I was going to post this in the 'hardware' forum, but figured not all of use visit there :-)Basicilly, i want a general idea of what type of PC we all have, and what frames do you get.MECPU : intel celeron 1.7GHZGPU: Powercolor radion 9600 pro 256MBRam: 512 mb DDR 3200Operating system: Win2000 professionalDirectX 9sound: Audigy 2.Motherboard: SIS something.This is not a very powerful system, as the celeron is not very good. I am going to replace all of this before christmas with an expensive upgrade.Frames: Quite good in rural areas, but in built up cities can drop down to 3-5.

>Basicilly, i want a general idea of what type of PC we all>have, and what frames do you get. MB : Abit NF7-S 2.0CPU : AMD Barton 3000+GPU : Radeon 9800Pro 128MBRAM : 2x512MB DDR 400MHzSOUND: AC '97 On Board Chip OS: Win XP Pro DirectX 9.0cWith a careful tweaking of the system and FS9 configuration and settings, I have 40 FPS (slider maxed at 40) in most conditions, and about 20 FPS in worst conditions (LDS767 at KJFK or similar airport at dusk, with ASVE giving 2 broken cloud layers, rain and max visibility).Note: AI traffic is off; Max vis is set to 29 miles (via ASVE);FS9 Settings:Resolution : 1280x960x32Terrain complexity : 80Terrain detail : None (eats more FPS than one would think!)Water effects : LowScenery complexity : Normal (major FPS eater!)Autogen density : NormalGround object shadows : UncheckedCloud drawing distance: 30 milesMip mapping quality : 5All remaining settings (except max vis) are maxed out.Marco

My rig:AMD Athlon 64 Bit 3500+ ProcessorAsus A8V-E-SE / S-ATA PCI-Express MotherBoard1024MB DDR 400 RAM (512MB x 2)S-ATA 200GB 7200 rpm (8M) Hard DriveASUS EXTREME X800XL / 2DTV 256MB DDR3SB live 24bit sound card400W Power SupplyLogitech X-530 5.1 speakersNEC 19" Flat screen - 1280x1024AAx4 AAFx16FPS locked at 35 with everything max except water which is low, the clouds are 100% 3D and Max density and a Mip mapping quality setting of 5. I have freeware planes, FS Traffic 2005 (set at 65%) and the airport gate scenery installed. My FPS rates are 35+ above the clouds, flying through the clouds it drops to 30 fps and on the ground I get around between 25-35 fps. At Heathrown with overcast skies, some rain and 65% FS Traffic 2005 I get around 25-28 FPS. So far I haven't dropped below 18 FPS which only happen when I was testing out 3 layers of clouds over the freeware Vancouver scenery add-on and even then it was pretty smooth.

Mine is in the sig..Performance is a subjective thing but I would say I never get less than 20 FPS in the scenarios I fly. Basically I feel no need to make another upgrade for FS2004. Maybe when FS10 or some other game I really want comes out and pushes my rig harder I'll upgrade again.

Mine is in the signature below. Practiclly evrything is maxed except the water. Visibility 60 miles FPS fixed at 25.No shdows for scenery._______________________________________________Edmundo CardenasCaracas, Venezuela Alienware Area 51M Pentium4 3.6 MHZ 2 GB Ram 2X60GB HDD, NVIDIA Ge Force Go 6800 256MB on BoardAltec Lansing Speakers with Woofer17 Screen, Second Display Samsung 21"2xNEC DVD+-RW ND-6500A Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2NX_______________________________________________

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http://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannersupporter.jpgProud Pilot Meridian VA

A tired-and-aging Northwood 2.2a OC'd at 2.72Ghz (Intel HSF)An Abit TH7II-R motherboard that needs a BIOS upgradeA meager 512MB of Samsung 40ns PC800 RAMAn original ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB) running Cat. 4.11'sThe latest OS stuff - DX9c, WinXP Pro (SP2)5 cheap WD HDD's (120GB, 120GB, 120GB, 120GB, 120GB)A really-superb Plextor 708A DVD/CD WriterA very-fast A-Open 1648/AAP DVD/CD RipperA now-not-too-bright Viewsonic PF790 (19")An even-dimmer Compaq S700 (17")A very large Inwin case fitted with a Enermax 431W PSU I get anything between 2 and 512 FPS depending on the the age of the Chianti.Doug

Don't know how many frames per sec I get, presumably enough as the sim is generally pretty smooth. I lock these days at 25. Really couldn't care less as the sim's performance continues to give me a great deal of pleasure. It's all down to what you install, where you prefer to fly and a healthy level of realisitic expectation.According to FSM my current aircraft tally is 233 excluding AI. Really should get around to scrapping some, but when you have tried to be selective, as I have from day one, throwing any out is hard ;-)FS9 occupies 39.3GB (uncompressed) HD space (27GB compressed) so it's far from being an out-of-the-box installation. Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo (FSB 400Mhz)Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz1GB Crucial PC2100 DDR RamSaphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.6.53 / Catalyst 5.7)Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32)SB Audigy Player (Drivers version 5.12.0001.0443 Signed)Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (160GB) + IBM Deskstar 120GXP UDMA100 (40 GB) Ultra-Quiet PSU 400WCH Products USB Yoke, Pedals and FighterstickPlantronics Headset and Mike comboPlexWriter 40/12/40APioneer DVD-106SLogitech MX1000 Laser MouseWindows XP Home Edition (SP2) DirectX 9.0cAGP Aperture = 128MBNo overclocking of CPU or GPUIn addition, my system runs the following very well indeed:F4-BMS, IL-2 Sturmovik/FB, HL2, and Doom3 (still not finished - trying to get out of hades!) to mention a few of the more demanding games. It also manages to cope quite well with Lock On (after some game tweaking).So, this particular simmer is quite happy and feels no need to upgrade anything else at present. I'll wait and see what FS10 has to offer before making a decision. By that time I will have had my money's worth from all my trusty hardware :)BTW I was once told that for a 700MHz hike of CPU grunt I could expect, at best, a 10% increase in FS9 performance in any given situation. Doubtless the more recent GPUs would help to alleviate the bottleneck. It's all academic really.Mike

Hello,It's in my sign

Decent "old" hardware, highly O/C on air and very stable, can run anything 24/7 and still give the "big boys" a run for the money (see sig)Run FS everything maxed and locked @ 28 FPSPersonal passion for all scenery Photorealistic as long as it was proccessed well (all 4.8 meter scenery is not the same).NV driver settings (77.72!) for the 6800gt= 8xs AA (anti shimmering,) 16x AF, and Mips @ -0.3, I long for the better AAss (4xs) and AF of GF3/4 days).Have minimal services running, including no motherboard monitoring etc and no stutters...

ASUS motherboard, AMD 3400, 1 gig ram, ATI X850, some old sound blaser, Seagate 120 gig HD, dual boot XP operating system. FS is on it's own bootable partition. 1 - 19 inch daytek monitor and 1 - 17 inch Daytek monitor, Omega 2.54 drivers and Logitech G15 backlite keyboard. I only run at 25FPS locked and works very well. Sometime on landing frames will drop to 10 but I just close 1 window and they go up again.JimCYWG

thanks everyone so farI will bump this to the top.

See the first one in my sig plus a 70GB 10000 RPM DriveRunning FS in windowed mode 1600x12004x Anti-aliasing8x Anisotropic filteringFrames locked to 28 - rarely drop below 25 even with LDS 767.FS takes about five seconds to start up :-)... and the whole thing is blocked by my wife now :-(Alex

guys like you make me ashamed of what i have.. lol...see my sig.. 4X AA, 8X AF, clouds set to high, 60mi cloud draw, 80mi max dist. All terrain is max, and autogen is normal, and airport scenery is one notch from the right. I lock at 30 on clear days or with light clouds. Heavy, nitty gritty stuff can bring me down in the teens as far as weather goes. Thick, multi layer clouds bring me down to low teen to high single digits, but i normally dont see that kind of wx in FS with ASV. :)With FT SFO, i can get around 15. Their SEA or MDW or MIA, i get 20-25. FlightZone brings me around 18. I normally fly nothing but payware. DF B58/A36/PMDG/LDS/occasional Flight1. My performance is overall, ok. Im about to upgrade to the X850Pro 256MB AGP8X, so im expecting better performance.But for now, im happy, but just want better. Not the best system, but it does pretty good. :)Anyone with the X850PRO AGP with any remarks? Id love to hear some comments.

haha 90% of you guys have way more comp than I do. Mine was top of the line FS stuff 3.5 years ago though:P4 1.8 @ 2.0 consistentASUS P4T-E (i850 chipset)PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 300 ATX p/s512 MB of some quality o/c brand (can't remember what I bought)GeForce 3 Ti200 (that's 64 mb ram for the uninitiated)IBM (I think) 40 gb HD 7200 rpm with Bay CoolerSB card, whatever was new back then (SB Live! ?)With modest slider adjustment, that above rig can still blast FS9 up near the frame lock of 20 fps in most situations. I don't have ASV or Ult Traffic or any of those things but I do use lots of higher res mesh terrain. I do use the typical FS9 tweaks, like the FS9XML fix, the DXT cloud textures, and a Terrain Detail of 96. At times though, I long for a new rig. It will probably happen when the Presler cores come out.Why are so many FS'ers running AMD now? Used to be not too many. Something happen in the last 3 years I don't know about?Rhett

thanks guys for your contributionRhett: Basically AMD are taking the lead as it is proved they are much stable and better than the pentium. This is why many people are making the move. There are reviews all over google ect.