Hi I am new,My name is William I am 24 from Paris, France. I am also Canadian. I recently received a brand new laptop, Toshiba Satellite A-100 with a T5600 Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of DDR2 RAM at 533 MHz, 160 GB of HD and a Geforce GO 7600 with 128 MB of dedicated RAM.I was so excited I installed FS X right away... With all the slides maxed out I wasn't above 4.2 images/sec... I must say I was quite disappointed, I didn't try any other configuration within the sim but I don't know that I could get improvements???So then I installed FS 9 and everything maxed out I get minimum 16 fps with an average of 24-28... Pretty cool eh?If you guys have any tips on add ons I could use for FS 9 like water textures scenery and better world textures, let me know!Regards,William :-)

To each his own. Most of us are more enamored with FS9, hence the name of this forum. Good luck to you.

Umm, he was asking about FS9...Bienvenue mon ami!As far as FS9 payware goes:Ground Evironment will make the whole planet look better better with new textures. Flight Environment will give you gorgeous skies and clouds and also gives you lots of water options.The Ultimate Terrain series places town roads where they should be and makes the coastlines much more realistic.FS Genesis mesh increases the accuracy of the terrain elevation making mountains and hills look fantastic.Active Sky 6 is a favorite weather program of almost everone, but I don't have it yet so I'll let someone else speak for it.All these programs can be used at once and make FS9 incredible. You won't believe the difference.As for freeware, check the library and read the Avsim freeware reviews. Also, go to fsgenesis.com and get some of their free stuff. Really, really nice. Try the Vancouver Island terrain mesh. You'll love it!

Will a multicore CPU help with all of these programs running independently?RH

Yep it will a lot lol :-)Andr

Thanks for the replies guys, do you think I should bring down some of the settings in FS to prepare for these add ons or will performance remain the same if I install them?Wish you all a Merry Christmas.A bientot :)William

Active Sky ships with a graphics enhancement for skies; so Flight environment may not be necessary- however if you want to use Active Sky weather with Flight environment you can.So far all I have are Ground environment Pro and Active Sky; haven't noticed much of a performance hit with those.Best Regards, Donny :-waveFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

Hello,I have a fairly large setup for FS9 and use TWEAKFPS for my "display" controller. It sets up the FS9 system, per your selection of what you want in the way of performance. My system can run FS9.1 "Maxed-out" at about 40 fps. System is an AMD 64 3500+, 2 gigs of ram and two Nvidia 6800 cards in SLI mode. I dumped FSX for the time being because the FSX version of TWEAKFPS got me 2 more FPS and would not run above 10 FPS for VFR helo flights.The product is very reasonable in cost and is simple to set up.Cheers,Ron Sagel

I must have been asleep when I read this. Sorry. I would go for Ground Environment Pro. Best single improvement that I've seen.

You might want to go for some addon scenery too. The best place for freeware scenery is http://walhalla.mine.nu/fs2004.php. Since your a Hoser too, try http://flightontario.com/ and http://www.fsaddon.com/products/products_v...ver_plus_1.html. For a whole host of addons go to http://www.flight1.com/.Here's a few more3 to checkout,http://www.flytampa.com/index.htmlhttp://www.eaglesoftdg1.com/http://www.captainsim.com/http://www.precisionmanuals.com/http://www.jdtllc.com/http://secure.simmarket.com/default.phphttp://www.fscloud9.com/php/home.php?lang=ENhttp://www.wilcopub.com/That should keep you busy and if I missed anything maybe someone can add some more. Happy surfing........Dave FisherCYYZP4 Prescott 3.2e 478p 800mhz 1mg CPUP4P800SE Asus Motherboard2.5 gig PC3200 DDR RAM 400MHZGeForce 7600GT/512 OC'dMaxtor 80 Gig ATA 133 HD x2WDC WD800 80 Gig HDAntec 500watt true powerSharp 19 inch LCD MonitorLogitech Extreme 3D pro Joystickhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/ng_driver.jpghttp://fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpg

DudeYou got to have KSAN (San Diego) FlyTampa scenery. Its so cool.San Diego is a favorite among pilots all over the world.Roger M.

I would return the laptop, I purchased a Toshiba, not as nice as yours, model below on sale for $599. last monthhttp://www.compusa.com/products/product_in..._S3094_NotebookIt is the core duo 1.6 with 512 ram and 128 shared video and runs FSX descent, around 20 FPS.

If you want to see how good FSX can look, check out http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php...id=464940&page=But note that the author also states: "I hear you Andrew. It looks good in the selected shots, but the whole experience isn't always very pretty."