Sometime little things in life can bring a lot of joy and I am now seeing this for the first time with FS2002 and soon to be FSCOF.I just purchased a new PCIntel P4 @ 2.8 Ghz.512 MB Ram80 GB 7200 RPM ATA DRIVE128 MB Radeon ATI 9800Wow, what a difference. I can now load or run any scenery or plane I want and not have to worry about lousy frame rates that I saw on my slow, but dependable, PIII 450. I have all the sliders maxed, running very dense scenery addons and a fine Meljet 747 and I still see 30 + FPS. In the air, when I view the plane from underneath, the FPS shoot up well over 100. In some cases, I think I need to limit the framerates as the controls have now become over responsive.It really is a whole new and much better experience and provides much more enjoyment and satisfaction to the whole flight sim experience. Just my observations. I am sure others have experienced this same joy after an upgrade, although I do see stories of people who have had problems so I consider myself lucky.Hapy Flying,Mark

Congrats Mark. Went through the same feelings about 4 mths, ago. It "does" make a big difference in the enjoyment factor. I can't remember spending so little time on system tweaks, and getting back to flying - anywhere, anytime, any weather. Best simming yet !Enjoy your system, looks great !Ron

Mark, Are you seeing 30+ FPS on the ground at dense airports, with AI and such maxed out? Or is that once you're at altitude? What sort of FPS do you see on landing approach?Best,Joel

Joel, Typically, at the default FS2002 airports like Heathrow, which is pretty desnse, with all sliders maxed and using the Meljet 747, I am seeing 26 - 30 FPS. I also had downloaded a scenery of Kansai international which when run on my old PIII 450 at normal density, gave me 5 FPS, with all sliders maxed, even aircraft shadows turned on (scenery shadows and relections are turned off) I am seeing 27+ FPS. This while using a pretty beefy plane in the Meljet model. I even have ATC set to 100 percent and Sound quality on high.On approach out a bit from the Airports I am seeing 40 - 50 FPS easily. Actually, I am quite surprised that I am getting performance this good. In addition, I have turned on AA and I have Anistrophic filtering set to 16X. The only negative I see is for some reason, when I preview the default MS planes in Choose a Flight, some of the graphics seem patchy however, when I actually get into the sim, the bitmaps are fine and I see no blurrys but the red text that comes up for FPS is a bit blurry as well as the text in the ATC window but it is readable. I think I can live with that, given the performance I am seeing. Happy Flying, Mark

It's a great feeling isn't it?? Enjoy your new machine. :-)Erich

Nice rig; if you got a DVD player with it, drop in your favorite movie. You'll be very impressed!

hi,just wonderin, & if u don't mind, how much did u get ur rig for? and from where?thanks,Al

Mark, those are indeed extraordinary FPS figures, are you speaking of steady frames at those rates? I've got a P4 3.06 with 1mb of RDRAM, though with the ATI9700. Running at 1280x960x32 resolution, and never get anything approaching those numbers. From speaking with many others with systems similar/identical to mine, 20-30FPS on the ground with everything maxed at a big airport is considered super high, and I know of a guy with my system and the 9800 who only sees 15fps on the ground at O'hare. If I don't lock my FPS slider at 35 it will of course go way higher on occasion, but I prefer a steadier rate. So I'm trying to figure out what kind of magic you seem to have got in your system, anything different about your setup that I could try because I'm frankly a bit disappointed with mine.Best,Joel

The rig is a Dell Dimension 4600. Check out the Dell Web Site (www.dell.com), they have many different configurations but I think the base 4600 system, P4 @ 2.8 Ghz starts about $1100. That comes with a 64MB GeForce Card but so far, I highly recommend upgrading to the the ATI 9800 and getting at least 512 MB of RAM.As far as the frame rates go, It jumps between 26 - 30 at dense airports (Heathrow). For example, I have most sliders maxed, Autogen is 1 click below maxed. Even the freeware Kansai scenery which killed my PIII 450 is flying here!What is not onNo Scenery ShadowsVisibility is 60 miles although I limited that with FSUIPCI use Bi Linear FilteringWater Detail is minimalThat is it. I checked the system and it is running Direct X 9.0I have other applications running in the background as well. NAV is loaded but disabled. I have AA turned on from the Video Menu and Anistrophic Filtering.I dunno, I cannot explain it. I never expected such high frame rates with everything set the way it is. I even have ATC to 100 percent but I have not added in a lot of planes like I want to so the FPS will come down with thatThe ATI Driver is version 6.14.1 dated 2/20/03 so it is olderOther then that, I am still trying to figure out all the settings so as uncover more, I will let you know. Wondering if the Hyper Threading on the processor is bumping it up here???Anyway, the flight sim is finally a real joy now. Waiting for FSCOF!Mark

i cant wait to upgrage my rig.I get crappy 5-10 FPS if the scenery gets dense like at LA

Go figure...After I defragmented my HD, partitioned it and performed a fresh install, I got a much better performance.I'm talking about an antiquated rig (PIII 450) - I wonder what this procedure would do to high-end systems.The trick here is NOT to install anything on the same partition EXCEPT FS2002.