Hello Gents,I recently bought a new cpu...Dell Dimension 4700P43.4GHz1BG RAM80GB Hard DriveRadeon X700 PCIeFor the first few months i was getting spectacular FPS... I had it locked at 40 and it would only dip slightly below in heavy scenery. Recently with the last few weeks i've noticed strange spikes.Example: my frames will go like this..... 40, 40, 40, 38, 19, 25, 40, 40, 39, 39, 39, 16, 31, 40, 40, 40, 40These sudden dips in FPS makes for a real choppy ride and is clearly noticeable... especially when turning on the ground.I have also noticed that i have a hard time staying locked at 40 anymore. Just seconds before i posted this i put my bird on the ground at an airport with default scenery and my FPS was hovering around the high 20's with periods below that.I went to the task manager and noticed that the FS9.exe CPU usage levels seemed a bit high. I vaguely remember my total usage during flight sim operations to be not much more that 10% or so. Lately i feel lucky if i can get it under 20%, and as you can see in the screenie below FS( alone is taking up 47%.Any ideas, suggestions, solutions? What is a normal CPU usage level for FS9.exe? What could be causing my problems?Thank you very much!!!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/118943.jpg

45 processes running would be my first question. Get Ken Salters Autostart to shutdown unneeded programs, or shut them down yourself. I feel 'heavy' if I am running over 25, and I have seen guys running 15 or less. As for normal usage by FS9, get used to a high number. FS9 is hardware hungry and will pull a lot of resources from your comp. Defrag your comp regularly, and keep it clean with a ad/spyware buster. Those things can eat up a ton of comp power. Hope this helps,http://strong.eastlink.ca/vton1.jpg

I agree with Tony. FYI if the system is configured properly it should use almost all available power for the sim. 95% or more is not unusual. Best way to check is to go into windowed mode and then move the window to start Task Manager (I have an icon on my desktop). Do not minimize the window.Using FSAutostart I have 11 processes running when I sim, including Active Sky. 45 is waaaayyy to much.Regards,Greg

Gents,One thing to remember on the number of tasks. Those are not really impacting the CPU. If you notice, the only other thing running on that screen is task manager itself and it's only running 1%. The commit charge is 49% and what that is "committing" to is memory usage. You could have 40 processes listed there, and as long as they aren't running, and you have pleanty of RAM, it shouldn't matter. Now, that said, if you have a number of tasks that are actually running in the background during FS usage, then there would be an issue. But idle tasks are just that, idle. Dave---------------------------------------------------System Specs:Athlon64 3500+ ClawHammer @ 2.3mhzECS NForce4 A-939 Mobo (1g FSB)1.5G of OCZ Performance PC3200 Ram (Dual Channel)ATI Radeon X800Pro PCI-E (Catalyst 5.5 @ 540/560)SoundBlaster Live 24bitSaitek Cyborg EvoWinXP SP1

Idle tasks are not completely "idle" - further how do you know when they "wake up" - especially during a Flight Sim session.Idle tasks may be in a loop issuing cpu friendly Sleep() statements - this won't appear on the Task Manager as using any CPU, but it is.Or they may be waiting on a particular Windows Event like a mouse move or keyboard - again, this won't show up on Task Manager but it is using CPU.Or they may truly be suspended while waiting on a semaphore, mutex, or other object to be signaled. But, the OS has to manage this.Besides the fact that they do use memory.Now, what impact does these "idle" tasks have? That question is your homework assignment :-)Anyway, to whoever it may concern, since FSAutoStart is FREE, just try it out and see if it helps out. If so, Great! If not, then just ask for a refund ;-)

Please forgive my ignorance with this topic.I've been away from FS for a while...but, doesn't FS work well around 20fps?Last that I knew, setting the target fps range so high simply robbed resources that could be used elsewhere.What is now the recommened fps setting?But, I do agree on shutting down background programs. It's always helped me considerably.KJ

My average is around 20 fps. I find this to be very good considering I have my traffic set high, scenery levels high, and other details on high. Granted more is always better, but at this point, I am very happy with 20. :DKev

"I've been away from FS for a while...but, doesn't FS work well around 20fps?"There's no real recommended fps--it's what you are willing to live with in tradeoff to what sliders you want to max. There's a obvious visual difference between 20 fps and 40 fps to many (but not all) simmers, but I don't know of many who can run with sliders maxed and hold 40 fps consistently.I like to run at 25 fps, and I do so with the fps slider at unlocked. To do this, and because I have a slow system, I leave Autogen off unless I am flying treetop level type flights, reduce my resolution, and only turn on AI when I feel I need it--usually if I am just doing pattern flights so I can enjoy the experience of interacting with traffic.There's a few things that will cause sudden falloffs in fps. A task running in the background, "cloud building" as an aircraft moves through the sim environment, AI popping into view--especially around airports.Also, aircraft which display the gps by default in the panel can hit fps. I don't allow any of my panels to do this--I usually paste an image of the gps into the panel.bmp. But again, my system is much slower than the norm.Any sudden change in FS9 smoothness which isn't related to FS9 or a new add-on warrants a system check for spyware, at a minimum. These days that's sometimes tough, since most newer spyware has learned how to evade the common spyware tools.-John