Hi. I have an older single-core system:Athlon64 3500+, 1GB RAM, X800XT 256MB, 500GB harddrive.FSX RTM was OK on this system. Autogen caused a pretty big FPS reduction, but as long as I kept it at very low it was fine. I had absolutely *no* blurries even when using the VFR England and Wales 1m photo scenery. If I maxed out autogen and scenery detail, I was getting framerates in the single-digits, but *still no blurries*. The England scenery has no autogen by default and so I spent a few happy months flying it.When I upgraded to SP1 (later SP2), framerate improved dramatically, or rather, the framerate hit from autogen was reduced significantly. I can now almost max out autogen and scenery detail and still get over 20 FPS. Unfortunately, I now suffer from blurries - the sim can't keep up most of the time, resulting in 4m or even 8m tiles instead of the 1.2m tiles it's supposed to display. Even if I turn down all the settings to how I had them in RTM, I get the blurries, though the sim is pushing something silly like 40-60 FPS. Worse, the England and Wales scenery is now completely useless: A blurry, 60 FPS mess.I've tried the framerate limiter, the fraction tweak (which eats into the fps, but doesn't reduce blurries like it used to in RTM for some reason), and alot of other things but nothing helps. Just to see if I had messed up something in my system, I uninstalled FSX and reinstalled without the service pack and *bang* Crystal clear textures, but very low FPS when autogen is turned up.This leaves me with two options:-Keep flying RTM with no autogen. This will limit the add-ons I'll be able to use and I won't benefit from the other bug fixes and improvements in SP2. Not a very tempting option.-Seeing as Microsoft has left single-core users grounded with their SP1/2, buying a dual core CPU might help. Has anyone upgraded from a single-core CPU to a dual-core while keeping the rest of the system intact? Did it improve the scenery loading speed? It's a pretty cheap upgrade if I can find a second-hand Socket 939 Athlon X2.I'm a bit skeptical however, because it seems a lot of dual core users are also complaining about blurries.There's a saying in computer sciences - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The terrain tile compositioning system was working fine in RTM, even though it was only using one core. The only problem with the RTM terrain engine was the massive FPS hit from autogen, which was solved by the batching, not the multithreading work.

I upgraded from an AMD 4000+ single core to a E6750. 1GB to 2GB, IDE to SATA, same 7800GT card. This upgrade basically doubled my FPS and more importantly got rid of stutters when FS loads weather and AI. In terms of blurry I don't think I had a big problem to begin with but on this new system I don't even notice textures coming from blurry to sharp in the distance as I used to. Things are sharp all the time. Now I'm only talking about FS9 but I'd thing if anything an upgrade like this would bring more noticeable differences to FSX since it's somewhat optimized for multi-core while FS9 is not?Jason

Same here. With my single core I had stutters, low fps and the blurries.I have since bought a new dual core PC with 2 GB RAM and a 512 MB ATI x1950. Not sure what fixed it but I have decent fps, no stutters except in high detail areas with a high detail aircraft, and most importantly, my scenery is clear and sharp with no blurries at all.PS - Most of my sliders are maxed or nearly so. I'm a happy flier now.

JimmiG,Just keep one thing in mind a AMD X2 has no where near the power of a Intel Core 2 Duo. Will FSX run better on a Socket 939 X2. Yes. Will it run acceptable for you? Probably not. In reality the hardware you have is now old.Your probably better off waiting till you can do a complete upgrade and not just upgrade to an X2.

Combine RTM and SP2 and I already have a fully satisfactory sim: RTM has nice crisp scenery textures, SP1/2 has smooth framerate. Framerate is very, very good under SP2 with my *current* setup, no matter how old it is. It's just those blurries that ruin everything. That's why I don't feel I should have to throw super-expensive hardware at the problem, unless there's something here I don't understand.If the changes MS made in SP1/2 essentially broke single-core terrain rendering, simply switching to a dual core should solve the problem completely. Seeing as the fiber fraction tweak has almost no effect on the level of blurries post SP1, even on single core, this seems quite likely.If there's something else going on, it probably won't make much of a difference. That's what I'm trying to find out. Obviosuly if you replace your videocard, RAM, harddrive etc. at the same time as you switch to a dual core CPU, it's going to be hard to determine where the improvements come from, and which component is most importantThe Socket 939 can actually take Opteron 180's, which are essentially 4800+ X2's. Those aren't terribly far behind the current top of the lines. There's also an AGP version of the 512MB Radeon HD3850 (almost twice as fast as the 8600GTS) which I'm thinking of buying, should the X2 work without issues. A 4800+ with 2GB of RAM and a 512MB 3850 is hardly "old". I'm going with a 3800+ for now simply because I found one for cheap, so I can determine if the switch to dual core alone is worth it.

Well, I beg to differ that the AMD X2s are not terribly far behind the current CPUs. A 4800+ compared to an E6750 is 30-50% less efficient. If that's not far behind then I stand corrected.It seems that you've already made your choice. I hope it works out well for you. Backing your sliders off to the left will be the key to attempting to cure your blurries.Good Luck.

Ok, here's a quick update:I tried to install a 3800+ Socke939 X2 CPU into my current system but somehow ruined the motherboard. Never happened before! It won't even boot with the old CPU.So, I ordered a new AM2+ motherboard, AM2 4800+ X2 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a case (the Shuttle SN95G5 uses some kind of proprietary motherboard format). One of the cheapest upgrades I've done, none of the components were over

I received my 8800GT 512MB videocard today and of course fired up FSX again to see how it compared.Framerate is increased from about 6-10 FPS to 15-20 FPS. This surprised me as I was expecting a much greater boost

>I received my 8800GT 512MB videocard today and of course>fired up FSX again to see how it compared.>>Framerate is increased from about 6-10 FPS to 15-20 FPS. This>surprised me as I was expecting a much greater boost