How do I know if my system is running out of RAM or processor capacity when my flight simulator fps goes tremendously down or when it gets stuck loading textures?I have put lot of AI aircrafts in at my local airport and on an average there are around 30 of them with detailed models and 16bit textures present at gates. Till I prevent them from comming in my view and observe the landings and takeoffs the average frame rate comes out to be 28fps. But the moment I face them the computers gets stuck for a long time and I can see the hardisk working hard. After 30 seconds or so, all airport and ground texturea vanish. If there aren't too many planea to display then after a minute or so textures come back and fps of only 7 is reached. If there are too many aircrafts then the textures don't return and the flightsimulator continues at 7 fps, textureless.What exactly can be the problem?I have athlon64 2800+,RAM 256 MB nvidia fx5200 256 MB, SATA 80GB on gigabyte K8M series motherboard. I tried to keep down my expenses to minimum.Can some one tell me the best cost effective upgrade to remove this problem? Will increasing the RAM be a good idea?Will running it on opengl be helpful? If yes, how to do so?I have heard that running on 64bit file system will increase the performance considerably. Is it true? What approx fps will I get then?

First, FS2004 won't run in OpenGL. It's a DirectX app.If I am reading yout post correctly, you only have 256 megs of RAM? If you have WinXP, upgrade to at least a meg. You won't be able to run MSFS with as much as you're asking it to do with only 256 megs of RAM. It will use "virtual memory" a.k.a. your hard drive and it will get stuck in a losing battle, trying to feed textures to a rich AI environment it can't keep up with.A 64 bit O/S won't gain you as much as RAM will. Also, unless you're into taking screenshots, don't throw that much AI at your system. When I fly with AI I just like to keep aircraft in the pattern. Planes sitting around on the ground are "eye candy" but realize any AI you add will be more than FS2004 was shipped with and expected to handle.Start with the RAM first, and just add RAM. Don't change anything else, and see if that improves your experience. It should at least minimize the amount of time your Hard Drive is grinding away.Regards,John

Thanks for your suggestion John. But looking at my system config, how much RAM do you recommend?What do you say about opengl?

"Thanks for your suggestion John. But looking at my system config, how much RAM do you recommend?What do you say about opengl?"Look at my reply again. I discuss both.

I did see one typo in my response. If you have XP, upgrade your Ram to 1 Gig.-John

As John said you need 1GB of ram for XP and FS9. Make sure you get the right kind.

You mentioned detailed models. What kind of AI are you running? Are they made for AI, such as Aardvark, Evolve AI, FSPainter, etc?

256MB of RAM is barely sufficient to run just the OS. I agree, 1GB of RAM is probably the best single thing you can do to improve things.But that said, an Athlon 2800+ and an FX5200 aren't the kind of horsepower needed to swing 30 simultaneous AI aircraft smoothly. Even with good low-bandwidth AI birds like PAI or AI Aardvark, you're probably going to have to dial back the AI slider a good ways to smooth things out. Of course this will vary with the complexity of the airport, wx environment, and aircraft in use as well.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V, and proud of itSantiago de Chile