Scratch that, I figured out what to do. I overrode the FS9 software settings by forcing the 7300 global graphics settings to their max in the NVIDIA device manager. I get a black box in the aircraft selection screen, but I get crisp graphics and a steady 25-30 FPS with great detail and an advanced texture pack. Not bad Nvidia for a hundred bucks.

I upgraded my rig from a 1.9 GHZ athlon XP with a 70 gig drive, 1 gig of 3200 RAM, and a Geforce 6600 256 MB to an E-machines, Win XP HE SP2, T6528 2.21 GHZ Athlon 64 3500+ with 1.5 MB 3200 RAM, a 160 GB drive, creative audigy zs, and a Geforce 7300 GS with 256 MB DDR2. (my system reads it as 512 MB of memory. Is that normal for DDR2, or is it a false reading?) My problem is that on my first rig I had a framerate ranging from 6 FPS on the ground to 20 FPS in the air, with minimal artifacts on screen. I figured my new rig would be a world better, but no. On the Ground I get 8-9 FPS, and in the air I get 20-22 FPS, with a jump to 30 FPS once in a while. I get major artifacting on the water textures, and brown boxes on ground textures.I set the cut off for FPS at 30, and graphics are on the highest setting. Is this normal for this type of set up, or is there a problem I am not seeing?(I have disabled my anti-virus, defragged drive, disk-checked, updated drivers for OS, graphics, sound, main board and BIOS).