For some of you this wont have any impact at all. For others, well hopefully you will be as pleased as I was. I have an Athlon 2200+ XP system with 1 gig of ram and an ATI 9700 Pro. Certainly not High End, but I should be getting more than 10 FPS that I was. I replaced my CHEAP sound card (hercules MUSE 5.1) with an Audigy 2. WHOA 23 or 25 FPS and the lowest in high density areas with clouds is about 13 or 14. My only thought on this is that the Muse card must have been using the CPU to process sound. In addition, FS9 must be processing sound very differently than FS2002. I still get the same frame rates in 2002 as I did before. One way to test this is to simply press the "Q" button and turn that sound off and see what your FPS does. I still get a massive frame rate increase even with the Audigy 2. Of all the things that I have tried from this and other forums, this is the "key" that solved my FPS problem and I now can fly and turn the FPS sim off. Hope this helps some. - Also beware when adding certain add-on freeware sounds as they have a large impact on FPS as well. This was rarely the case in FS2002.Josh LaughlinAAL902 - Flyava.org - KSTL

I get 1-2 FPS difference on my AMD2000 with 512ram and 4200Ti 128 meg card when I turn the sound off. I have onboard sound. I also have my framelock on 20 and maintain that everywhere but in large metro areas...then it may drop to 12 with no AI...or 10 with 100% AI...(All Aardvark AI...Dropped to 6-8 with PAI)....I use only 38.2 mesh or higher res.So...I am thinking that something with FS9 and your soundcard does not get along. You say you still get that type of increase with the Audigy 2? Somethings just not kosher there....sorry.

Only a 1 or 2 FPS increase when turning the sound off in the Audigy - my mistake saying I got a massive increase with the Audigy. My point was really about the junky sound card. For those who have a decent sound card this wont make much of a difference.