At least threads like this let me know not to worry too much after loading PANC and UT Alaska and watching a slideshow... with some traffic and hit low teens with tons of stutters. It gets better by tuning ut alaska significantly. I've actually ditched aerosofts panc altogether as well, using a freeware panc with self made photo-real ground scenery.

 

After much trying over the last little bit to find some kind of acceptable combination of settings for flying complex planes in/out of complex airports, I've finally turned to fs9 - it's been quite enjoyable flying the md-11 and the ifly 737 with 100% traffic and getting frames in the 50's-60's at big airports. A few places get a little lower, but not by much.

 

fsx can stay my small plane & alone in the sky, bush / mountain / rural / photoscenery sim.

 

But part of my problem is that I'm quite fussy - 20 fps is the least that I can handle, I usually even find that to be quite objectionable and immersion breaking.

 

Well with a very good system, you never ever usually go under 20, unless you ask for it and turn up the sliders wayyy up.

Framerates aren't the biggest problem on my PC. That award goes to Mr Out of Memory Error. The combination that makes the greatest contribution to the number of votes for this award would be VFR London X/UK2000 Heathrow Xtreme/Gatwick Xtreme/London City Xtreme/VFR Airfields/Treescapes/REX/Ultimate Traffic 2/FSX Power Project/**payware plane of choice**. A wonderful combination that is always capable of detonating a CTD bomb of nuclear proportions.

Well running any complex scenery will bring my system to its knees. I am running at 17 fps (locked) and its okay, but hopefully my 2013 build will improve that.

 

I mainly run Orbx scenery, it will do 17 fps until I get near enough to the custom airfields, then it hovers between 10-17 fps. Other than that I use Aerosoft and FlyTampa which usually beats up my system and turn it into a slideshow. FSDremteam scenery does perform well, even their most complex scenery, I think only KLAX make me lose a few frames, so I am looking foreward to trying their Vancouver scenery.