My new rig is a disapointment- I keep it locked at 15 and sometimes get half that. 60 mile vis, no traffic, FSNet is my only addon other than aircraft (PDMG 1900C, Realair Marchetti, ATR-72). My Pentium 3 550 MH with a 32 meg SDR card gave me ten FPS- what's up? As soon as I enter FS9 my CPU usage shoots to 100% and stays there. Is CPU usage a sign more RAM is required or is that not related? I have contacted FS-GS; no reply yet but should I up the RAM?My main question is, does more RAM reduce CPU usage.My new rig's specs:Asus K8N motherboard, 2.8 GHZ AMD Sempron, 512 MB 400 DDR RAM, Radeon 7500 64 MB DDR vid cardFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

Hi,CPU will always be at 100%.Your video card is very weak and very small.512 is minimum especially with XP.Your add ons are intensive. Try with a default plane.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://www.fseconomy.com/

Shalomar,See, if you can bring that total RAM to 1Gig and see if you can add a Graphics card with 256MB. I am sure you would be able to find some good deals.I would think, with that you would be able to have a very decent FS9 setup there.Manny

Your main #1 problem is the video card. You need a 256 meg card.And you could use 1 gb of ram; 512mb will get you by, but 1gb would be MUCH better.Your Sempron should be up to the task, but don't expect wonders. You should be able to maintain 20 fps in FS9 though, provided you get a decent video card. That vid you describe is, simply put, totally inadequate.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

>>My new rig's specs:>>Asus K8N motherboard, 2.8 GHZ AMD Sempron, 512 MB 400 DDR RAM,>Radeon 7500 64 MB DDR vid cardWhoa! that's an UPGRADE???? That setup would get beaten by the worst of my 4 machines at home, and it's 3 years old! Seriously, I hope you didn't spend much on it.Also, you have a Sempron 2800+, not a 2.8Ghz... That video card is like 6 generations old! Is it even DirectX 9.0 compliant? I don't think it is...WinXP basically can only barely load and run without immediately swapping to disk in 256MB. 512MB is the BARE minimum in my mind (for people who only use their machines to surf the web or do MS Word), and I always recommend at LEAST 1GB if you're going to be gaming. The more ram you have, the less the system has to swap to disk while running which should help performance a lot.Gotta say, in terms of modern machines, you have a seriously LOW-end rig. Sorry....--2002cbr600f4i

Thank you all for your quick and acurate replies. I bought a one gig stick of RAM bringing my total to 1.5 and an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro. 256 Meg DDR 2. You were right about the deals since the PCI Express cards came out. $119 for the vid card. I paid $85 for the 7500 years ago.Sitting on the ground in the Bell 206 I was getting 46 FPS; I promptly locked it to 30. Taxiing out in the Marchetti there was some minor stuttering turning onto the runway; relocked to twenty. On a test flight to and around New York City I was getting a steady 19.9 FPS through clouds. I'm happy. I'm not a frame rate junkie; I would be happy with 15 and may wind up locking there again if I have trouble with heavy IFR- my favorite flying.I set up the card with quality settings; it looks fantastic. Shimmering went away when I reduced Mip mapping from 6 to 4, and I upped a few sliders. I haven't tried traffic yet- think I'd be OK?One last question: Should I overclock the CPU by ten percent or leave it as it is. I heard overclocking can trip up systems when it comes to FS; what do you think?Best Regards, Donald Traill :-waveFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

Thanx for your concern for my finances; I paid a grand total of less than two hundred bucks for the motherboard, processor, RAM and case. The vid card I bought when it was too much for my machine then to handle, it was laying around while I flew with a 32 meg SDR card. So now I have a ~500 dollar rig getting 20 FPS thru clouds.We must have been typing the same time... LOLBest Regards, Donny :-waveFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.