so FS9 uses all speakers but with min damage to FPS. Currently with basic acceleration my FPS are high and FS9 is smooth as silk but the sound is only been played through 2 speakers. Is there anyway to play the sound through all the speakers with basic acceleration? Is the bottleneck my onboard sound card? Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.Spec'sAMD Athlon 64 Bit 3500+ Processor Asus A8V-E-SE / S-ATA PCI-Express MotherBoard 1024MB DDR 400 RAM (512MB x 2) S-ATA 200GB 7200 rpm (8M) Hard Drive ASUS EXTREME X800XL / 2DTV 256MB DDR3 6 Channel 3D Sound Integrated 400W Power SupplyLogitech X-530 5.1 speakersNEC 19" Flat screen - 1280x1024

The answer is suprisingly simple: Do not use an on-board soundchip with FS9! On-board sound generally does not have a hardware buffer and therefore doesn't use it. Get a cheap Soundblaster.Hope this helps,Pat

>The answer is suprisingly simple: Do not use an on-board>soundchip with FS9! On-board sound generally does not have a>hardware buffer and therefore doesn't use it. Get a cheap>Soundblaster.>>Hope this helps,>Pat>I went with your suggestion and upgraded my sound card to a SB live 24bit card and everything is fine now. The OB sound was not just killing my FPS but I wasn't getting the full 5.1 sound I wanted. SB has a nice 3D sound feature which allows 2 channel audio to be played on 5.1 speakers. Thanks!