Hi guys,I have an old machine (Dell Dimension 8400 P4 3.4GHz 1G RAM/windows XP 32). I recently replaced my old ATI HD4350 with a Galaxy GT430. Nothing I do removes the jaggies. Everything close-up looks good, but as distance increases the jags go from bad to worse. If I put the old HD4350 back in, jaggies are gone (but FPS suck).Here is what hasn't worked:Used Driver Sweeper then Downloaded latest nvidia drivers 266.58 ^WHQLTested every AA and Anistropic setting from 2x - 16x in every combinationDownloaded and used nvidia inspector settingsContacted Galaxy customer support and ran hardware test on the graphics card with FurMark. No errors.Here is the part I'm wondering about. The GT430 box says it reqires a min 1G system RAM, and Galaxy tech support wants me to test my system RAM.Has anyone every heard of system RAM affecting AA?Are newer DirectX11 cards maybe "less compatible" with older systems?Any wisdom at all would be greatly appreciated. I'm loosing my mind with this.Thank you,cap10jaf

Hi cap10jaf,Short answer to your question is; Yes, I'm amazed that you can run FSX at all without memory errors. 1gig of system ram is not enough.To explain; Windows XP and FS have to use Direct X9. Now, the known limitation of Direct X9 is; that it tries to maintain a shadow copy of Video memory in System memory.(RAM) So without any tech explainations, this means your video memory, which I believe is 1gig, is equal to your system memory ie. 1gig. Your operating system is using a few hundred MB of system memory, so you don't have enough left, to keep the shadow copy.In effect, I believe your card is being forced to shut down some of it's features like AA, in order to be able to work. If galaxy say it will run on min 1gig of Ram, that's for Direct X10 or 11 (Vista or Win 7 ) which have better memory managers, and a shadow copy is not needed.I would put in at least 2gig of Ram and see how it goes.Ron.

Hi cap10jaf,Short answer to your question is; Yes, I'm amazed that you can run FSX at all without memory errors. 1gig of system ram is not enough.To explain; Windows XP and FS have to use Direct X9. Now, the known limitation of Direct X9 is; that it tries to maintain a shadow copy of Video memory in System memory.(RAM) So without any tech explainations, this means your video memory, which I believe is 1gig, is equal to your system memory ie. 1gig. Your operating system is using a few hundred MB of system memory, so you don't have enough left, to keep the shadow copy.In effect, I believe your card is being forced to shut down some of it's features like AA, in order to be able to work. If galaxy say it will run on min 1gig of Ram, that's for Direct X10 or 11 (Vista or Win 7 ) which have better memory managers, and a shadow copy is not needed.I would put in at least 2gig of Ram and see how it goes.Ron.

Hi Ron,Thank you very much for taking the time to help me. Your explaination was excellent, and seems to define what's happening. I'll upgrade the system RAM and let you know how it works out.Thanks again,Greg

Hi Ron,Thank you very much for taking the time to help me. Your explanation was excellent, and seems to define what's happening. I'll upgrade the system RAM and let you know how it works out.Thanks again,Greg

Damn. I was finally able to purchase and install 2G of RAM (two new, matched 1G sticks) but it didn't fix the problem. The system runs better and I love the improved performance, but the jagged lines are unchanged.I didn't mention above that this is FS9 not FSX. Any other suggestions?Thank you,Greg

Here's a screen:I'm concerned that my CPU usage is 99-100%, even after adding the 2G's of RAM????Thoughts?

Open Nvidia control panel and set antialiasing to 4x in the FS9 profile, or the higher your GPU allowsThere should be a setting in FS9 for antialiasing, can't remember anymore. Play with that too

Hi Greg,now you have enough Ram, I would reinstall the video drivers, no need for sweeper any more, select custom install and Nvidia removes old ones.It's been a while since I had FS9, but I don't remember it looking that bad. Something missing there. may as well do Direct X too.Then I would backup/save a copy of the fs.cfg file, delete and let FS rebuild it, just to be sure references to previous video card are removed.make sure to show hidden files and folders etc. go to; Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\FS9\FS9.CFGor if your up to it, open with notepad and look for ATI references and delete manually.can't help with high cpu usage..check if something is running in background maybe. Turn off antivirus program when running FS. Run an antispyware program like Malwarebytes, it's free. Sometimes Highjackers can cause high cpu usage.Ron.

I'm concerned that my CPU usage is 99-100%, even after adding the 2G's of RAM????Thoughts?

FS9 will run the CPU at 100%, that is normal.The only way to get lower CPU usage, is to set fps to unlimited in FS9 andrun an external fps limiter.This is what FS9 looks like on my system (at Meigs) with the attachedfs9.cfg and nvidia inspector settings:[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460.0]Mode=1680x1050x32TriLinear=1[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=80.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=0TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5 // 2.5 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.0 // 6.0 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1 // 6 [sCENERY]IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=4DYNAMIC_SCENERY=0DYN_SCN_DENSITY=0DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1SUNGLARE=1LENSFLARE=1

Well guys, I don't know what to say other than THANK YOU! I did all of the above and used Bert's inspector and .cfg settings and BAM! I was almost ready to give up. Thank you all very much!!!Greg

Well guys, I don't know what to say other than THANK YOU! Greg

Happy it worked for you!

This is what FS9 looks like on my system (at Meigs) with the attached

Yep, that's how I remember what FS9 looked like.good stuff,Ron.

Just a final word for future readers of this thread looking for solutions. The two things that really jumped out were the fact that my FS9.CFG had settings for both old and new video cards. The ATI card info was way down the page near [OLD MODULES]. The other was my TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=xxx setting. Mine was set in the high 200s rather than 80. Greg