OK, after reading the article, I think everything will work OK. My RAID 0 drives are on IDE 1, DVD drives on IDE 2 and since I am getting a Raptor for the page file, that will not effect the IDE channels because it is SATA. Is this correct?The only question left is what size Raptor to get. If I get a 150GB, make a small partition for the PF, and put fs on the other partition, would that be a better set up rather than FS on the RAID 0 drives with the OS. I'm sure it would help with fragmentation at least.

I think if FS9 is having to read scenery from the page file, your performance will be in the crapper regardless of what you do with the page file.scott s..

>I think if FS9 is having to read scenery from the page file,>your performance will be in the crapper regardless of what you>do with the page file.>>scott s.>.>Are you speaking about my performance or everyone's performance? My FS shouldn't work any different from someone elses FS.

If task manager says that PF usage is 700MB, does that mean all of my RAM is in use and Windows has now decided to use up PF? I don't think this is the case. Page file usage is 105MB when my rig is doing nothing after using a clean boot. Now, I can't imagine that Windows has used up all of my RAM when the system is idle and has moved on to PF. Although I am also going to add a gig of RAM at the same time as the new drive, I'm not sure if FS will ever use it. Many on this board think it won't.

Sorry Jeff I must have missed your reply in the last few days. or week.Anyway, you have some good questions re: stuttering and I too am always looking for ways to fix them. I am presently flying with no AI, to try and isolate some things. That is how I came across the "pause" that occurs when airport scenery is loaded. if I am flying away from any airports, there are no such pauses ever.I have 1 hard drive on my current sys. However in the past I have had 2 or 3 hd systems. I did experiment with page files on a drive other than the OS drive. A lot of the pundits say that is the best setup. In my experience I noticed no significant difference where the swap was.I think if you RAID0 a pair of Raptors you will have about the best mainstream setup you can get these days. So if that doesn't solve the loading problem with AI you have, then it must not be related to hard drive access times.I also think that any changes you make would probably produce marginal results, because I think the cause of most of this has to do with the software code rather than hardware. One thing I read here at AVSIM recently (tonight as a matter of fact) was in the Main MSFS forum here...it had to do with converting one's textures to DXT1 or DXT3. Would this solve the texture loading pause? Seems pretty tedious to load textures in to DXTBmp but it might be worth it. I wouldn't trust batch processing all textures.Rhett

ha ha paul I like the disclaimer in your sig now. Since I am at home now, it has the right stats now! :) No proxy or fw here at home..Rhett

I just don't understand why me, and a select few people get these studders with decent systems. It is just bizarre. The only thing I haven't changed on my set up in the last two years are the hd's. Every other piece of hardware is new since last year. I had studders then and I have them now.Today, I went to KORD with Simflyers scenery and full ai and everything was smooth. Yes the FPS were a little lower but the sim was smooth and that is is what I am looking for. Later, on a clean boot, I flew out of KEYW and in the middle of nowhere I got studders. There must be a reason. The HD's and the page file seems to be the only thing left to tweak.I am not joking, I can fly through heavy clouds, I can move around an airport with FPS heavy scenery and I only get studders when you would least expect it. Filemon shows that the studders occur when FS searches for more ai aircraft.I am going to put fs on the same drive as the page file but a different partition. Both will be a 150GB Raptor with a 16MB cache. I am going to add a gig of RAM, not two more 512's but two 1024's in a matched pair. I am looking at the OCZ Titanium XTC series that should have timings out of the box at 2-3-2-5. I am going to use the previous article as a basis for my new set up.After spending another $400, I hope I get to the bottom of this.

>I just don't understand why me, and a select few people get>these studders with decent systems. Wait a minute. Doesn't everyone have stutters, to some extent?Rhett

There are a lot of people that say they don't. The type of stutters I am talking about are very different from the type that you get when you are taxiing around a crowded airportDoes this happen to you?Occasionally, for no apparent reason, no major texture loads, in clear sky, I can get a series of 10 second pauses and the whole sequence can take a minute. During that time, FPS go to <1. They can happen anywhere in the world but usually happen in flight as opposed to when I am on the ground.Observing Filemon shows that the sim is searching for ai aircraft, and during that search is when I get pauses. Chances are, a group of ai aircraft are loading because I crossed in to another sector. It is the loading that is causing the problem, not the display of the aircraft.

>There are a lot of people that say they don't. The type of>stutters I am talking about are very different from the type>that you get when you are taxiing around a crowded airport>Guess what. I think I have eliminated the stutter I was getting on airport texture load. All I did was change Global Texture Size from "Massive" to "Medium". No more airport texture load stutter...at least in limited testing.I guess a person needs 512 mb+ video ram to use "massive" with no stutter. Even on my 256 meg 7800GT, I can get away with "massive" and it is smooth 90% of the time. It's just that 10% of the time when it loads a texture, I was trying to eliminate. It seems that I may have found the cause.>Does this happen to you?>I am going to turn my AI back on pretty soon to test. I predict I will get stutters on AI loading just like you describe. It's been a looong time since I flew with AI so I can't remember what it was doing before. Also I don't use any traffic add-ons so I'm sure those programs take more resources, especially if you use more complex AI aircraft models.Based on all of this, I'd have to agree with the MS guys who say video ram will be/is far more important than the raw speed of the video card with FS9 and FSX. I guess I'll get a 512 mb (or even gig!) vid card when they come out.But the big story is, I may have solved the minor stutter problem I was having.Rhett