The bottom line is, FS9 performs pretty well for me, as long as I keep settings rather conservative with sliders at around midrange. I'm getting about 15-20 fps on average, and am primarily using addon aircraft - Dreamfleet, FSD, PMDG, etc. My biggest gripe has been frequent stutters/pauses while in 2D mode, which is at worse in turns. (For some reason,it isn't too bad in virtual mode.) I have tried many suggestions I got from the forum, such as changing target framerate, trying different display settings, changing resolution, turning off AA, etc. Nothing helps. One suggestion was try a new video card. I read up on the following cards in Computer Pilot - VISIONTEK XTASY 9800 PRO, WINFAST A310 ULTRA TD, WINFAST A350 ULTRA TDH (which the article says is so big, you have to be careful not to damage capacitors on the motherboard!), and per suggestion of Gateway when I called, the new RADON 9800XT 250 MEG CARD. ($489.00!) My current system is a Gateway P4 2.8, with 1 gig RDRAM, and a NVIDIA 128 meg Geforce4 TI 4600G card. Is anyone familiar with these cards and do you think they will improve FS9 performance? I'd hate to just try different ones, since returning them can be a problem and often there are restocking fees etc. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks, Tom

well, i have a 9700 pro and when i got it it was the top card, i upgraded from the ti-4200 and the main performance difference was when Anti-Aliasing was turned on, the fps hardly dropped on the 9700 whilst they were crippled on the 4200. this should hold true to your card as well because it is based on the same tech as the 4200. so you will notice a difference yes, your cpu is fast enough and personally i would (although i am biased) get a 9700 pro, check out eBay for a good deal, if you check out the benchmarks, the 9700pro isnt far behind the 9800pro at all and costs a lot less!cheersJames

I may be a little biased here, being a 9800XT user. However, 489US really isn't breaking the bank for this card, compared to what I paid for it. I paid just short of $700 when it was first released. Even considering the extreme price, I haven't looked back. Great card.If you're budget doesn't quite stretch that far, I'm hearing good things about the 9800Pro/128 by Sapphire.

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/200310...n9600xt-24.htmlMichael J.

how can you say what breaking the bank is!! its all relative. the 9800xt is good but it is seriously not worth the extra money if you have anything above a 9600... wait until the next gen cards come out then the 9800xt will drop down in price,James

The 9800Pro 128mb card is selling for about $199 now. Someone mentioned just a bit ago they were that price at compusa. There's virtually no difference between a 9700Pro/9800Pro/9800XT. Just the clock speeds as they're all based on the same design. I run the sim at 1400x1050x32 with 4xAA & 16xAF and it screams. Haven't seen a jaggie or had a stutter. Unless I fly outta Dallas! The best bang for the buck is the 9800Pro 128mb card. Unless you want Nvidia. If that's the case, I'd suggest nothing less than the 5900XT or you'll be sorry.

Hi Bigshot,I have an Alienware system too. Here are my specs.P4 3.061 gig of 1066 ramASUS P4T533-C Motherboard80gig WD HarddriveATI 9700 proSoundblaster Audigy 2I can't seem to get 2004 to run worth a crap on this system. I have read and tried everything I can find to get it running smoothly, but nothing seems to work. I have stutters, pauses, poor texture loading, frame rates are poor in 2D and 3D cockpit etc...I have read many of your posts and you seem to have found the "Magic" combo to get 2004 to run like it is supposed to. Could you please give me some advice as to what I need to do to get things running smoothly? I'm not looking for miracles, but with my system I shoud be able to run 2004 A LOT better than I am now. Thanks in advance,Hawk

The only major difference in components is the mobo. I have the Intel D850EMV2 and 512mb PC1066. I was to cheap to spring for a gig and find I don't need it. Run 4xAA & 16xAF (Performance). Do the autogen fixes and use Chris' clouds. Use 1400x1050x32 resolution. Looks as nice as 1600x1200 and runs a bit faster. A major thing that I did was to convert all those huge 32bit textures we're seeing in the library to DXT3wAlpha with Mipmaps. They seem to plug up the works. For example, the Posky 757 wouldn't run worth a crap on my system. Textures lagged bad and framerate was inconsistent. Especially on takeoff. I changed the exterior textures using DXTBmp and now they run in the 40 to 50fps range most everywhere, including takeoff and landing, and they look better since ATI does not alais nonmipmapped textures. Same with most other aircraft. Especially the eaglesoft jets. They really go now with DXT3-nonmipped interior textures and I can't see any real noticeable difference in quality. Interior textures don't need to be mipmapped. I'd say you're probably suffering from a texture overload like I was. Folks are trying to cure the problem with more ram. It ain't working from what I read. Swap em' out and you'll be very surprised. If you run into a texture that blurs (seldom happens), just replace that particular texture with the original. http://fly.to/mwgfx Just load the extended textures and save as DXT3wAlpha. The program will automatically add the mipmaps back.

Hello Hawk,It sounds like I have the exact same Alienware system that you do except my Harddrive is a 120 Gig. I have FS2004 running beautifully if I say so myself. I don't get the absolute best performance when I'm around large cities and complex airports. But even then it's not too bad and certainly flyable. I use MyTraffic 2004 with the traffic set at 100 percent in the sim and the rest of my sliders/settings in the sim are very high. I could get better peformance in the large urban areas with complex airports by turning some stuff down, but forget that! Eye candy is good candy. ;) Have you taken a look at a guide I made to try and help people(mostly for those somewhat new to WinXP and the Sim) get the best performance? If not I put a link to it down below. A lot of people said that it helped them quite a bit. It doesn't cover everything under the sun but I feel it is more that just a starting point. You could also look into trying out Ken Salter's (our glorious Avsim forum moderator) FSAutoStart available in the Avsim library, filename: fsautostart.zipFS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...topic_id=173789Cheers and Good Luck,Jim

Bigshot,I just want you to know that I can run the POSKY 757 with 32-bit textures fine on my system. The only difference is they take a slight amount more time to load when I go into spot view. Other than that my sim performs no differently when using them when compared to other 'less heavy' aircraft/textures. I think it is due to the fact that the 32-bit textures take quite a bit of memory and I have 1 GB of RAM with my AGP Aperture Size set to 256. It is my belief this is where having 1 GB of RAM can be of benefit. There has been quite a bit of controversy about what the AGP Aperture setting does and where it should be set to, and I might not fully understand this BIOS option setting myself. But, I believe that the 256 setting that I am using(because I have 1 GB of RAM) allows a portion of my RAM to be used for texture storage. Thereby allowing me to enjoy the use of 32-bit textures on complex aircraft such as the POSKY 757, PMDG 737NG and others like it. If I had less RAM than I do I don't think FS2004 would work as well for me with it set at 256, but I could be wrong. The most common recommendation I have seen about the AGP Aperture Size setting is to 'play with it'. Try it out on different settings and see what it does for your performance, if anything.Again, I myself don't have any problems using 32-bit textures on complex aircraft. They only take a very slight amount more time to load texture-wise.Regards,Jim

>that the 256 setting that I am using(because I have 1 GB of>RAM) allows a portion of my RAM to be used for texture>storage.This article clears up a lot of misinformation about the AGP aperture. He clearly states that the aperture setting should always remain in the 64-128 MB range.http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demon...erture_Size.htmMichael J.

The rule of thumb is half your video card ram for AGP Aperture setting. ATI recommends 64. That's where mine is set. If I had a 256mb video card, I would have it set at 128. The texture lag is the problem. I've read several articles on the subject and wouldn't admit knowing the whys and wherefores. A one second lag is fine; but a two or a three or a four second lag is not acceptable. Neither is the stutter that texture load causes acceptable. Not when the cure takes about two minutes and results in a better looking texture that loads instantly most of the time. A simple test would be to load up the FFX 737-300 as an example with DXT3 textures. Does it fly smoother? Does the sim run better overall? Why? I think I've answered that already. Does more ram help? Undoubtedly!! I guess the texture lag is only one of the problems. When you're using a graphics intensive aircraft, all of a sudden, you're seeing other problem areas like blurred terrain textures off in the distance and you're experiencing stutters in the turns and upon landing. Leaving em' in the library for others to enjoy is not an option. I've found my cure. I fix em' up so they work the way I want em' to work. They look good and the sim still screams.

Michael J.,Thanks for link, but I have read that a number of times already. In fact, in my FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide V2 I give the link to www.rojackpot.com and recommend them to go and read the BOG(BIOS Optimization Guide) for more detailed info than I give in my guide. What little info I give in this area in my guide is gleaned from there as well as my own experience. As I already stated, there has been quite a bit of controversy here on the forum about this setting. I don't not know nor can I claim to fully understand everything. But I can understand at least a good part of what I read and go by my own experience.That article by Adrian Wong has been around for a good long while now. It was written well before FS2004 was around. Imo, FS2004 and some other newer games are pushing textures levels to new heights, therefor requiring as much texture storage as you can give them. At least when using high graphics settings. Again, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.----------------------------------"Note that reducing the AGP aperture size won't save you any RAM. Again, what setting the AGP aperture size does is limit the amount of RAM the AGP bus can appropriate when it needs to."----------------------------------Now, if you have lots of System RAM, why limit this? Seems to me if I were to limit the amount of System RAM that can be appropriated then I wouldn't be taking full advantage of the 1 GB of RAM I have. And I have checked my RAM usage, specifically with the POSKY 757, and it showed I was using 97 percent with 2.4 percent cached.----------------------------------"Some games even use so much textures that AGP memory is needed even with graphics cards with lots of graphics memory."----------------------------------Ahhh-Haaa! Maybe this is why "I" noticed a difference when I upped my AGP Aperture Size from 128 to 256. Yes, that's right. I noticed a difference, for the better. I actually had my setting at 128 for a while after FS2004 came out because I didn't think that turning it up to 256 would do anything(make any difference). But FS2004 is not your average game and I was wrong in thinking there'd be no difference. I didn't really get an increase in FPS. But what I did get was a noticeable difference in smoothness, less stutters even though my FPS didn't really increase except by maybe a tiny bit. Now I get hardly any stutters at all.From posts I have read on here though, what changing this setting will do for you seems to vary from system to system. That is why the best recommendation, I think, is to play with it and see what you get. Don't take what you have seen in writing as being an edict.I have gone with a setting that I have determined to work the best for me on my system with what I have experienced.Regards,JimBigshot,----------------------------------"A one second lag is fine; but a two or a three or a four second lag is not acceptable.""I've found my cure. I fix em' up so they work the way I want em' to work."----------------------------------I agree with what you said except maybe the 'rule of thumb' thing. But anyway, I get right about a one second lag for the POSKY(et al.) 32-bit textures to load when using them and the sim performs no differently in any other way or area. So I go ahead and use them because I agree that one second is an acceptable level of load time. I am glad to hear you found what works for you as I know the 32-bit texures are indeed heavy hitters! :) But for me they work fine.Cheers,Jim

Thanks for the help guys. regards, Tom :-)

Thanks for the reply Bigshot. I did as you suggested and MAN! what a difference it made. It's like having a new sim. I can't thank you enough for your help. I was almost at the point of uninstalling 2004 and finding a new hobby. This just proves once again what a GREAT community Flight Simming really is. Now I'm off to really start enjoying myself. Thanks again,Hawk