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Although I share your pain, I think you must look more closely at your upgrade, and your expectations. Why on earth would you think upgrading our computer would solve most of the problems in your list? Most of those are to do with the sim, not the computer running it.As for the rest, well, did you reinstall Flight Simulator? Your OS? Did you check that your `new` video card has the latest drivers (I gaurantee you it won't have). Have you checked for the latest chipset drivers? Your sound card is the cause of the sound problem, not the sim, so either look for updated drivers for that, or check the manufacturers website for patches or fixes.As for the problems within the sim, that's what the forum is for. Many of those little difficulties have been discussed and solved here, so try the search engine systematically and see what fixes you can find.Allcott

T,I cannot help but respond to your delimna. For the last month and a half, or forever long since FS9 was released, I have had repeated problems with FS9's weather engine. Any time it snowed, rained, or spit anything, my system locked. At the time I was using a modest Athlon 1800+ with the Matrox Parhelia. Granted, the Parhelia will tax more than the ordinary system because it has to draw, not 1, but 3 screens. That considered, without bad weather, I will still recording extroidinary framerates. But if I added precip, it didnt matter where the sliders were. If there was precipitation, the system locked. First the video, then the sound making a loud thumping noise. Only recourse was a cold boot to escape.So at the time, I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the issue. -Removing, exchanging sound cards,-Disabling precip in FS9.cfg,-Disc defrag, and yes, even a format-Default aircraft, addon aircraft-Sliders in every mentionable configuration-Resolutions of 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024, 1920x480, 2400x600, 3072x768, 3456x864, 3840x1024 - tried them all-Various changes to DirectX configurations,You name it, I probably tried it to no avail.So what did I do that everyone else had probably tried or considered?I upgraded my hardware. Oh yes, new FS version certainly must mean new computer right? Afterall, history has taught us they go hand in hand. Well I built a completely new system with a new HD and mobo. Increased the cpu to a 2400+ Athlon and increased up to 1gb ram.Guess what? Same freaking problem. Now I'm thoroughly convinced its the Parhelia card. So off to Matrox's forum I go. And let me tell you. They were less than useless. However, my posts did generate some educated replys from other forum users. One of which was to increase my underated power supply (250watts) up to 450watts. While I did get even better framerates and smoothness, my weather delemna continued. At this point in my FS9 career, I was beginning to add 3rd party sceneries and quickly began to realize my lockups were not just weather related. I sustained several lockups of the same magnitude from merely taxiing at some of these more instense airports. Let me advise you up to this point, I had spent just under $2000.00 in various hardware to include the new computer.Finally, a kind gentlemen from the U.K. who had been posting verious suggestions, mentioned the video card might be overheating despite the builtin fan unit. Back to the store I went and bought a cheapo $8.00 computer fan. I mounted the fan right on the side panel facing the Parhelia card. B-I-N-G-O, problem resolved. Just like that. And, once again, better fluidity within the sim in higher cloud settings.I know my situation does not exactly mirror your complaints. However, I personally am beginning to corrolate just how much drain FS9 is putting on various hardware components under varying periods of use.For folks having "uncommon" lockups, framerate issues, and other anomolies, you might just want to tinker with some of the cheaper hardware components like fans and power supplys. A much cheaper route to take before diving in head first and forking out bigger bucks for a new system that may inherit the same problems.Michael Lehkampwww.deltaflight.com

Yip AllcottALL OF THE ABOVE!New harddrive means formated ... WinXP + SP1 ... latest drivers for the FX card (latest by Nvidia as well as Guru - tried them both). SoundCard drivers are the latest. DirectX and all other games report NO problem with sound.I did not upgrade my machine to solve the list of bugs in the SIM, I was trying to solve the stuttering, the lost of memory after flying for an hour or two and the wonderful drop of frames when you fly into an airport like EGLL or EDDF with AI traffic and real weather. I thought (how stupid could I have been) that the new CPU and RAM and VideoCard will make a difference.Your last paragraph is my whole point - I do not want to systematically go through the forum and FS9 and see what fixes I could find to solve all the problems. Surely that is not the point when you buy a new version of a familiar simulator.I've checked the box (where the FS9 CDs came in) again just now and there is nothing about: do not fly any other aircraft with detailed panels and gauges / do not install 3rd party scenery / the clouds are an improvement but do not run REAL WEATHER UPDATE because it will not be real and will kill the frames of your simulator.What really aggravates me is the fact that I could fly X-plane with all the bells and whistles on, as smooth as anything else; I could play Commandos 3 or Call of Duty and have everything on MAX and there are NO stuttering, NO problems with sound, NO lost of any frames. But with FS9 you have to install and then take on the painstaking task to apply a dozen or twenty tweaks and fixes before you have the pleasure to take a single flight

I think it's rather odd that people expect good performance with addons, it was designed to run well by default, not with simflyers and the heavy addons installed, I expect bad performance with these addons, especially the framerate heavy simflyers. Funny, I put together a new rig for FS as well not expecting a big jump in performance (went from an Athlon 1 gig to an XP 3200), but hoping and while I didn't get a great jump, it looks tons better and is more fluid. I am able to now fly in the clouds and don't experience much of what you are. One thing I found is that extra memory makes a huge difference. I installed 1 gig of very high performance gaming 3500 DDR and it rocks.Sorry about your frustrationRegards, MichaelKDFWhttp://mysite.verizon.net/res052cd/mybannercva1.jpgCalVirAir International VAwww.calvirair.comCougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviationwww.cgrmtnhelos.com

You're not happy with it, T -- that much is painfully obvious. Like you, I have no love for spending countless hours (days? weeks?) searching for tweaks and/or performance enhancing tips. It's bad enough I spend a lot of time downloading addons with my "blazing fast" dial up modem! LOL It's a fact of simming life though.... with a new version of ANY flight sim, comes a whole new crop of difficulties.However I am a little curious. You don't mention what type of system you upgraded FROM. I've learned over the years from upgrading my own equipment not to expect too much from new components unless there is a huge leap forward -- such as going from a P3 700mHz to a P4 2.4g; that will give you a good boost. Moving from a P3 700mHz to a P3 1g is NOT worth the money (IMO). Of course, these are just examples but I think you get the idea.Unfortunately I have no suggestions for you. I'm still using FS2K2 which works fine for me on my P4 2.4G machine running Win98SE. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) About all I can say is Good Luck getting your system set up, and I'm sorry to hear you're having such difficulties.-Lindy :-rotor:-wave

I posted on this subject about a week ago, and it slid down to the bottom somewhere... anyways, I built a system for a friend with a P4 2.8 800mhz bus, and my 2.4 at 2.9 was outperforming it (even with his overclocked to 3.2 WITH cooling), I later dropped my 2.9 back to its factory 2.4 setting and saw that the 500mhz overclock is only worth 3 fps... I upgraded my Ti4200 to a 9800 and I got a HUGE boost (Double and a half frame rates with the same AA/AF settings as the 4200 card)To tun 2004 fluidly you need a fast CPU, but after that its videocard hungry in my opinion.Chris

Terblanche., interesting post. I just upgraded from 1.2 Athlon to a 2.4 Athlon (same tower new motherboard) with option of upgrading to a 3.0 in the future, but will think twice about spending more money. When using real-world weather the stuttering can be really bad and thats with little AI traffic and low display option (radar contact is my only add-0n). I wonder that these and other issues (e.g little or no ffb in fs9) dont get bigger mentions in reviews and during beta-testing. MSFS IS a great series, but ill hold out for a Pentium 4 andanother joystick before my next flight! flyer

T,while you seem to have an indeed good system FS should run well on, you have one serious problem - RAM.Sorry to say it, but 512MB IS too low.I figured that out (and bought additional RAM pretty quickly afterwards), when checking the task manager once while FS 2004 was running.It used up 712MB of memory, under normal conditions, with only a normally-detailed freeware addon a/c in use at the time.So it is pretty obvious, that at this moment, FS has to use your HD (or the virtual memory on it), to some extent, and that slows it down considerably by nature.So, my suggestion would be to get another 512MB RAM, if you can afford it, upgrade to 1,5GB even (it is not that expensive these days).You should see an improvement then, and not a small one at that.I only upgraded my 512MB to 1024 and exchanged the GForce 4 TI4600 128MB with a GForce FX 5600 256MB, but yet kept my tiny little 1.7GHz processor - and I noticed a drastic increase, especially when changing views (which brought FS to a grinding halt before).Regards,Robert

You mention GFFX card but don't say which one. If you got anything other than the 5900 Ultra, expect rotten performance. This sim requires a high end video card just like it requires a high end Processor. One without the other does you no good. Get a Radeon 9800 Pro preferably or if you have to have an Nvidia, get the 5900 Ultra and you should see a major improvement.

>>If you got anything other than the 5900 Ultra, expect rotten performance<

Hi, You have never tell your video card setting, the weather display and your resolution, AA and Anasotropy which are the most important before anything, and never use the built in fs2004 Antialasing.""11. Sound problems (this is a FS2004 bug because no other game or program put any sound in a loop or distortion) and the relationship with DirectX`""There is no problems with the sound, check your video cards acceleration."6. The problems with video cards (reflections, 2d panels, stuttering etc.) while the same video card will have no problem in any other program"not really at all, I will not comparing to others games since they use less processing processor and details from the sky to the ground x, y, z rendering. All others things you have tell use there was more bugs in fs2002, worst atc, worst weather, worst scenery, worst virtual cockpit, worst environment sky/sun/moon and the list goes on etc.. it's part of flight simulation accuracy. "Even on this new computer which I consider as top of the range`Like fs2002 at his release, computer market, the high end computer 1.2 ghz, 64 mb gforce2, you could never use fs2002 at full details and all details to on and full AA and anasotropy, but in a mid setting range details.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

I expect you have done something wrong or expected too much. I upgraded last weekend to a AMD Barton 2500, ATI 9600XT, 1 meg 3200 DDR RAm and I am very happy with FS9. I run everything maxed even Ultimate Traffic. I do run real world weather in 3D also. Yes, it does slow down to 8-10 at Heathrow during busy periods but still is fluid and does not cause a problem. My Santa Cruz sound card works just fine without distortion.Try using the default setting for FS9 and then raising your sliders that are important to you and see what happens. Many different combinations of PC's are available and frankly I have seen no concensus on anything except some folks having problems and others are happy.It is not a perfect sim but then I find it very enjoyable and a great time waster.John

Hi! you say you have a P4 3.0Ghz...hum... let's try something: disable Hyper Threading on your P4 (in the BIOS I think) and compare. Let us know about the results as it seems many are experiencing up to 100% increase FPS (double) but not everyone (and with more reports, MSFT could read this and be prepared to solve any pending issue in FS2006) and I can assure you that on a P4 1.3 with Radeon 9600, I can pull 24 FPS (lock 24) abobe 5000ft with the Meridian around Seattle, and ~ 16 FPS on approach at KSEA 34R... Not all is maxed out that's for sure on this system, and the autogen XML file is renamed too, but hey, it is a P4 1.3 only....Hope this helps!

>The conclusion: An upgrade for your PC (cost me almost $800)>will not make that a big difference if you have software that>are full of bugs Another conclusion: throwing $$ senslessly into upgrade will make little difference unless you first do a tiny amount of research and learn what components work best with FS9. It has been long proven here that Radeon 9800 is probably the best card for FS9 and that anything above 128 MB on your card is wasted money unless your resolution settings are extremely high. Also, unless you stayed in the cave for the last 4 months you would know there are some obvious tweaks - quick and quite effective.YEs, FS9 has its share of problems (not worse than FS2002) but you seem to be bent on undermining whatever good remains in this program.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg