I wonder how many other folks are experiencing a phenomenon I've noticed these last few weeks:I just built a fast new PC to replace a 3-4 year old 3 GHz Pentium IV as my primary simming platform. It's a Core 2 Duo machine, and FS9 has really sprung to life using it. And here's the interesting piece...so have a number of previously sidelined add-ons that were such dogs on the old system it wasn't worth keeping them around.Example - Simflyers KDFW scenery. Never saw frames above about 10 fps on the old system there, and during approach/taxi, it was a 6-8 fps slide show. Took all my SimFlyers sceneries off the PC years ago after many futile hours trying to fix the problem. Fast forward to today...just reinstalled the scenery on the new machine. With the PMDG 744 running plus ActiveSky weather, Radar Contact 4, full FSGenesis 38m+ mesh, and MyTraffic 4.1-generated AI traffic, I'm still steady at a locked frame rate of 30 fps in all phases of flight. All of a sudden the old scenery is worth using. It's never going to be as nice as my Cloud9 or FlyTampa stuff, but it's still very usable. Just reinstalled KATL and found it to be very usable as well.Example - The last time I saw the CaptainSim 707 run on a fairly well-tuned P4, it was deep in frame rate he11. On the new system, with all sorts of other load on the PC, it runs smoothly locked at 30 fps. It still needs an FDE overhaul and some major custom gauge work, but it now performs well enough to think it a worthy addition to the fleet...and I don't mind needing to reengineer a $10 add-on.Makes me wonder how many more of my old castaways are going to come back from the dead. It's an interesting development, and a little extra holiday fun.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

Very good point Bob on bringing old discarded addons back to life. It sorta shows FS9 coming of age where anything and everthing can now be maxed out with today's hardware.ClutchProject 9Dragons

Great point. I have a ton of airport sceneries I either uninstalled or simply avoided due to performance issues. Now, with my newer PC, I can fly them finally. Also, a big change for me has been moving from 2d cockpits to virtual ones. I could never get interested in VCs on my old PC, as the performance hit was just too much (and VCs have improved significantly as well). In the past the first thing I would do with an add-on is to comment out all the VC gauges for performance reasons. Now, I'm actually flying without using the 2d panel at all, at least for general aviation aircraft.

Bob,Good to hear that you are loving FS9 even more after the upgrade. What are your specs? I am thinking on building a new rig myself in the next few weeks.Possible specs:Intel Core 2Duo e6700 2.67GHzThermalRight XP120 Heat Sink 2Gig of PC4000 Corsair ram2 WD 250Gig 16Mb cache HDD configured in raid 01 WD 500 Gig 16Mb cache for storage1 NVidea 8800GTS700 watt power supplyI have not decided what Motherboard I am going to get as yet.CheersKroswynd

hehe always good to see that you are really enjoying your system Bob :D and yeah 9 has alot of life left when we can finally use those "used to be useless" add-ons

>Bob,>>Good to hear that you are loving FS9 even more after the>upgrade. What are your specs? I am thinking on building a>new rig myself in the next few weeks.>>Possible specs:>Intel Core 2Duo e6700 2.67GHz>ThermalRight XP120 Heat Sink >2Gig of PC4000 Corsair ram>2 WD 250Gig 16Mb cache HDD configured in raid 0>1 WD 500 Gig 16Mb cache for storage>1 NVidea 8800GTS>700 watt power supplyYes, FS9 plus the truckload of add-ons I've been accumulating these last 3.5 years is positively wonderful on the new machine.My new system:Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 at 3.2GHz (3.4 or 3.6 GHz when needed)eVGA/nVidia 680i motherboardZalman 7700-Cu oversized CPU fan2 GB Mushkin DDR2-8000 (1000 MHz) RAM1 WD Raptor 10,000 rpm SATA HDD (WinXP and MSFS)1 WD Caviar 500GB 7200 rpm SATA-II (300Gb/s) HDD1 nVidia 8800GTX (768MB)750W PSIf I were you I'd go with at least DDR2-6400 (800MHz) RAM, and pay attention to the timings, too.Also, I'm absolutely sold on a 10,000 RPM HDD for FS. Way more performance improvement in FS than you're likely to see with RAID 0. And my experience with RAID is that it can be pretty finicky when overclocking, too.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile