It seems no hardware I buy is good enough for this sim. Now I have an AMD dual core, SATA hard drive and a Geforce 7800 GFX video card. Even that does not cut the mustard.If I load up the Boeing at JFK with 100% Ultimate Traffic and real time weather and start to taxi, the frames I get are only 12-14 on average. And thats with default scenery. With Simflyers it would be around 7-8.I can hear the the hard drive is going crazy alot of the time. Are the textures being cached in memory?? Is 256MB not enough graphics memory? Would 512MB graphics memory solve the problem? What is the bottleneck? I left task manager open and the CPU is not maxed out at 100%. In Pacific Fighters the graphics are smooth 100% of the time. I have never even tried looking for the FPS counter in that game. Why does FS have such a bad performance?John.

Well, your experience certainly seems isolated.I have a P4 3.0 GHz with HT and an ATI X800XT vid card, and with all graphics maxed out and traffic at 100% and three layers of cloud with ASV connected I get around 20 - 25 fps on average. My fps are locked on 25. On a "normal" day with only a few clouds flying around a mid-size city (all visuals turned up) I consistenly get 25 fps.The FS engine is extremely well tuned and it's amazing that standard computer hardware can run the game "out of the box" as well as it does, considering all of the detail in the game such as thousands of trees/buildings within the screen as well as all of the number-crunching required to simulate flight.Maybe it's something else? Maybe your setup isn't quite right?I think further investigation is required before you start critisizing what most consider is an exceptional engine.James

What kind and how much RAM do you have?

You should leave that framerate counter alone and enjoy the sim instead of being a junky for ever higher fps numbers.And indeed as said it's you and you alone (with maybe a small number of others).I've several times your performance on a machine that's maybe half as powerful as yours (2.4GHz CPU, 128MB videocard of an older generation, etc. etc.).

1 GB RAM.Before upgrading I only had 512MB, and the sim still performed fairly well.James

James, the engine is not well tuned. And for us to sit here years after it was released and only now be able to run it well proves my point. I find it hard to believe you are getting such good FPS. Do you fly in the VC? All sliders maxed? what type of traffic? And not every day is a normal day with few clouds.

James, you get 20-25 FPS on average? Is that at one of the major airports with 100% Ultimate Traffic with ASV and from the VC of the PMDG?Because thats the situation I am talking about. Sure I can get an average 20-25FPS in other planes/situations, but thats not what I am talking about.I am curious to know if a 512MB graphics card would help alot in this scenario.John.

Try to understand his perspective though. On his machine he should get double the frames than a machine half that powerfull, true enough? If not double then darn close. The framerate counter is there to help configure the sim to your machine. What's wrong with the idea of seriously upgrading your computer and trying to wring the heck out of FS? Absolutely nothing.And it's EXTREMELY hard to enjoy the sim at 10FPS, especially if that number becomes irrelevant at large airports due to the-very-jerky-landing-feeling, which is at best 50 to 55 frames per minute in some case :-lolI hope you get it figured out, John, and good luck!-JeremyThe Ozark DogfighterHappy Flying!

There's only so much hardware is capable of processing pe second.I know for a certainty that the FS engine is extremely well tuned, especially when you consider how much visual information the PC is required to process.You need to be realistic. Obviously at a major airport with 100% traffic and everything maxed including heavy weather with 15 layers of cloud is going to tax the system. But most people who intimately know the inner workings of the FS engine know it to be very well written.Think of it this way - many report getting better performance on FS2004 than FS2002 with similar levels of detail (ie FS2004 dense autogen vs FS2002 very dense autogen), and when you consider that FS2002 provides better performance than FS2000, that's quite astonishing.Also, if you're using 3rd party addons, you can't asses that the FS engine is problematic. So your addons are taxing the system? That's nice. People won't take you seriously when you state that FS has a crappy engine because after running twenty addon sceneries and five traffic applications it only runs at 10 fps. G0t common sense?James

Some things to consider:Having a dual core CPU doesn't mean you have twice the processing power of a single core CPU to throw at FS2004, since FS2004 is not built to take advantage of more than one CPU. You can get a benefit by assigning FS2004 to one of the CPUs and everything else to the other (external apps like anti-virus, Adobe Reader, web browser, etc), but it's nowhere near "double performance".Unless I'm mistaken that dual-core CPU is 64-bit. Assuming you use Windows XP x64, you're still not getting any benefit over a 32-bit CPU (except the ability to use more than 4Gb of RAM) because FS2004 is not built to take advantage of 64-bit CPUs.Therefore, as far as FS2004 goes, you got an "ok-to-good" CPU depending on its single-core, 32-bit performance. Not an "ungodly one" as "dual-core, 64-bit!" might make it sound.You also said you have a GeForce 7800 GFX (GTX?) video card. That's all good and well for games like Doom 3, FarCry or Half-Life 2, which make extensive use of the latest graphics processing goodies. FS2004, however, is a "far cry" (pun intended) from that. It does not take advantage of advanced shaders, instancing (which would be great for autogen and clouds) and what will you have.For FS2004, a faster video card will mostly affect texture filtering, antialiasing and resolution - as in, you can pump these up without a performance loss. The rest (flight dynamics, AI traffic, etc) are still left to your CPU and related systems (motherboard / buses, memory). If the "rest of the system" can't feed the graphics card fast enough, you're not going to get good framerates at any resolution.Unfortunately I don't know if having 512Mb of RAM on your video card (instead of 256) would change anything for FS2004.As far as system memory goes, 1Gb is "ok". I have 2Gb and I'm sure the extra gigabyte helps FS2004 some.The biggest problem, I think, is the misconception that you should be able to run FS2004 with every slider to the max as long as you pay enough money. Consider for a while the possibility that the sliders might not be meant to be topped off at all. Some thoughts on the most important settings:* If you have an LCD display, play the game at your LCD's native resolution (1600x1200 for me). If you don't have a good enough machine to do that, then you've gone for the wrong upgrades. If you have a CRT display, 1280x960 is probably a good resolution to go for (would be for an LCD, too, but with LCDs native resolution is more important as far as image quality goes).* Limit FPS to around 30 or 40 (20 if you fly on VATSIM, of course). I imagine many people run FS2004 with the "unlimited" framerate setting without realizing that this is detrimental to their overall experience, because the CPU has to compete with the graphics card's demands and "other stuff" (like AI traffic, sound and flight dynamics). When the framerate is limited to a REASONABLE level, the CPU can get "other stuff" done in time and avoid sudden stutters and hiccups.* Use 3D clouds (because that's one of the reasons you bought FS2004 for), but set the amount of 3D clouds to 50% and density to "Medium" or one notch above that if your system can handle it. 100% 3D clouds at maximum density is just ASKING for trouble. If in doubt, go for higher density but lower 3D cloud amount - a supposedly "cloudy" sky doesn't look very convincing if there are only a handful of clouds around (which "density" controls). Play around with the visibility and cloud draw distance to get the best possible mix of performance and visuals - off the top of my head I think I have visibility at 130 miles and clouds at 50.* Turn everything up to the max under "Aircraft" settings (Display options). I have played around with these and on my system, anyway, none of the settings seem to matter much as far as performance goes.* Turn off "Ground objects cast shadows" (or whatever it was called). Aside from the clouds this is probably the biggest troublemaker performance-wise, because people who enable it are likely to also have autogen and object density at high levels. VERY BAD MOVE. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd see a notable increase in performance at airports (which you pointed out as a big problem spot) if you disabled this option.* Set Scenery complexity, Autogen density and Add-on dynamic scenery to "Very dense" at the most.After these changes, see how the game runs and THEN start thinking about possibly using anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. If you STILL can't maintain a steady 30 FPS in most situations, with default aircraft (and see sub-20 at default airports), something is wrong with your system.For the record, I have the following machine:AMD Athlon 64 3800+2Gb DDR400 RAMOne IDE drive for operating system and software *One SATA drive for FS2004 and other games *ATi Radeon X850 XT PE 256MbWindows XP x64* Separate physical drives for operating system and games = very goodI run FS2004 at near-1600x1200 (I run it windowed, so it's actually something like 1600x1130), with 4x AA and 4x anisotropic filtering. I have VERY FEW settings at max, most of them at "one or two notches below max" and a few at "mid-range" (such as clouds). Some options I've disabled altogether because they are performance killers and have no impact on my flying experience (shadows cast by scenery).My target framerate is 30 (20 for VATSIM) and most of the time it stays there. The times when it dips are A) extremely cloudy (not "foggy" or "overcast") conditions and :( some add-on airports. Both are to be expected, but the time I spend in these conditions, compared to the time I fly all-in-all, is negliable and in my opinion worth it considering that most of the time I get great visuals and performance.And that's without maxing every slider. Imagine that! :) PS.I also run AV software in the background, as well as a web browser and sometimes Adobe Reader for reading PDF charts. I have not "tweaked" my system for best gaming performance and I don't shut down "unnecessary" processes when I play (any game).

Now THAT is a RESPONSE. Very nice!I'm also extremely intrigued by this: "Separate physical drives for operating system and games = very good"One of my next upgrades will be a 400GB SATA SeaGate Barracuda, and I have been curious as to whether I should use it for games and such seperate from the IDE 200GB Barracuda I now have, and keep my OS on that one.-JeremyThe Ozark DogfighterHappy Flying!

The reason why separate harddrives for your games and operating system (+ other software) is a good move is pretty simple: when the time comes for two (or more) programs to access or write to files on the same harddrive at the same time, the operations have to be queued.This queueing causes a short delay in the operation which would be of no consequence with web browsers or office applications, but in real-time applications like games it can cause a pause or stutters as the game can't get what it needs in time.This is why I have my operating system, swapfile and software on one drive and games on the other. If the operating system needs to swap things in and out of the swapfile on the primary harddrive, the operation doesn't block FS2004 from reading textures, models or scenery data from the secondary harddrive.

I just stumbled across this a few minutes ago -- maybe there's something there you can use.http://support.microsoft.com/search/defaul...HRASE&maxResultCal (CYXX)

John - I don't think you have an isolated case. Most machines in the situation you describe are going to have slowdown problems. The real issue is too many ploygons need to be drawn to render the scenery with not enough CPU cycles to process them quickly enough to keep up a really good framerate. Everyone has that problem anytime they get into a really complex scenery/weather situation. Not all flying is around a mid-sized city with a few clouds :-) . (Going to 512MB of video RAM won't help. Most 128MB cards will work fine and 256MB is more than enough. FS9 doesn't utilize the GPU capabilities to anywhere near the fullest extent).Doug

Not true. Raw power doesn't mean squat. It's the way all those components work together.He obviously has a rather serious bottleneck somewhere, I'll give you that.But you can upgrade say your CPU to one that has twice the clockspeed and not see a single fps more speed.You can also exchange your videocard for some hypermodern racemonster and see no performance improvement counted in framerates.What you will see is more fluid gameplay and possibly better looking visuals, as that's where that extra power is pumped into unless you specifically tell FS not to (in which case it will likely just sit idle for the spare time).