I would appreciate your views on what setting I should have for the AGP aperture on my machine to help avoid texture popups. Here's my core specs:PC Chips M825LU mobo (VIA KM266 chipset)AMD Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2GHz512Mb PC2100 memory (2x256Mb stick for dual channel)Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128MbMaxtor 5400rpm 60Gb HDI have JustFlight VFR photo scenery installed, and despite the slower initial load times, this doesn't suffer any worse from textures popping up than the default scenery. I have followed the JustFlight instructions for optimising performance, and I'm happy with the image quality etc.However I am unsure whether tweaking my AGP aperture size from the default 64Mb will help maintain textures in RAM rather than off my (admittedly) slow hard drive. My concern is that larger aperture will merely deprive the rest of the machine of system memory, and result in more page file activity. Would putting more system RAM in the machine (1Gb? 2Gb?) allow a much bigger AGP aperture size and help prevent texture popups?And no, I don't have a budget to throw at this rig to improve overall performance, so don't try spending money I haven't got! ;)My frame rates are around 25fps around busy airports, so overall perfomance is pretty good for a modest machine.

AFAIK AGP Aperture has nothing to do with available RAM. It's storage off-card to cater for GPU overflow. So as long as you try the various combinations between 64 and 256 you should be able to see very quickly what works and what doesn't. It will be obvious from texture load times when panning or switching views. In simple terms the AGP Aperture setting is NOT the `texture memory in use`, it's `texture memory RESERVED for use` and if it isn't needed, it isn't used.I dont think the throughput on a 9600 with FS2004 is fast enough to try anything else. You're stil limited by bus speed and texture throughput bottlenecks.But I think more RAM would benefit you much, much more. FS uses between 512 and 768 meg of RAM on average, more if you have addons installed, so 1 gig of RAM is definitely the sweet spot for FS although I think some photoscenery users recomend 2 gig.Allcott

Thanks for the advice, it confirms my thoughts.I'm in the age-old dilemma of not wanting to throw a lot of cash at a box with limited upgrade potential. However I think shoving more RAM in there is justifiable. I've been considering sticking one 1Gb stick in there to start, with possibly another one at a later date.I will benchmark FS9 with aperture settings and report the results.

The huge advantage with RAM is it still has value if you take it out your box and sell it!Allcott

On my system I performed many tests and found that 64MB works betstMichael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_beta_member.jpg

It will be system specific, I'm sure. But the experimentation is simple, non-harmful and fun. And takes only half an hour: Reboot, launch BIOS, change setting, continue boot, load saved flight in FS, check for improvements and problems, shut FS reboot, repeat.The important thing is to use the same situation for the test. Even moving the aircraft to the opposite end of the runway makes a difference, so repeatability of the test is vital.128 works for me!Allcott