Well said Dave! I agree with you completly.Erv

I have a dell xps with a p4 3.6 non dual core processor, 2 gb ram, and a 7900gt with a matrox triplehead setup at 3840x1024 and i get 25fps smooth flight everywhere except for major cities. I dont think there is a machine that can run this thing in new york city maxed out but even my midrange box runs the fileplanet beta at totally playable and fairly smooth frame rates. I'm a frame snob too and the game is more than playable and i have the sliders all about 3/4 of the way up and with 2xAA and 4xAF. Sometimes when near water it bogs down but not always for whatever reason? If i turn off the AA and AF the frame rates are even much smoother. My dad has a fx-62 with a 7950gx2 and his frame rate is well over 30 at the same settings and remember that this is at 3840x1024 here. At 1280x1024 my midrange machine chews up fsx like its nothing. Not sure why the guy with the core2 and 7900gtx is having problems running this game but he might want to check his machine to make sure its running right. That machine should run fsx like glass at 1280x1024 and if it doesnt then you've got something setup very wrong.

Agreed,I have the demo and will look into the tweaks and 'magic' settings when they are posted but with the current performance indiccated by the demo I won't buy FS-X without a major hardware upgrade .Thats my experience on my fairly new AMD X2 4400+ with 2 Gb mem and ATI800XL graphics

OR there are things in the FS-X code that cause this on perfectly tuned machines... ever considered that? Maybe a little variation in FSB speed can have a major impact in the results you get.I Still have to try the new demo on my old machine. (Thats an AMD XP2700 with a lowbudget AGP NVidia 6200). Guess what? The old demo actually did perform beter on this machine than it did on my X2 4400+This might be caused by the 0,17 Mhz higher clock of the XP2700 (2,17 Mhz) core against the 2x 2 Mhz cores of the X2. Maybe the 333 Mhz FSB speed on the mainboard agrees more with FS-X. Maybe the NVidia driver are beter in this particular instance. Or maybe the insane amount of slow memory on the aircooled NVidia 6200 (512MB) actually made a difference? Who knows. The only thing I can tell you now is that FS-X might have some problems on some setups and it might be caused by the way the program works...

If I remember correctly from the Avsim Conference. A Microsoft evangelist stated that FSX run at "MEDIUM" settings is for high end computers of today, while settings of "HIGH" and above have been implemented for systems within the next 1 - 2years from now.Suggestions, were to install FSX and run it as is for a while before starting to tweak settings. As the old FS9 did, it search for the optimum setting based on your hardware (well as we all know, that is never usually good enough....lol)Interesting.....at least it sounds like M$ is looking into the somewhat future for FSX. Most of this I am sure has to do with the fact that DX10 cards will be available by next year, which with Vista, will really require most of us who want to enjoy FSX in its full glory to start upgrading our hardware accordingly in the next year or two.I know many of us are going to want to crank this baby up when we unleash her onto our OLD, MID-RANGE, or HIGH-END rigs, only to be disappointed when we are brought to our knees, by undying demand for CPU and GPU power.Time will tell....and may we all enjoy the joys and woes of tweaking this new animal when she is let out of the cage. I probably have to wait abit longer than the 17th since it has be shipped from the Avsim store. ;(Kroswynd

Over clock you e6600 to 4ghz, you should get hugh performance increase.

Well, if we're giving reports from all kinds of computers, here one for the FULL demo, which is based on the older build. Retail no available here yet.I have FS9 and FSX on both computers.2 computers:Pentium 4 2.4MHz1.15 Gig of RAM9600 RADEON 256M AGP8XBiggest problem is the slow clearing of the fuzzy terrain if you move along very fast. Frames rates are barely useful, in most cases - 5-12 usually with 4-18 outside. Yes, autogen kills it fast as does road traffic, but I had some very nice flights with 14-16 FPS with Beaver off NC coast WITH moderate amount of autogen trees ON. Most sliders were mid or slightly lower. I consider this level of computer only somewhat useful, but still, with certain limitations can give some good fun with FSX.Athlon 4600+ dual core 64x22 Gig RAM7300 GeForce 256M PCIexpressMUCH better. (Yes, I know FSX doesn't use both CPUs by design.)Still somewhat challenging, but almost everything flies with 9-25 FPS which is acceptable to me. Sliders are even a bit higher, like "heavy" autogen, 17m terrain, etc. Even some larger cities did pretty well. Photoscenery did not gain, though (same scenery compared to FS9 on Pentium 4: Alaska, Pacific NW) ... but was still fine. There seems to be a critical point in equipment ... the 4600+ duo can be had for near $700 at one chain. I consider this level the bottom of good standard operation of FSX.What worries me, is that clouds and addons will pull this down some, but I agree with many posters on "tweaking" configurations, etc. And, who knows what will happen with Vista and DX10 - I've seen opinions ranging from it will supercharge FSX, to, it will do "nothing" at all in speed and little in quality (since it was created with XP and DX9). We'll just have to see.Only an observation and opinion, guys.

Im not a computer expert but i do know computers and it seems to me that the Intel boys,the Amd boys , the nvidia boys and the ATI fellas, could care less about us hardcore simmers.because all i see is there benchmark test on first person shooters and such games .you all have seen them you know 175 fps versus 172.6 fps on games that does not really work a system.Now we have to go out and buy super duper triple core systems with all the fixins, with hard drives so big i can move in on.Maxed out Ram and suped up cpu's, you know computers so powerful when you turn them on you can see the lites in your house dim.All so that i can get more frame rates.Bottom line is that we are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to those wonderful companies i mentioned, i can care less about 3d Benchmarks and all those high numbers the com gets when you test your system.Because as soon as i load up FS9 and all of the fixins, my com boggs down to a wonderful 17 fps, and that is in good weather, and im the only plane within miles. And if im lucky to get to 20 fps im thirty thousand feet in the air.And when i try to land in a busy city and the weather is bad, i get a whopping 10 FPS.But you see folks im a hardcore simmer, and i will wait for FSX and load it and deal with all of the headaches that comes with it.yeah im going to go out and get all of the latest hardware, and software so as soon as i get it home it will be old hardware.Yeah im going to cuss and fuss and get mad and holler and scream when my camera will get better frame rates than my com does.I will continue this Hobby because i love it so much.Just imagine i will go out and buy a five hundred dollars vid card so i can get a better frame rate , just to find out that my cpu is to slow and im talking a 3800+ amd, then i will go out and buy a faster cpu , and mother board , and more Ram , and more whatever it takes to have more frame rate. Just so i can keep it at between 15 to 20 fps.Because you see im a hardcore simmer and i will do whatever it takes to injoy this game.I Love This Sport.................Robert

Even on my mediocre PC (Ahtlon XP 2800, 1.5GB RAM, Ati 9800 PRO) I get smooth performance in the second demo with the settings from this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...5&page=2#352702only thing I did change was the target framerate. It was choppy at unlimited, but smooth at 18 frames.The retail version will probably more taxing to my PC, and it will become even slower once the addons start coming, but I am quite pleased sofar.Allard.

Bloom and shadows and 2x water require two passes on every frame. It will kill your performance. Do not expect to run with these on. If it works, great, but please don't complain that it kills your performance. We know.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Hey..those remarks resemble me.so watch it.:)MannyPS: Does anyone know...when Ultimate Traffic for FSX is planned for release? :(

One thing I can say and I am grateful for one decision ACES team did not make, and that is.To cut down on the limits in the resolution etc...to get high FPS. They could have said.. "Well! we are going to get beatup if we do not provide for high FPS..so that should be our PRIMARY goal and hence reduce the texture resolution to what it was in FS9 or..lets not give them the new detailed Water... but we will give them the 70FPS". I am really really glad they did not do that... Inspite of my gripes over low FPS. I know that it sound like I am talking from both sides. But I am not. The decision to provide for high textrures and what not is a better decision than not providing it. But the issue seems to be the divergence of the FSim product architecture and the CPU architecture (dual core --> quad core). They are out of sync It looks like.Manny

>To cut down on the limits in the resolution etc...to get high>FPS. They could have said.. "Well! we are going to get beatup>if we do not provide for high FPS..so that should be our>PRIMARY goal and hence reduce the texture resolution to what>it was in FS9 or..lets not give them the new detailed Water...>but we will give them the 70FPS". >>I am really really glad they did not do that...LOL, there's no way they ever gonna do that. Unfortunately.Marco

And yet,Why can't we scale FS-X back to FS9 like visuals and get beter (say a rock solid 70 FPS) performance then whe have in FS9.1?I would buy such a version of FS-X in an instant. Being able to turn on bloom and shiny water when I finally get that new Cray super computer would be an added bonus. Blurries and FPS drops spoil my fun in FS much more then missing eyecandy. My lowest target FPS would be an absolute rock solid 30 FPS. 60 FPS without drops would be super.

Yeah, I'll give that a shot as well - turns out I almost filled my 300 GB hard drive by installing FSX (had 17 GB free before installing, and it's around 3 GB free now).