Hi All,I have had FSX for about 3 weeks and had the demo before that. i have been using the sims for the last 15 years. My machine had an nvidia ti4200 w/64mb. Yes, that's 64 meg. :-) My PC is a P4 @2.8 w/1.5gb Dual Channel. The demo ran OK for me. I modified the number of buildings and trees with the auto-gen config tweak. So I bought the sim and a new ATI X1600 AGP with 256mb. I worked with it for over a week trying to get rid of constant stutters. I searched every forum I could find and tried every tweak I could. I used third party graphics card tweak tools. I monitored my harddrive activity and the stutters were not HD access related. I turned everything down in the sim and on the graphics driver and still had constant stutters in flight(every 4-6 seconds and constantly while taxiing). I disabled all unecessary services and disabled devices that I thought may have caused a conflict, sound device, on-board nic and nothing changed the stutters at all. I then remembered I didn't have this issue with my ti4200 card and the demo so I put the old card back in and it was perfectly smooth.Last night I returned my ATI X1600 and purchased an Nvidia 7600GS and it works perfectly with absolutely no stutters. It really seems to be a driver issue with ATI because I had this problem with all settings turned down or off and no weather.The only tweaks I have made are lower cloud and tree textures, I couldn't stand the lowered land textures, I enjoy the 1 meter textures too much. I have limited the buildings and trees via the autogen config tweak. I now run with the sim locked at 22 with dense scenery and sparse autogen which still gives me plenty of trees while on the ground, and I run with any weather I want. I mostly fly GA aircraft and fly from small to medium size New England airports but can fly out of Boston's Logan airport and still maintain 17-20. I have air traffic at 8% for both GA and comercial aircraft and cars and boats turned off.I have no aligence to ATI or Nvidia just reporting on what worked for me. If you have the chance try a different card. I am happy with FSX performance and I do not consider 15 fps flyable it appears too choppy to my eyes, I really need at least 20fps to see it smoothly.I hope this might help someone overcome what I know is a very aggrevating issue.Thanks and good luck,Tom

Odd... while I love my ATI (and will NOT give it up) I am hearing a lot of reports that the ATI drivers and/or cards are having signifigant issues with FSX. I wonder if there is some truth to the claims. Perhaps an IT guy could figure this out? I certainly do not have the credentials or time to really understand if there could be a real issue with ATI and FSX.

Well i used to think that, Rob (see the 11fps thread) has a stunning system with a state of the art nvidia card and has the same problems.

*shrugs*I get considerably good framerates in FSX, even for my crappy system. 3500+ AMD, 1 GIG RAM. The only redeeming factor is the video card, Radeon 1900XTX 512 Video RAM. I have been tweaking XP for a long time so understanding system resource allocation seems to be nearly natural for me. I wonder if some of these issues stem from CPU overusage through system resources etc.I get a solid 17FPS in major cities with autogen at normal, 30+ FPS outside said cities.

it was a flip of the coin for me when i was deciding between x1600 and 7600gs. guess i picked the right coin:-)

What driver version are you running? I have the same card but am having stuttering and massive pauses.

Hi Leafhopper,I am using the latest ones from Nvidia's site 93.71. Like I said I tried everything with the ATI drivers and hardware tweaks, but when I put my old Nvidia ti4200 back in it ran fine. So I went out and traded in my x1600 for the 7600GS and now have no stutters. Finally enjoying the sim. Hope you are able to solve the problem. I currently don't have any special driver settings to speak of, but if you have any questions give me a shout.thanks,tom

Tom, you've made my day. I have a X850XT 256meg agp and suffered what I call "microstutters" in FSX only. I guess I must have tried all the Cat 6 series drivers but your post forced me to try older drivers.I presently use the CAT 5.9 and they work smoothly in FSX.This microstutter is not happening in FS9 which I still run and use.Thanks again. I can now use FSX with max settings. CPU is AMD64 3800 (singlecore)Pierre

and could it be a difference in card manufacturer ? everyone seems to be mentioning type of card (the ati/nvidia chip) but not who actually made/sold it.whenever i download lastest nvidia drivers for my Inno 7800gt's, they always result in graphical glitches...on FSX, Company of Heroes etcIf i download latest drivers from Inno, who make my 7800gt's, they always work perfect. Their driver revisions are always slightly behind the official nvidia driver revision. Guess they've done something slightly dodgy that makes their cards incompatible with nvidias native drivers :)anyway, just my thought on why some people may be experiencing different results.