My GAWD....I found out what FSX NEEDS! Yes, FSX is CPU bound, but it chokes at less than 3 GIGS! With XP, 3 full gigs of system memory or the max 4 XP will handle!I had one gig..then added another, than added all I had (3). That was the panacea!I can't believe this.....FSX needs GOBS of system memory!!!!!I just took off from KDFW, with all sort of full bore A.I. with 18 FPS or greater!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great animation, no stutters!!!!!I am for the main part running now with 18 FPS no matter what I do!!!!No stutters!No blurriness!Fantastic Performance!!!!!Guys and Gals....you need as much system RAM as you can afford! 3 gigs seems to be the optimum, as 4 gigs with XP interferes with XP calls at the 4 gig addresses.Run...don't walk to pick up 3 gigs of system RAM, and then sit back...and be amazed! All your FPS, stutter, will be eradicated.Make SURE your new RAM MODULES matches the speed that you have now installed, or anything higher will run at the lowest MHz of any module you at present have. I had PC-4200 (533MHz) and ordered the same. My system roars now...and I do NOT now need to upgrade my ATI X800XT. It is system RAM that makes FSX happen!!!!!Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!Mitch R.

I am now able to run the system with NORMAL AUTO-GEN, with only 3 FPS reduction. Before 3 gigs of system RAM, this was not even possible. With NORMAL my 1 GIG system crawled in FPS's and froze as MEMORY SWAP OUT kept happening.So...it's not only the CPU that chokes this version. I'm finding out, that the vid card memory wasn't the hinge pin either!!!My 256 meg ATI X800XT is rendering beautiful stutter free scenery.It is obvious that FSX tries to load out a huge amount of graphics and texture data to a user's memory system and hence, that is the long pre-load time we all have seen.It is now quite obvious to myself, that a lot of the issues I and others were having was a result of the constant swap-out and system hard-drive activity to keep FILE-SWAPPING textures cycling and whatever else FSX's engines were doing.I'm watching hardly any hard-drive action as I am flying west from Dallas. It seems that FSX (if it has the resources) pre-loads hundred's of miles beyond what the graphics card is presently rendering into a scene. My system now has this information sitting in memory and available to the CPU and GPU immediately, rather than having to lose cycles waiting for the entire mechanical system to respond for data.System Memory---MAJOR player in FSX!!!!!I have all scenery sliders at full, with the exception of AUTO GEN at NORMAL, and am getting 'this is a keeper' performance from not even the latest and greatest CPU! (Pent 4 3.4 Prescott)From my experience on my system it is SYSTEM RAM where the smart upgrade money goes...and NOT putting it into a latest and greatest graphics card. The CPU is starving for data in this sim, and chokes if it has to wait while the memory is swapped out continuously. Slap in 3 gigs and you'll see what I mean.Cheers!Mitch R.

Just curious why you have two posts saying the exact same thing on the same page? Your other post on this topic is not even off the front page and you already posted another on the same topic...Please don't clutter the forum with multiple posts on the exact same topic.More power to you with your 3 gigs, happy all is running well for you.-PaulPrimary RigLiquid CooledAMD FX-57 @ 3 gigsAsus A8NSLI-Premium2 gigs Corsair XMS PC3500LL 2 3 2 6 1TXFX 7900 GTX 690/1750XFX 7800 GTX 515/135024 inch Widescreen LCDDual 19 inch LCD'sRaid-0+1PCPower and Cooling 1khttp://home.comcast.net/~psolk/3monitorsa.htmlBackup RigAMD 4000 San Diego @ 2.72 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2XFX 7800 GTX 515/1350 Raid-0

he's happy & excited

Try out the memstatus utility and see how much memory you are really using. Can't argue with what you are seeing, but I've never been able to exceed 1.5GB (according to memstatus).

I certainly could do that...but I have to tell you, the breakthrough came with 3 gigs of system RAM. Perhaps is not only FSX of itself, but that you give the ENTIRE system more resources, and it is seen as SYSTEM performance across the board. Perhaps 3 gigs (75 %) of XP memory capacity is what is happening here, parallel with running FSX or anything else for that matter.I'm not only seeing impressive and REAL performance increases with FSX, but with anything else I am doing or running since stuffing my system with RAM.I should have done this a LONG time ago.Yeppers...I'm excited. I have FSX truly usable now. I don't need to upgrade my present system as I had thought, and have saved hundreds of dollars, by throwing $260.00 at the memory increase.Yep...I'm happy....lol."...er...what was the give-away?!?!?" I know...too MANY exclamation marks, LOLOLOLOLOLCheers,Mitch R.

Happy to see someone so buzzed :-) That's the ticket ...Triangle :-)

Because I am verifying as my flight progresses.I don't intend to post beyond this on this topic.You might say I was viewing, comparing pre and post and 'typing out loud'.In my case, taking my system to three gigs has made literal night and day in enjoying FSX.I hope that others can recreate my success.Take care,Mitch R.

Message received!! And I now tend to agree so have a happy happy day..I'm gonna go pick up my 3rd gig of ram now...

It made a nice difference on my machine too-though what I noticed most is side views/outside load instantly, and a little more smoothness overall.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn't Windows xp only recognize up to a certain amount of ram and isn't it less than 4?Lee

XP recognizes 4 GB of RAM. The only thing with using a full 4 GB is that XP uses some addresses that are in the 4 GB range. So, XP doesn't REALLY use a full 4 GB for memory usage.It will use 100 percent of less than a **FULL** 4 GB's.Hope this helps.Mitch R.

Hi Mitch,Glad to see this was the saviour for your setup! Would you mind posting your computer specs? I currently have a P4 2.8GHz HT (socket 478), Asus P4P800 Deluxe Mobo, 1GB of RAM, and an ATI 9800 Pro 128MB GPU. I was thinking of upgrading to something more beefier, but if memory is the trick, I'm sure I can convince my wife a heck of a lot easier on the purchase of just memory as opposed to a new board, chip, and memory (I already have an ATI 1900XTX 512MB sitting in it's original box waiting to be used as soon as I get a PCIe board :-( ) Also, what are your average FPS?Cheers,Gord NoseworthySt. John's, NLCanada

. . . agreed. . On my system MemStatus has never shown higher than 1.3 gig system memory being used, with about 275 meg video - X1950XTX w/512 meg. I get 24 - 32 fps most of the time.

>Try out the memstatus utility and see how much memory you are>really using. Can't argue with what you are seeing, but I've>never been able to exceed 1.5GB (according to memstatus).I agree. I have 2G ram and 512M Vid ram. The most system ram with everything maxed is just under 1.3G and the vid ram doesn't go much above 170M.And I'm on a P4 3.4g. Either memstatus is wrong or the ram usage isn't as big a deal as some people think. However, each system is different so what works for one may not work for another.VicVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/