I know this has been mentioned before but I had to comment on this again because my stutters are GONE plus framerates overall have improved. 1. If you go into your Display Properties under the Settings Tab you'll (usually) find a screen that shows monitor 1 and 2. 2. Click on monitor 2 and go into advanced settings. Find the tab that has the Hardware Acceleration options.3. TURN OFF HARDWARE ACCELERATION ON THIS SECOND VIRTUAL MONITOR, (you only need this if you have a laptop/docking station situation)...That's it and it actually make since. Most of us have a feature turned on that we get absolutely no benefit from. I can't confirm but I'd bet this the reason for 99% of our problems with FS concerning stutters. Like most things in Windows, Microsoft has things turned on the average user doesn't need and unless you know about it your applications suffer. When I read this info before I thought it pertained to users who were currently using multiple monitors. I had no idea this tip was for everyone. So unless your using multiple monitors, shut down the features on that second virtual monitor and you should see improvements in FS9 and everything else...Dillon--

Thanks Dillon--I made the same assumption so I'll have to give your tip a try, although I suspect my system will be too slow to really show any measurable improvement. Still, I'm eager to give it a shot...Regards,John

John you are too valuable to this community to be stuck on old hardware... It sounds like you make the bucks (IT) so take the plung and get yourself a new system. Another option is donations... With all the help you've given us in the past, it's the least we could do...:-beerchug John this tip may be geared more towards the Windows XP crowd...

LOL.....I stick with the old h/w and Win 98 because I have a legacy piece of imaging h/w I prefer which requires both. It was my first scanner, which I bought twelve years ago and am very attached to. When it dies, I'll move on. But I'm proud of the dang thing because twelve years ago, I was the only guy on the block with one :)-John

Another thing I found out from another thread is lower end video cards (GeForce4 MX) don't support two monitors. So only the higher end cards will find much needed resources allocated to a virtual monitor that they're not using.

I have tried this and also have gained some frames.I would make one comment about your post. I read in the original posting on this issue, that if you back down the h/w acceleration on the 2nd (unused) monitor output too far, the entire ATI control panel disappears. I haven't found this myself, but if that is the case then you may want to include that in your orginal message in this thread.Bruce.

I can't find this option on my system. Is this not available on XP? I've got a GF4 5600 FX Ultra. Appreicate the assist.

I have an ATI card for which this procedure was originally written, I believe. That said, it should work for any dual-headed video card I think. The process involves the control panel, and since I don't have a G4 card, I can't say how to do this. The process is just the unused output to not use full acceleration.Bruce.

simply amazing how many "hits" the phrase improved performance gets. tt

Ummmmm, not to sound like a complete idiot (which is probably to late), where is this "display properties"? You don't mean in FS9 do you? I shouldn't put my name on this,,,, but I'm gonna.B Bjorkman CFI

Just tried this, and I really see no difference. Don't you actually have to be DISPLAYING something on a second monitor in order for it to be taking up resources accelerating something?? I seriously doubt ATI and Nvidia would design their cards to just take up 3D acceleration power doing nothing on a second monitor that doesn't even exist...

In reply to B Bjorkman...lol don't worry.....we won't tell anyone! ;-)Right click on your desktop and choose properties or start menu -> Settings -> control panel -> displaythen go to the settings tab and followed the instructions in the previous posts

Thanks for keeping my stupidity a secret. I must not have an option for two monitors. I do have a G4800ti card but don't see anywhere in there to adjust for multiple monitors. Thanks. B Bjorkman

Hi Dillon,Just tried it on my system (PIII, 1 gig, GeForce 4 Ti4200, WinMe) and i had a problem with the settings.In my case, I highlighted the second monitor and then turned off hardware acceleration as you indicated. Then just for the heck of it, I highted the first monitor and then looked at it's settings. For some reason, the hardware acceleration for that monitor was also turned off! I then turned it back to full and checked the second monitor's setting and it was now set to full. In my case both the first and second monitor settings are tied together. Such is life.Thanks anyway for the tip - please keep them coming.Howard

I just tried it on my system (P4c 2.6 @ 3.38ghz) and it definitelly improved performamce, but I could no longer move popup items to my second monitor. In fact I had to goto one notch below full acceleration to use that monitor but even then my mouse pointer was having problems so I went back to full acceleration. At least I now know how to get a good performance boost if I'm not going to use my second monitor. Thanks for the tip, limited use but still a good one.David