Another slow system success - Thumbs up for 2004

As other posts mention 2004 is very usable on slower machines if you have a good video card and enough RAM. I should note that I could care less about the new weather and scenery and I usually have the WX set for overcast for 200'agl to 20000' agl with 2 miles surface visibility for real world instrument practice. That being said I have messed around with the new weather and find I can display the new effects with solid frame rates if I don't get too greedy on the settings. The scenery & WX graphics are in general several notches better in 2004 (even with 3D clouds and special effects off) and Im getting the same frame rates with similar settings as compared to 2002.I have not played around with the new ATC. The Garmin 500 pretty much works like the real thing and I did a few self-vectored GPS approaches with it and it works like a charm. This addition makes 2004 a pretty complete way to practice any type of real world approach. If nothing else this is a great reason to upgrade to 2004 if you are an instrument pilot or student.I have the scenery settings in the 30% range with some effects on. The aircraft & sound settings are all at 100%. I have the 3D clouds off, but the new clouds in general are still very nice. Display is set at 1024x768x32, Tri linear filtering, & all of the lighting and AA are on. For the most part I get a solid 24-25FPS with dips to 17-20FPS on the ground at small airports. I get closer to 30FPS when using the overcast & low visibility WX settings I mentioned above. I have not tried the more detailed airports and I have all AI traffic off. As a whole 2004 seems to run smoother than 2002 right out of the box and with little tweaking thus far. It also seems to me that the FPS fluctuations are smaller than they were with 2002. BTW these frame rates are from using stock aircraft (I was testing with the Baron, Mooney, & Grand Caravan)My system