Here are my specsPentium D CPU 2.80GhzATI Radeon X300 128MB1GB RAMWindows XP 2002 SP3149 GB Hard drive (69 GB free)All of my sliders are at 100% including AIActive Sky 6PMDG 737-700Fly Tampa SceneryDi Franco CYYZAESAll of Flight Ontario sceneryUltimate Terrain CanadaWhen flying I usually get 20 fps, when I descend into the clouds the sim stutters a little,then when I finally land it stutters and frame rates drop to beyond flyable. What can I do to improve my performance because it was fine on my previous installation of FS2004.

Hi,Was your previous install on this very same computer?

Here are my specsPentium D CPU 2.80GhzATI Radeon X300 128MB1GB RAMWindows XP 2002 SP3149 GB Hard drive (69 GB free)All of my sliders are at 100% including AIActive Sky 6PMDG 737-700Fly Tampa SceneryDi Franco CYYZAESAll of Flight Ontario sceneryUltimate Terrain CanadaWhen flying I usually get 20 fps, when I descend into the clouds the sim stutters a little,then when I finally land it stutters and frame rates drop to beyond flyable. What can I do to improve my performance because it was fine on my previous installation of FS2004.

Ya can't run FS9 with all sliders max'd.You should have 4gb of system memory.If you are using Windows 32bit then with the 4gb of system memory you could use the '/3GB /userva=2560' parameters in the 'Boot.ini' file.Updating to a faster video card would help too. But make sure you know what video cards will work on your motherboard.Some add-on scenery and aircraft do use up some frames. Plus large airports will use some some frames too.

Here are my specsPentium D CPU 2.80GhzATI Radeon X300 128MB1GB RAMWindows XP 2002 SP3149 GB Hard drive (69 GB free)All of my sliders are at 100% including AIActive Sky 6PMDG 737-700Fly Tampa SceneryDi Franco CYYZAESAll of Flight Ontario sceneryUltimate Terrain CanadaWhen flying I usually get 20 fps, when I descend into the clouds the sim stutters a little,then when I finally land it stutters and frame rates drop to beyond flyable. What can I do to improve my performance because it was fine on my previous installation of FS2004.

Add more RAM.You are using too much of your hard drive space. As a general rule, the more space you occupy on your H D the less efficient your system will operate.Delete some unnecessary programs, or get a bigger H D.

Hello,

149 GB Hard drive (69 GB free)

You are using too much of your hard drive space.

LOL ...So the rule is .. buy a 500 GB HD but use only 100 GB of itIf you use 300GB .. you will use too much of your HD space ...Nice idea ... the HD industry must be happy to read that :)BTW .. where your readed that ?? :)BTW .. a average 10-15% of the full HD capacity as free space is considered as safe by the OS and HD industry.Under 10 % .. defragmentation (depending of defrag utility you use) can be problematic.The free space of the OP HD is certainly not part of his "problem".Regards Gus.

Try some of the following settings; they should help get reasonable performance. Also defrag your hard drive, that helps reduce stutters.Terrain mesh: 60-70Terrain texture size: medium to highTerrain detail: land onlyWater effects: lowScenery complexity: normal to denseAutopen: normal to denseTurn off anti-aliasing in FS9; use your video card settings to turn on AASelect render to textureSelect Transform and lightMipMap setting: 6-8Hardware rendered lights: 4-6Global aircraft quality to one of the medium settings.I had a system of your spec at one time and you should be able to get it running pretty good with some tweaking. Finally, looking at your hardware it's not really worth upgrading any one component versus a complete upgrade.Hope this helps. Scott

Hello,LOL ...So the rule is .. buy a 500 GB HD but use only 100 GB of itIf you use 300GB .. you will use too much of your HD space ...Nice idea ... the HD industry must be happy to read that :)BTW .. where your readed that ?? :)BTW .. a average 10-15% of the full HD capacity as free space is considered as safe by the OS and HD industry.Under 10 % .. defragmentation (depending of defrag utility you use) can be problematic.The free space of the OP HD is certainly not part of his "problem".Regards Gus.

Every tech I've talked suggested that the system will operate best if the HD isn't cluttered.They recommended not actually using more than half the HD space for optimum performance.That's just my humble opinion. I'm certainly no expert.The more you have on the HD leads to more in the registry..system slows down because it is trying to process too much.Maybe more would have been a better word..Perhaps I am wrong on the hard drive usage.Perhaps 20% free space is sufficient.That could be debated because of the info that is written into the registry every time something is added to the file system.In any case more RAM would be a good idea.

Your 5 year video card is a major bottleneck. You don't need a top of the line video card. If you want to stick with ATI, pick up a 4850, or even the less expensive 4830 and you will see improvement. KJ

He doesn't need more RAM, especially not 4Gb, FS9 works perfectly fine with 1-2 Gb, but that video card has got to go - the X300 is ancient and remembering it on my dad's computer back in the day, it was nothing special even when released. Make sure if you do consider upgrading this though, that it will work with your current setup - meaning, the power supply is more than adequate, it will work with the motherboard, AGP, PCI or PCI-e, etc.Point being - there is no way you can expect to run FS9 at anywhere near max sliders and expect solid, smooth performance, especially with any clouds in sight.The processor is nothing special either, but it will do for FS9.

Every tech I've talked suggested that the system will operate best if the HD isn't cluttered.They recommended not actually using more than half the HD space for optimum performance.That's just my humble opinion. I'm certainly no expert.The more you have on the HD leads to more in the registry..system slows down because it is trying to process too much.Maybe more would have been a better word..Perhaps I am wrong on the hard drive usage.Perhaps 20% free space is sufficient.That could be debated because of the info that is written into the registry every time something is added to the file system.In any case more RAM would be a good idea.

I wish I can remember the link, but I can't at this time. Anyways it was a graph showing performance vs % filled. From what I can remember it showed very slight performance decrease starting at 40% (not relevant) and the performance started to really decrease around 65%, while still at a minimum, and go progressively worse after that.

As far as HD capacity goes, up to two thirds should never give any problems.It is clear that "descending through clouds" and being on the "ground" are the major problems here. So, turn off a/c shadows and building shadows. Your frame rate will increase by up to 40%Vololiberista

Hello,

The more you have on the HD leads to more in the registry..system slows down because it is trying to process too much.Maybe more would have been a better word..

Well .. I feel the need to return to some basics factsFirst .. if you know your OS .. you can turn many things in to your advantage (performances gain)Second .. it's also nice to know about HD technology .. and EG ..the speed of the displacement of the HD writing and reading heads.This speed is actually very fast .. and even if the data to read is fragmented .. the speed of reading or writing still very fast and the loss is infinitesimalYou can check all those experiences in some youtube technicals docos.BTW ... many bottlenecks are waiting the datas readed from the HD .. and there you will have lost of performances.Note:It's also possible to reduce many access (not necessary ones) to files on the hard disk by the OS (files indexing .. etc ..) and have infinitesimal (again :) ) gains on performances.Now .. about the registry .. you can have one monster registry .. this will cause only a little (sometime not visible) loss of boot speed of the OS.All those "registry cleaners" are basically useless ... but hey .. some try to make money with .. it's good business :)Many have problems instead "gains" ?? when using those "cleaners" :)BTW .. no need to analysing registry softwares for find registry errors.If it is errors .. the OS will notice and warn you when you boot .. and resume the booting process if it's not a major error.Conclusion :I discard completely the HD to be source of the OP problems.Regards.Gus.

You're absolutely right Gus, the HDD is def not the problem for OP. His problems are more of trying to run the sim at max settings while not having a decent enough computer for it, if you can call that a problem..