I now have my i7 920 running very well with trial and error and lots of reading and some help with some folks on here...thanks Nick. I have one and only one major problem that I did not have on my old P4 and it is driving me nuts. Right before touch down on landing I have one major stutter. I only fly GA and it does it on all aircraft I have tried. No matter how long or how short the approach no stutter until just a few feet before touching down....FPS locked at 30 and stays steady. It is very annoying. Everything else is as smooth as silk. I have FTX...GEX....FEX....FSGen....XGraphics. The video card is a 9600GT. The only thing I do not have in this machine that I did have in my old machine is a dedicated sound card. I have an Asus P6T Deluxe m/b with built in 7.1. Could this be the problem? Is the cpu loading the touch down sound right before landing? I do not know how this new on board sound works....does it take away cpu cycles? I have tried watching on task manager but can't see anything going on there. Of course it may be something else. That is the only thing I did not add to the new rig. I have 6gig mem....two 500gig HDD one dedicated to FSX only. All I know is that I can count on when landing a few feet above the runway that stutter happens....tried it at least 100 times...never fails....always there. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

I have had this with two PC's. I also get it right before liftoff. It's like transitioning from ground to air and back makes FSX load a whole lot of stuff

I have onboard sound and have never seen this problem. As an experiment, turn sound off. Also you can change sound quality ingame. Try your frame lock at different places. Bob

I have onboard sound and have never seen this problem. As an experiment, turn sound off. Also you can change sound quality ingame. Try your frame lock at different places. Bob

If you haven't touched down, then the sound file bnroll.wav conceivably shouldn't have loaded into the sim. Now being into the winter months, I'm wondering if it could be the runway snowwash effect is being loaded at that moment, as it usually occurs just before touchdown? I would think a rig like yours should be able to handle it.Regards, Kendall

If you haven't touched down, then the sound file bnroll.wav conceivably shouldn't have loaded into the sim. Now being into the winter months, I'm wondering if it could be the runway snowwash effect is being loaded at that moment, as it usually occurs just before touchdown? I would think a rig like yours should be able to handle it.Regards, Kendall

Thanks for the tips....nothing worked. Changed to spring season....disabled sound....changed sliders....changed frame rates....Before I hit the runway one big stutter!!!!! Crap!!! I did one thing on this install that I don't know if it makes a difference or not. On my HDD that I have FSX on I just did a quick format and not full. A quick format takes away the headers and is supposed to be OK but I don't know and here is why. One of my test flights was KMRC to El Paso. When I did the flight plan it popped up and said file already excisted. I had not done an El Paso flight on this machine yet but had done many when the HDD was in the old machine. Go figure. I have spent days re-installing all this stuff...I am sure most of us have done this.....but I sure don't want to think about doing all this again.

I've never had this problem either, You could try and defrag your hard disk. Making a quick format might still let your hard disk hold info on your files in the allocation tables - and scatter new installs around to avoid overwrites.

Thanks for the tips....nothing worked. Changed to spring season....disabled sound....changed sliders....changed frame rates....Before I hit the runway one big stutter!!!!! Crap!!! I did one thing on this install that I don't know if it makes a difference or not. On my HDD that I have FSX on I just did a quick format and not full. A quick format takes away the headers and is supposed to be OK but I don't know and here is why. One of my test flights was KMRC to El Paso. When I did the flight plan it popped up and said file already excisted. I had not done an El Paso flight on this machine yet but had done many when the HDD was in the old machine. Go figure. I have spent days re-installing all this stuff...I am sure most of us have done this.....but I sure don't want to think about doing all this again.

Get the 14 day trial of Ultimate Defrag and give it a go. Read the instructions and put FSX at the beginning of your HDD or partition.http://www.disktrix.com/It's a pig-ugly web site and program, plus the writing is a bit immature, but the program works very well. I highly recommend it.

Get the 14 day trial of Ultimate Defrag and give it a go. Read the instructions and put FSX at the beginning of your HDD or partition.http://www.disktrix.com/It's a pig-ugly web site and program, plus the writing is a bit immature, but the program works very well. I highly recommend it.

Thanks guys.....I found the problem. Now I am in flight sim nirvana....LOL. For years I have used AVAST anti-virus. When my program...End It All...killed extra processes it was killed also. I down loaded End It All....Avast....set up as usual. The only problem is that when End It All executed I did not read my prompts....just closed it and flew. Avast was not closing. In their new version....and I had never heard of this....is a security feature called "Disable self defense mode". That setting had never been in their previous versions I used. I found the box and disabled that for using FSX and all is well. Thanks for taking time to try and help. Regards

Thanks guys.....I found the problem. Now I am in flight sim nirvana....LOL. For years I have used AVAST anti-virus. When my program...End It All...killed extra processes it was killed also. I down loaded End It All....Avast....set up as usual. The only problem is that when End It All executed I did not read my prompts....just closed it and flew. Avast was not closing. In their new version....and I had never heard of this....is a security feature called "Disable self defense mode". That setting had never been in their previous versions I used. I found the box and disabled that for using FSX and all is well. Thanks for taking time to try and help. Regards

NOD 32 AV... just the AV NOT the Security Suite is the ONLY AV I use. It has the least footprint of all the AVs and you can fly with it enabled

NOD 32 AV... just the AV NOT the Security Suite is the ONLY AV I use. It has the least footprint of all the AVs and you can fly with it enabled

Thanks Nick...as usual you have the answers. I used Avast because I had been let down many times by Norton...McAffe.....plus it was free. I would always close it down when flying.....even though I always felt uncomfortable doing that. Just installed NOD 32 AV trial and made several approaches.......smooth as silk.....at least the equipment part maybe not my flying.....LOL. Once again thanks.

Alphahawk3 and Nick, OK, you eliminated the pause at landing by changing to a better AV but the question of interest is WHY did that fix the problem? Why would the AV affect repeatedly a landing and maybe a takeoff. Understanding this might prevent other pauses/stutters from happening.ThanksWhitav8

Alphahawk3 and Nick, OK, you eliminated the pause at landing by changing to a better AV but the question of interest is WHY did that fix the problem? Why would the AV affect repeatedly a landing and maybe a takeoff. Understanding this might prevent other pauses/stutters from happening.ThanksWhitav8

For the same reason freeware AV's have called F1 installers a virus many many times over the last 2 yearsthey dont know what file is what but sit there and access files they think may be nasty due to poor designSpeaking of overblown bloatware that makes you think you are getting something for your money.. Norton and McAfee are up there too'The more they overtake the plumbing, ... the easier it is to stop up the drain"-James Doohan

Alphahawk3, Thanks for your answer but it doesn't point to the specific instance of why an AV could "always" cause a pause a few feet above the runway. Are you thinking that the sound file that is loaded for tire screech is getting evaluated by AV?whitav8

Alphahawk3, Thanks for your answer but it doesn't point to the specific instance of why an AV could "always" cause a pause a few feet above the runway. Are you thinking that the sound file that is loaded for tire screech is getting evaluated by AV?whitav8

That was my thought and I still have my old rig here and could have pulled the sound card out and put it in but it took me a while to get this rig built and I just got stichers out from carpal tunnel surgery and was kind of fed up with all the re-installing and everything else. Plus the 7.1 sound on this P6 Deluxe sounds really good. I remember reading several posts on Avsim and I think maybe Nick was one of them about on board sound not being a good idea with FSX but am not sure and that was several years ago. I do know I had to do over 100 landings checking this out. I would just start at an airport....tried different ones...and use map to put me out about 3 miles and then fly in. You could set a watch by it. It never happend before because I was able to disable AV. Avast new version has to be disabled in the settings. I knew AVAST used lots of resources but it was free and it never let me down as far as getting a virus. Norton and others had. I did not know of NOD 32 AV....but do now and have spent the last few hours checking it out with lots of landings and everything else I could throw at it....storms....snow....so on. I will be buying later tonight. It really is true...you get what you pay for. I don't know Nick but have read lots of his posts. When I am in trouble I look for something with his name on it as first read. How he does it I don't know...time wise that is...he is all over the flight sim world. I have found his posts in other forums. By following a lot of his ideas I was able to get my old P4 to give a decent ride even though it was old it was smooth and looked pretty good for what it was. All I want to do is fly. I don't like playing around with settings so I need to find out where they all belong and then leave them alone. I am not 100% sure but think I am there now with this i7 920. But yes I do think the AV was checking the sound file as it was loading....but I am not a software guy....hate code....I was a bit chaser for 30 yeras and a darn good one but just could not get into the software thing.

For the same reason freeware AV's have called F1 installers a virus many many times over the last 2 yearsthey dont know what file is what but sit there and access files they think may be nasty due to poor designSpeaking of overblown bloatware that makes you think you are getting something for your money.. Norton and McAfee are up there too'The more they overtake the plumbing, ... the easier it is to stop up the drain"-James Doohan

Nick, do you have an opinion on AVG Free? I have used it for years, but I disable AVG related services in services.msc, plus there is one more that is an executable that I have to disable from starting up. Even with these services running I don't perceive any problems in FSX. But just to be safe, I think, I do the disabling thing. An any case, I don't see anything amiss with it.Noel