Dear friends,what is the most important upgrade I should make to get better framerates. Especially clouds are dropping a lot. More then that is water texture. If I set the slider for water details to the right then the fps goes under 10. I have it half way.My current system is AMD XP 3000+, 1 Gb Ram, 128mb Ati Radeon 9600.Thanks for helpsincerelyHeinz

Heinz,I would recommend another video card with at least 256mb. Also tweak your display settings in FS9. Move autogen to 50%; ATC to 40-50%. With the card you have now, you'll have FPS problems with all sliders to the right (max'd).Jim

There are many threads about fs9.cfg tweeks but there are two tweeks that made a *huge* difference to me:*First* I would suggest backing up your original fs9.cfg before you start fiddling. It is located in:C:Documents and Settings...your windows user name...Application DataMicrosoftFS9However you can get a fresh cfg file by deleting fs9.cfg and starting fs9, or going toStartPrograms...Microsoft Flight simulator 2004TroubleshootingReset Defaults1) Increase texture bandwidth - find the following line in the DISPLAY section of fs9.cfg TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=###the default value is ### = 40, for your 128Mb card set ### = 200 to 400.2) Increase VC panrate - find the following line in the CONTROLS section of the fs9.cfg file:PAN_RATE=###the default value is ### = 400, set a higher value (I set ### = 850).

For your current system, I would get a Geforce 6600GT to see a good FPS improvement. Your current board is clearly a bottleneck. Your CPU is just fine for now and I would hold onto it until you can justify an upgrade to an AMD 4000+ or FX system.Hope this helps,Pat

Thanks for your hints.Why is my board a bottleneck? Is FS depending much on the video card?Also it takes a lot of time to fire up the programm and takes to load the scenery and all long time.Dear Django, unfortunately the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and PAN_RATE changes did

Thanks guy for your advices.Before buying a new card I searched for new driver and dx. I found a new catalyst ati driver and the Dx9c. Wahooo what a difference. I doubbled the fps. Unbelivable. Never had such a improvement with updating. Can use most slider full right now and still have average 22-40 fps. great.Sincerelyheinz

>>Dear Django, unfortunately the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and>PAN_RATE changes did