Greetings,We experience stutters from time to time and have accepted them as an indication for a needed upgrade to our 1.2 ghx machine.Not ready to make that upgrade just yet, so what would happen if I purchased a 512 mb USB Flash Memory stick that has transfer rates up to 1.5 Mbit/sec and REDIRECTED my 98SE swap file to this flash memory instead of the current hdrive location? Setting the swap file size accordingly.Thanks for all knowledgeable advise!Regards,BobSSeems the rage to talk about the "size and speed" of each others computer. Beat this if you can for solving novel/unique problems.. ..Have K&E and know how to use it!

Wouldn't make a bit of difference...If your swap file is getting used, then that's a symptom of not enough memory vs. cpu speed. I have 98SE, 384 Megs of RAM, and I've never had a swap file hit running FS9... I generally run with 100-120 megs free, which also allows me to Design in FSDS 2 while MSFS is running. If you're running FS9 with less than 384 megs of RAM, even using a Flash Memory stick isn't going to fix the bottleneck the swap file causes.Some stutters with any version of MSFS are simply unavoidable. The sims have to go to where the textures, scenery, etc are stored...--the HD. Even with DMA, there will be some slight pause when this happens, although less so a second time depending on how much gets cached in memory (I'm talking 98SE's cache vs. COF's, which is only for caching data read from the CD onto the HD).In your case, it's likely your system isn't USB 2.0 compliant, so it's a guarantee that your Flash Drive will be slower than your hard drive. Otherwise, you could play with pointing the scenery.cfg to a copy of your texture folder stored on the Flash Drive. Just try to copy a large file to your hard drive vs. the Flash Drive, and you'd see what I mean.When I compare my performance here to those with machines much faster, I don't see ppl with 3x the performance or even 4x. You'd think that'd be the case given the fastest Pentiums run at 4X the clock speed of my machine. So much depends on the graphics card, amount of RAM installed, how well the O/S is configured, and how reasonable one's COF settings are.Along the same vein as your thread, long ago I pointed my scenery.cfg to a large RAM disk which held the MSFS core textures. Performance improvement wasn't measurable except at startup, in large part because once common textures are loaded they are cached anyway if RAM is large enough to support it.

Thanks John,As I read your response I gather the the xfer of data from the HDrive is the bottle neck most people have. I do have a 120 gig 8mb cache with FS9 installed.I also have a firewire card installed that I use with my Sony DV camcorder. In my reading I find the fastest xfer of data is: "Essentially, the recipe is quite easy: of course, Western Digital uses a hard drive from its own production, creates snazzy casing for it, and equips it with an interface so that the IDE drive can be run with a FireWire controller (IEEE1394). The result is a mobile storage solution that offers a tremendous 120 GB of space and also has a connection that's fast enough, thanks to its bandwidth of up to 400 MBits/s."So my next question has to be ... would this be the "hot setup" to REDUCE the impact of stutters?Thanks!fyi -- our computer is 1.2ghz - 512 mb memory -- 98SE current updates -- raid controller used for the 3 hdrives we have installed -- not in a raid confioguration -- (will probably be adding a fourth drive with all of the video work ahead. -- DVD burner/cd burner/DVDplayer.) and a ATI 9600 video card. (The simple one that only drives a single video. --- directX9.1 "all" this connected to a second computer with 2 drives, plus a laptop in the lan. Regards,BobSSeems the rage to talk about the "size and speed" of each others computer. Beat this if you can for solving novel/unique problems....Have K&E and know how to use it!

You'd still see some stutters as even loading scenery from pure RAM isn't instantaneous.... The sim still has to fetch the textures and send them to the video card, and that process is going to soak up cpu cycles regardless of the media involved. Oddly, I don't see stutters that much with FS9, not any more than any other version of MSFS. I have the WD 80 Gig with the 8MB cache. But I run an extremely clean boot. The only thing you'll find in my system tray is the volume control. Some applets that end up there really impact MSFS performance, especially keyboard "enhancement" programs that allow you to use keybords with volume controls, etc....Also, you have a lot of H/W installed. All of that uses resources and steals IR's....-John

Thanks again John for the points,We have gone into MSCONFIG and killed everything except explorer and systray long ago. That #@$^%@ realplayer keeps putting an icon in the tool tray and hiding in the background following use, but we kill him as required after a cold boot.We are not complaining, we were just exploring possible solutions. After all, we got through FS2000 where when we hit a stutter,where we could go make a cup of coffee, and also "expell" it before the stutter broke. ;-) Regards,BobSSeems the rage to talk about the "size and speed" of each others computer. Beat this if you can for solving novel/unique problems.. ..Have K&E and know how to use it!

I have a problem with FPS too since i installed my fathers copy of PMDG 737NG with SU3. No matter what settigs i change (i have turned off FSAA and AF, and i almost done every tweak on this forum).I dont understand why this happens because all ran great before and i have no fragged harddrive neither. should i reinstall FS?because i have installed many freeware addons to have a look at them and then i deleted them, does this maybe have an effect

I think your question related to the PMDG aircraft is a bit different than the intent of this thread.... You might want to open a PMDG specific thread and see if anyone can help. I hope I misunderstood your post though. You mentioned you were trying to install "your fathers copy." Does that mean your father already has it installed on another machine? If so, perhaps PMDG's install routine is designed to self destruct your MSFS install if it detects the same license being used on more than one machine :)

I hear you about Realplayer... It's hard to get rid of... Don't know if it's the cause of your stutters...One thing I've had to sacrifice when fidelity is really important is AI given my slow system speed. It seems to introduce the most stutters in the FS9 environment. I've reduced that a bit though, by replacing all the default MSFS jet and propjet aircraft with AI models. Still, AI can hit performance and I imagine I'd perceive it as stuttery after I've been running without it for a while...-John

Sorry, my question is not related to the PMDG Aircraft, its just that i expierience stutters in FS9 even if i dont use the 737 and even if i turn down all settings to low exept aircraft detail and terrain mesh complexity,. I dont think that PMDGs Install routine self destructs my FS9 installation, and im using the 737 on my mashine only, my father hasnt even FS installed anymore

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here but why would you have any part of Real Player running while flying in FS9? There is also a program called Real Alternative that replaces Real Player but without all the baggage. I've only been using it for about two weeks but so far no problems.David

I don't run Real Player, but it's interesting to hear about Real Alternative.... Gotta look that up :)-John

"I dont think that PMDGs Install routine self destructs my FS9 installation"Just kidding with ya on that one....I only have the PMDG 1900, so I don't believe I can compare the two since the 1900 (as far as I know) didn't change MSFS at all. With their 737, I'm curious if they drop a module in the modules folder. Some designers do that to allow gauges to communicate with MSFS in a more complex way than the default install of MSFS supports. You can scan your modules folder, sorting everything in date order, and check to see what's the newest. It's possible that there's something there which is bogging down MSFS...-John

Yes they drop a module in the modules folder, i have taken a look at the modules folder an found a file called PMDGOptions.dll i also use the 1900 but i think that the module is from 737.I solved the FPS Problem by deleting my fs9.cfg now everything works fine again, alltough the PMDG 737 is still a very hardware intense aircraft.