For the most part, I have FS9 pretty much tweaked as best as I can for my system. I have a P4 with 1 gig ram and a 128 meg NVIDIA Ti-4600G card. I am averaging about 15-20 fps all around with high singles on approaches and landings. The real annoying thing is that while in flight with the good 15-20 fps, I often get pauses of a split second or so, usually while in turns. Then everything is fine. Is there any way to tweak a little further to eliminate these pauses?? Thanks. Regards, Tom

My advice would be to turn down completely your ai traffic/autogen-then bring them each gradually back up to that level that performance is acceptable.Both of these take the biggest hit on my rig-with ai traffic greatly adding to stutters. Also-turn your visibility down to a reasonable 20 miles (or less) or so-that will also help.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Right click on your desktop to bring up display properties. Then go to settings/advanced/troubleshoot. There you should see a box where you can select "enable write combing". Untick this box. For some reason, this does a major cure of the stutters and pauses for me. It is a tweak that appears to work for ATI and Nvidia cards. Giver 'er a try , you have nothing to lose! :)Harry

Thanks for the help guys. I'll give your suggestions a try. Regards, Tom:)

Do you have the DEFAULT.XML file deleted?. Sounds to me like you have the dreaded stutters/pauses caused by this file.Barry

No Barry, I didn't know about this. Where is this file located and is that all I have to do is delete it? Thanks for the help. regards, Tom:-)

>No Barry, I didn't know about this. Where is this file>located and is that all I have to do is delete it? Thanks for>the help.> regards,> Tom:-) TomThere has been a lot of discussion in this forum about this file -- and the general consensus is that it affects FPS and causes stutters badly. It is the file that provides certain Autogen objects like fast food stores, etc. The problem is that these objects build up in memory even after you have flown past them . You will find it in the AUTOGEN folder -- rename it to something else and see how you go. I have found that it affects my system badly.Barry

Just out of curiosity after reading the above I disabled write combining to see what happens ( I have no problem with fps etc. normally)The effect was immediately noticeable- but not on the plus side. On the default flight (Seatac/C172) I can usually expect to see 17 - 21 fps on the take off run(2Dpanel or VC) rising to 30fps locked) once off the ground ( in any view).The effect of disabling was to drop the take off run fps down to 13-17 and in flight around 22.Needless to say I have reset to "enabled" (System info below)DaveAMD Athlon 2000XP (@133/133)ECS K7S5A Mobo 3.1 :04/29/02 Rev BiosSiS 735 Chipset Rev 12 x 256mb DDR RAMGeforce4 Ti-4200-8x 128mb DDR AGP(not overclocked)AGP 1.17 WHQL . 5216 Detonator XP Drivers2 x Maxtor 40GB HDD (7200rpm)LG 8x4x32 CDRWLG 52x CDRDirect X 9.0 Windows ME(FS2002)/ Windows XP(FS2004) dual bootBIOS Settings- DRAM Timing Ultra. CAS Latency 3T,RAS ACtive 6T,RAS Precharge 3TL1 Cache Enabled.L2 Cache Enabled.Sys BIOS Cache Disabled.DRAM Drive Slew Rating - Fast