I've gone from 15 fps to 25-30 after deleting all textures, scenery, config folders, etc. Then I went through the usual maintenance of using ccleaner, starting in safe mode then running eusing free registry cleaner and finally mydefrag on the "system disk monthy" setting. I reinstalled FSX with sp1 and 2. I have not reinstalled Acceleration. I have also not yet reinstalled FSUIPC. Then I re-added FPS Limiter, shader 3 mod, let the tweaking tool page make me a new fsx.cfg, and followed the instructions for nvidia inspector here as well as the NGX set up manual. Have I left anything out? Im exhausted. My test was in the vc sitting at the gate, which is where it has been the lowest. I'll do more testing in the morning, including a flight in bad weather. Too tired now. The point of my post is that I had tried everything else and couldn't get a smooth ride in the vc except at cruise in fair real-world weather using AES. I resisted the reinstall because of the hassle, but early checks look promising. If I have to sacrifice HD textures around the airport in exchange for getting this bird going, I'm all for it. I still want to ask, would upgrading my graphics card help in this particular situation? The graphics are fluid outside and speed up when I look away from the panel. If the bottleneck is the cpu, I dont want to spend money on a card. E8400 Core2 duo 3.0 oc'd to 3.84gb ramwindows 7 64bitnvidia gts 240 x2 Add ons: AES with cloud layers limited to 3PMDG NGXno others reinstalled yet. Goodnight edit, my reinstall was on c drive and not to the programs folder 84

Ok, I'm awake and somewhat rested and am definitely seeing a vast improvement in vc performance so far. I'd forgotten how much I hate the default sky and horizon...that will have to change!About to take it on my usual debugging route (LIT-DAL via fingr3) to see if the performance holds up.