No, this is not another tip to place your sliders, but something most people including me overlook. I struggled hours last night positioning my sliders but the stutters didn't go away. Now here's what you need to try:Go to http://www.guru3d.com and download "Sandra 2003 Max". It's on the right in the "popular downloads" box. What this tool does is closely examine your system and spit out a list of things you can reconfigure to get things faster. If your underlying system is not configured properly, you will never get performance out of fs2004.Sandra found out my AGP bus had always been disabled! I had forgotten to install my intel MB drivers, so it used PCI mode. :-badteeth I guess modern systems are so fast that you won't notice this in average games. FS2004 however is pushing the limits of your hardware and it needs every available speedup there is. My stutters are gone now. I'm still fighting the 25 seconds delay after I do a world/change airport though.

Excellent find. Thanks for posting. This is particularly useful for AMD users as it gives you a way to compare your system against Intel results. Example, I have a AMD 2700+ which is modestly overclocked. It equates roughly to a P4 3.1 Ghz Proc. I am very big on tweeking my system for all-around performance and this is a great tool. I found a couple of safety issues in my bios that I took care.Again thanks for postingDave