Hi guys, I've had my PC for over 2 years now spec below!HP 9070Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP1, Inter® Core Quad CPU 2.4GHZMemory (Ram) 3.00GBNvidia GeForce 8500GT (512MB)Although I can have all slides across in the FS9 scenery section I've always suffered from unbelievable shimmer and stutter. I've tried everything known to man over the last year, many Nhanser settings, many different drivers, you name it I've tried it. Lots of different CFG file settings, should I go on!!! :( My FPS is around 24 so no issue there. Anyway before I completely bin my current PC I was wondering if it can simply be upgraded? Better or different Graphics Card (I believe Nvidia has always been an issue in FS9), more memory or is my processor too slow?Can anyone offer any advice?? I'm completely distraught with the incredible texture shimmer and slight stutter every time I use FS9 and it's completely ruining my experience!!! :( Cheers in advance.

Of course it can be upgraded, but you have a good computer for FS9. Make sure it is in tip top shape. Get Vista SP2. Delete the FS9 cfg and run without tweaks to see what happens. I think most cfg tweaks were made to run FS on under powered machines. Not yours. If that is DDR2 ram, and you have 3 one GB sticks, think about going to 2 GB or 4 GB. Runs a little better.Bob

Thanks for the info Bob. What about my nightmare shimmer & stutter can any thing be done to improve this?Cheers

Thanks for the info Bob. What about my nightmare shimmer & stutter can any thing be done to improve this?Cheers

You have two issues with your machine, that I can see from here:The 8500GT graphics card is not really designed to handle an app such as FS. It is designed to be used for various productivity apps like MS Word, IE, and Powerpoint. This is your first hamstring on your system.The 3.0 gb memory is probably a 3 stick config, which is a no-no with a mem intensive app like FS. You would be better off running a matched pair of single gig sticks, giving you a total of 2gb. That along may eliminate the stutters you are seeing.----More advice...The latest vid driver is not always the best...in terms of both image qual and performance. New driver may equal stutters with your older card.re: shimmering. The 8500 cards will not handle high AA/AF settings as well as the gamer-spec cards (8800GT/GTX) and the AA/AF settings are the prime way to handle shimmering.If it were me I would open my case, inspect the ram stick config, and if I could determine that I had 2x1 + 2x512, or some odd config like that, I would remove the 512mb sticks. Get to a pair of 1gb sticks asap.Then, I would visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html ...and experiment with older drivers. I would recommend starting with the 169.xx series and go from there.Oh, and be sure to use a solid method for removing the old vid drivers, which is:1. Control Panel|Add/Remove Programs|nVidia driver2. Reboot machine3. run Driver Cleaner (free download) just to be sure4. reboot machine again5. install new driver6. rebootAnd as always a good system tuning (defragging, spyware/ad-aware check, switching to a non-intrusive anti-virus, etc.) never hurt anyone.Hope that helps a wee bit

Do some research before getting a new card (which I would too recommend), but something like a 9800GT or GTX260 would be better, and allow you to crank the AA and AF. The 9800GT *should* work with your power supply but not so sure on the GTX260, for the 9800 you would need a 6pin molex connector from your psu to the video card I believe

Thank you for the excellent advice! I now have plenty of things to look at for my upgrade and all your suggestions really help :(

Hi, nbquidditch.Your system should run FS9 fine if:1-Make sure you clean / disable background tasks that are not needed.2-Turn off your Anti virus scanner, especially if it's Norton, you can set it up to run manually.3-What ever else you can do to minimize the initial Memory foot print, 3G and Vista is about the minimum, clean up your Start up.4-Rename your "FS9.cfg" to whatever you like and let FS create a new one, you can mod it later, but keep track of what you are doing, and do one thing at the time.5-In FS disable the Anti Aliasing, and select Trilinear.6-In your Video board set up set AA and AF to around 2-4 to start with.Report back here with results.. TV