First of all my system is a little dated (about 3 years old), however, I still can usually get acceptable performance. The main exception is when I fly the F1 Citation Mustang which everyone knows causes more of a frame rate hit. The problem I have with it is that often the graphics do some strange things. Sometimes parts of the plane disappear. Other times the scenery will develop large light blue squares of various sizes with no detail. Usually happens after flying for a little while. Other times I can do a whole flight with no problem. Sometimes the whole screen will develop a kaldeodoscope of colors and crashes the puter. None of my other planes (quite a few addons) do this. Anybody have a clue? CPU or GPU caused? GPU is not running hot because I check the temp as soon as the problem occurs and it is usually about 50°. CPU seems cool also.My system specs are as follows: E6850 @ 3.0 Ghz, 4 GIG's of RAM, 8800GT card. Using GEX, REX, UTX and SP2.Mainly trying to determine if a new video card might cure this. Can't spring for a new system right now unless I want to pay for a divorce lawyer. LOL!Thanks for any suggestions.Jim

Hi Jim, for me this sounds like the GPU or the CPU is getting too hot. You can check it with an freeware tool called Core temp. It shows you your temparatures and the highst and lowest temp of your CPU. For the GPU you should look for GPU-Z, it does the same for the GPU. Than check whether the components get too hot, so that this causes the glitches.Steffen

First of all my system is a little dated (about 3 years old), however, I still can usually get acceptable performance. The main exception is when I fly the F1 Citation Mustang which everyone knows causes more of a frame rate hit. The problem I have with it is that often the graphics do some strange things. Sometimes parts of the plane disappear. Other times the scenery will develop large light blue squares of various sizes with no detail. Usually happens after flying for a little while. Other times I can do a whole flight with no problem. Sometimes the whole screen will develop a kaldeodoscope of colors and crashes the puter. None of my other planes (quite a few addons) do this. Anybody have a clue? CPU or GPU caused? GPU is not running hot because I check the temp as soon as the problem occurs and it is usually about 50°. CPU seems cool also.My system specs are as follows: E6850 @ 3.0 Ghz, 4 GIG's of RAM, 8800GT card. Using GEX, REX, UTX and SP2.Mainly trying to determine if a new video card might cure this. Can't spring for a new system right now unless I want to pay for a divorce lawyer. LOL!Thanks for any suggestions.Jim

Jim, the Mustang does put quite a load on the system.. on my Q6600 / 9600GT it was marginal..I've spent the $200 to upgrade to an Asus GTX460 and it now flies quite nicely.This card will run, even with a 400W power supply (which I've got) and it runscool and quiet. Might be worth the [email protected] - 4GB RAM - GTX460 1GB - WinXP32

Hi Jim, for me this sounds like the GPU or the CPU is getting too hot. You can check it with an freeware tool called Core temp. It shows you your temparatures and the highst and lowest temp of your CPU. For the GPU you should look for GPU-Z, it does the same for the GPU. Than check whether the components get too hot, so that this causes the glitches.Steffen

Steffen,Took your advice and downloaded Core Temp and GPU-Z. Did two flights in Windowed Mode while I monitored the two apps on my second monitor. Both CPU and GPU temps stayed pretty constant and not excessively high. The first flight didn't mess up at all. Same with the second flight for about an hour unitl I switched back to Full Screen mode. I instantly had screwed up graphics - too weird to describe. All of the scenery was messed up and couldn't even get either an internal or external view of the Mustang. Switched back to Windowed Mode and it was still bad. Temps were still good.Strange thing though, the whole time I was monitoring the two flights, the GPU Load as indicated on GPU-Z almost allways showed the load at less the about 60% (with some variation). Only once did it get up to about 70% or 75% very briefly. Don't know much about it but that tells me that the GPU is not working very hard. Really confused.I would have thought the the card would be maxed out with high temps to give the indications I am getting but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe a new card in my future.Guess that is why I was a jet mechanic and not a computer guru. I are confused!Jim

I would have thought the the card would be maxed out with high temps to give the indications I am getting but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe a new card in my future.Guess that is why I was a jet mechanic and not a computer guru. I are confused!Jim

Maybe your card's memory is going bad in which case a new card is the solution.. butbefore you spend the money.. What about upgrading to the latest 266.xx drivers fromthe nvidia.com site and using nvidia inspector to set the AA and AF settings.Also, have you blown out the dust from the card's heatsink?Nvidia inspector will also show you GPU memory usage in addition to temperature and load..

Maybe your card's memory is going bad in which case a new card is the solution.. butbefore you spend the money.. What about upgrading to the latest 266.xx drivers fromthe nvidia.com site and using nvidia inspector to set the AA and AF settings.Also, have you blown out the dust from the card's heatsink?Nvidia inspector will also show you GPU memory usage in addition to temperature and load..

Bert,I keep the computer blown out on a regular basis. It's clean. Also, I already use Nvidia Inspector to set the AA and AF settings and to monitor the GPU. It compares to CPU-Z as far as my readings go. Upon checking again, however, I noticed that my memory usage is just about maxed out. The 8800GT is a 512 mb card and I'm using just about all of it so maybe when the graphics go crazy it is wanting to use more than 512mb. I did take your advice to upgrade to the 266.58 drivers. I'll see how that goes. I'm pretty sure I need to upgrade to a 1GB card though. Thanks for your input.Jim