How did you figure it was the sound card causing your problem? BTW, I find the only way for me to get good performance with UTX Europe at EHAM is to set the Scenery Complexity to Normal. Then it works fine. If I find more areas in Europe like this I may just remove UTX Europe as the hit seems large with it.

Well, for some reason when I built my system everything was fine. Then when I went to do the first video card driver from the Nvidia 169.21's to a newer version I got better visual quality but I started getting some popping and crackling, ATC would suddenly make a screeching static sound, exterior texture on my plane would disappear, and sometimes I would get the dreaded autogen spikes. I also noticed that when FSX first loaded and I clicked on the different numbers to select a/c, starting airport, weather, and date/time, instead of getting the sharp click sound, I was getting a thud sound. I asked around a lot of forums and was told that it was most likely because I was using Xp 32bit and 2gb of RAM and pushing the system too hard. I also read that there were a lot of people that have had the same sound issues with the Asus mobos that had the onboard SoundMax sound card and tried using newer nVidia drivers.Then a week ago I saw two threads here on the PMDG forum describing the problems with exterior and VC textures disappearing and after combing thru about 14 pages of the two thread discussing this, it was almost pinned down to audio cards and audio settings.On a whim I went to my local Microcenter computer store and bought the SB XtremeGamer sound card, uninstalled my SoundMax drivers, removed the SoundMax card and installed the new one and loaded the newest drivers. Fired up FSX and now no more sound problems or texture problems.As a test I spent about the whole day in the LDS 767 and flew from KDFW to KATL, KATL to KJFK, KJFK to KMIA, then KMIA to KLAX, all without restarting the sim or creating new flights. During this I switched views, communicated with ATC, minimized FSX about 5 times, acsessed the FSX Map,and couldn't get it to crash or get the texture or sound problems. Minimizing FSX and accessing the FSX menus during flight would also cause the texture losses.Not only did the problems go away, but I also picked up some FPS. Prior to the new sound card, flying into the stock KJFK or KLAX with most settings maxed and 60% AI with heavy weather I would only get about 16 to 18 FPS in the LDS 767 while landing. Now using the same settings I am getting 22 to 25 FPS in the airportSo that's about it. I wish I had know earlier or I would have gladly spent the $100 on a new sound card. I feel like I have a new sim now.

Thanks for the info cmpbellsjc! I have a MicroCenter near me here in Atlanta, I can really do some damage in there if you know what mean.

Thanks for the info cmpbellsjc! I have a MicroCenter near me here in Atlanta, I can really do some damage in there if you know what mean.

LOL, yeah I know. They already have about $3000 of my money.

Thanks for all the replies. So far this is only happening at EHAM or when flying around there and from what I have read it is a problem area to say the least. I just thought it was strange to get such poor performance with the system I have. If I lower scenery complexity to Dense and autogen to normal it flys fine or if I move scenery complexity to normal and AG at dense is good also. Turning of UT2 did not improve things. One note on UT2 if you turn off GA you can boost up your commercial level 10 to 20% higher with smoothe flight.

It's just due to that our country has a lot of water and bridges and they depicted those in FSX too lolSo you have a few factors that will contribute to the performance loss at this spot in FSX:- Water a lot or rivers and small canals- Bridges a lot too- Car traffic when enabled high density on a relative small surface- Large cities on a relative short distance between- Lot of airports on a relative small surface- AI when enabled lot of traffic at EHAM and EHRDSettings that can lead to improvement on this particular airport and surroundings;- UTX disable bridges and car traffic.- Disable airport traffic density or at a low setting and disable jetway movement with UT2- Water settings to low 2.x - AI percentage based on your system capabilities.Cheers,