I'll add to the mix of posts. Please be aware that I've never posted up until now, but read posts pretty much daily. I've been simming since the Commodore 64 days, and very much enjoy our hobby!I thought I'd just throw my stuff out there.Yes, I know many of the lovers and haters will not care, and yes I've read through the countless posts pro and con FSX. : )I own an Alienware ALX with an AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 Processor (still running Windows XPsp2-non 64 version), 2 gigs of RAM, a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra w/256 megs (newest drivers), and a couple of hard drives. I went all-out when I purchased this two years ago.FS9 runs awesome on my system, with all of the trimmings including everything maxed and countless add-ons including ultimate traffic, ultimate terrain, tons of payware airports, activesky, etc etc etc.I knew FSX was going to tax my system, so I went in knowing that I couldn't have everything maxed obviously.It is INDEED amazing, and the flow and flight dynamics are wonderful...in remote areas. I have done the Autogen tweaks, and in order for me to have frames in the mid-teens, I have to have ALL traffic sliders off, Autogen at minimal, no light bloom, mesh and terrain at abouthalf, water at minimal, shadows off, etc. In remote areas I will see pretty good frames and the sim is a joy, and amazing. When I get into a metro area like Chicago, my frames drop to about 5 or 6...even with many sliders turned off.So, my question is, for those of you absolutely enjoying FSX, how would you compare your system to mine? Do you have to turn off most items to truly enjoy the sim? I am worried that when I start adding AI aircraft and scenery, that the sim is going to crawl at about 2-3 FPS. For those hard-cores out there, what are you having to give-up, in order to enjoy the sim?I knew things were going to be slow-going, but I really want to get the most out of this sim and start adding AI, since I like to fly commercial jets.But one thing is for sure, the sim is stunning for me in remote areas!Thanks for reading. Please remember this is not a slam either way.

Hello Bob,Welcome to 'posting' in the forums. I hope you'll consider posting a little more often. :) Now, where do I begin? I mean, this could become a dissertation. But I'll try to keep it somewhat short to start off with.As you probably already know, what perfomance you get depends on a LOT of factors. You've listed your system specs, approximate location of where your flying, and some of your settings. Still, not everything has been revealed. Let me take a moment to venture a guess. On the 'Scenery' settings Tab you have 'Level of detail radius' set at Large, and/or... you are flying an aircraft equipped with the Garmin 1000. Or perhaps you have the 'Special effects detail' set to High, I found setting that to Medium to make a big difference on my system. Ok, those are just pure guesses, but I wouldn't doubt if I hit on something with one of them! Or I could be completely off the mark with my guesses. Perhaps when you say you have Autogen at minimal, you mean you have it set at 'Sparse'. Sparce in FSX actually loads a lot more autogen in FSX than it the Very Dense setting in FS9. I have my autogen slider set in the middle at 'Normal', BUT, I have done a tweak in the 'fsx.CFG' file that actually reduces the amount it would normally make at any given slider setting. I don't know what the autogen tweak you have done is. As for systems, I think mine is probably comapable to yours. Mine is around two years old, but it's an Intel/ATI setup as opposed to your AMD/Nvidia rig.System Specs:Intel P4 3.4C(C = Northwood Core with Hyperthreading) on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe(Intel 875P + ICH5R Chipset), Zalman 7000a-Cu HS/Fan, Enermax RG651P-VE 550W PSU, 2 GB Mushkin eXtreme Performance(2-2-2) Dual Channel PC3200 RAM, Samsung 214T MultiSync 21" Digital LCD Monitor, Sapphire Radeon X800 XT PE Videocard with Catalyst v6.9 Driver, DirectX 9.0c, Creative Audigy2 Platinum Soundcard with OpenAL Beta Driver v2.08.0002, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Speakers, Western Digital 250 GB w/8 MB Cache 7200 RPM Parallel ATA HDD, WinXP Pro SP2, Norton SystemWorks and Personal Firewall 2006I have done a fair amount of tweaking to my WinXP OS that helps with gaming performance to a slight degree, and made sure my BIOS is properly tweaked(AGP Aperture Size set to 256 MB). You can download my WinXP Tweak Guide here(ignore the FS2004 stuff for FSX)...http://home.comcast.net/~linuxrh/FS2004_an...on_Guide_V2.zipFor the leanest qand meanest WinXP I would recommend downloading and learning how to use Ken Salter's FSAutoStart available here in the Avsim file library, although I've never personally used it.Regarding the concern for available overhead in FSX for addons such as AI Traffic and third party aircrafts, I have the same concern. I feel that if I want to keep the settings I currently have and continue to receive the performance I'm getting that I will have to live with a default FSX, and no flying into cities with an FSX Garmin 1000 equipped aircaft. OR, I could turn off autogen completely and probably get some AI and possibly run third party aircrafts and/or use the Garmin 1000. This is the kind off tradeoffs that come with using 2 year old systems for the latest version of Flight Sim. From what I have read using just about any amount of Autogen in FSX is pretty hard on performance, but I haven't run it yet with no autogen at all and I know I'd rather not, at least not without some trees anyway! If we had the latest and greatest systems things would probably be a little different, we might feel there's a little overhead available. Still, I think this sim will be somewhat taxing even for future systems for some time.Now, I said I wanted to keep this a little short(even though I have not, hehe), so I will end this by posting some screenshots and letting you know I have done some tweaks to FSX and to the fsx.CFG file(I mentioned the autogen amount tweak earlier). I would be willing to go over every tweak I have done if you are interested. It's not a whole lot of tweaks, just several. But first take a look at my screenshots and let me know what you think and what your settings are compared to mine. I took off from KORD and flew around some to see what Chicago was like compared to my home city of Denver. Performance was a little lower, but not by too awful much. FPS was usually in the 12-15 FPS range, but it did vary from that depending. Depending on how much car traffic was in view in addition to my distance from KORD, and how much water was in view while in and around downtown Chicago. Keep in mind, I was not flying a Garmin 1000 equipped aircraft! Around Denver I get around 15-17. I switched to the Baron 58 with the G1000 while I was flying a little bit outside of downtown Chicago to see what would happen and FPS dipped down to 8.5. Note: what I think about FSP in FSX1) 10 and under: Unacceptable and I don't want to live with it.2) 10-15: Flyable, but not quite what I call acceptable, but I can live with it for a little time, to get some eye candy, I suppose, lol.3) 15-20: Nice, definitely flyable and enjoyable.3) 20 and above: Great, I'm loving it!Cheers

You will have to do 2 major tweaks on your system. The 50% texture tweak and the low impact AI packages. With air traffic below 33% and ground 15% or below.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159552.jpgThen you should get 20 to 25 FPS around big cities.

Thank you both SO much for taking the time to respond. I will look into that 50% texture tweak and AI tweak. I suspect I can find info on those tweaks somewhere in these posts? Thanks!Tinsoldier, You were almost right on minus a couple of sliders here and there which I set far to the left, if not off all together. You had me pegged! But yes, I am concerned about how FSX would handle the load if I added the amount of add-ons I presently have for FS9. I expected my rig to handle this a bit better, but hey...what can you do? I am going to tweak it and enjoy it as best I can.Thanks again...really appreciated. : )Bob