Hi,I've just installed an NVIDEA GTX470 1280mb card. I'm getting great results with this generally in fs9. Averaging 25-35 fps (locked at 40 fps) with heavy addon scenery and all the sliders on maximum.However when I am over built up areas after two or three minutes the frame rate drops sharply to single figures. Pressing the alt key (to display the menu bar at the top of the screen) clears this, and I am back up to 30 fps again for another few minutes.Can anyone tell me what's going on here?ThanksGigabyte S series motherboardAMD Athlon 64 X 2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.61 ghz2 gb DDR2 RAMNVIDIA GTX470 1280 mb Windows XP ProfessionalSoundblaster Live

"AMD Athlon 64 X 2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.61 ghz2 gb DDR2 RAM"There's your problem. A GTX470 isn't going to do a whole lot for you, because you're killing its potential with the AMD 64X2 and 2GB DDR-2.

"AMD Athlon 64 X 2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.61 ghz2 gb DDR2 RAM"There's your problem. A GTX470 isn't going to do a whole lot for you, because you're killing its potential with the AMD 64X2 and 2GB DDR-2.

Can you elaborate?

There's a tonne of things that could cause stutters - that said it's may be a driver problem as the 470 is a new card, not all the kinks have been worked out on the driver side likely. It will take lots of troubleshooting on your end, and I don't believe anyone here is going to be able to say Yes it is definitely this or that.However, with your system and setting up with a 470. I'll put it with an analogy:Example:Buy a Tipo F133E V12 engine (Ferrari) (Nvidia GTX470)Rig it up into a ford fiesta (Old athlon 64, 2 gigs of ram)Doesn't mix very well eh?

Hi,I take your point, but what I don't get is why I'm getting good frame rates generally. and why does pressing the alt key clear the problem temporarily.Also, I can fly around an addon scenery area like "Tongass Fjords" or "Misty Fjords" with very detailed terrain and airport scenery, for hours, and have no problems at all.

The only thing I can think of is a possible driver issue. I assume you only experienced this after getting the GtX?. It may just be a matter of Nvidia getting the drivers "Right".

Hope you're right. I was getting excellent performance with my old 8800GTS on the same system. The only reason I replaced it was because it died suddenly. I figured I would get the best card I could afford and the GTX470 seemed to offer the best bang for buck.

Yea, I don't think it is your CPU. Curious - since you upgraded the GPU, I wonder if you could drop in a newer AMD Phenom 4 or 6 core onto your motherboard? Haven't done much research but I hear the new ones are backwards compatible. And the dollar/cost value is really good for some extra horsepower. Just a thought...