Meh, I'll bite also.When FSX first came out, I was running an opteron 146 @ 2.8Ghz with only 1gb of memory. It ran poorly.Since then, I've upgraded to:Asus p5K-Deluxe (0311 Bios)E6600 @ 3.5Ghz2GB G.Skill Ram @ DDR2-9607900 GS500 GB SATA II HDNow, even with Ultimate Terrain, etc - I'm locked at 29FPS and RARELY drop.

>Well, I should probably add my experieince to the thread,>too..!> ...>I figure I spent (after a few rebates) around $925.00.>>Now, off to flying again...Great and under $1000, nice quad, looks like the 640MB GTS may not be needed after all. Did you overclock the quad at all?

You guys gotta tell me what I

Let me add my final $.02 to this. Yes, I let the "Macho" in me with my new powerful system take over. I thought....I should be able to run on UNLIMITED FRAMES because my system was that good. Well, I now concur with others in this thread. FSX runs great at 25 (mine is set to 35) and it runs beautifully WITHOUT STUTTERS. Yes, I initially turned of my AV and got a few more frames and less stuttering. Actually it was quite smooth. But NOTHING made it as fluid as turning my frames down from the MACHO "Unlimited" setting to the reasonable level of 25-35. I, too, will now turn off my frame counter and concentrate on the flight I'm flying. Because, now, the sim doesn't stop and start microscopically when terrain is attempting to load. I think that adding Cloud 9, FS Genesis, and finally Ultimate Terrain is very taxing on ANY system. Letting it breathe by turning down the frames gives you back the fluid sensation of flight. Unlimited frames is now NOT the way to go with this sim because of the spectacular scenery addons that are available to the simmer.

Well, as if you all need anymore toys to make things rock and roll, have any of you tried using all that nice power as I have and let a Matrox TripleHead2Go splitter port your FSX onto three 19" LCD monitors? I've got a E6400 DuoCor 2 with my new Nvidia 8800 640meg care....wow...4 gig ram to boot and although there are still situations that will bring it down, for the most part we're talking constnat 25FPS (limited).Randy Jura, KPDX

>Great and under $1000, nice quad, looks like the 640MB GTS may>not be needed after all. Did you overclock the quad at all?Not yet - everything is at stock speeds for now. Since I've had the rig up and running less than 48 hours, I'm still in the re-install all necessary software mode (Office, Photoshop, etc.).I do hear that the Q6600 and GigaByte motherboard combination is a good platform to overclock, so I'm sure I'll try my hand at it as I get time. I, too, debated on 320MB vs. 640MB on the 8800. I had found a great deal at NewEgg on the 320 ($245 after a rebate), and I just couldn't justify spending more, so I jumped on it. So far it is looking like a good decision - but the 320 MB of extra memory sure couldn't hurt at all!

>You guys gotta tell me what I

What wattage is your power supply?Sounds like there is not sufficient power getting to your system...Try runing DXDIAG in your start-> run dialogue,,,,,does the spinning cube spin freely, or is it choppy?Did you defrag after your installs of software?

I am actually running a dual boot setup. One goes into Windows XP and the other into Vista. I have tried many games under each operating system and all of them are more stable and faster under XP. I have an Assus P5NE 32 SLI Plus mother board. I have an Antec 650 watt power supply. One thing that makes me not look too closely at my system is that I have played Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander on it. Even at full detail, lots of units on the field and huge explosions with a lot of debris flying around the games have not even come close to stuttering. Every game I

Another Update:Hooked up a 2nd monitor to the 8800 tonight, and more nice surprises!The 2nd monitor offers accelerated graphics too, I was able to run Google Earth full screen on the second monitor and FSX on the main monitor, and my locked 25 fps held up fine. I used FSXget to track my flight live in Google Earth as I flew in FSX.I also added an extra 2GB of ram, more for my video work than FSX but it worked fine with the sim. I applied the Vista memory command to make use of the ram in FSX. No out of memory errors and flew for over an hour tonight, with Google Earth open at the same time.Without a doubt this has been the best PC upgrade yet.

You should see how many fps you get in FS9 just for the #### of it.:) Well man, I think you convinced me of this cpu. Can't wait to get some cash and build a new rig.

All I have to say is lock your frames between 20-25 fps (this is the only thing that truly helped my experience), anything over that seems to makes the sim choppy. And make sure to give your system some head way by pulling some of the slidders to the left.

>Well, as if you all need anymore toys to make things rock and>roll, have any of you tried using all that nice power as I>have and let a Matrox TripleHead2Go splitter port your FSX>onto three 19" LCD monitors?....>Randy Jura, KPDXRandy - sounds great having 3 monitors running and keeping your framerate up must be great to use!Just discovered the new instant on from sleep state. The PC seems to shut down fully, no lights, no fans, etc, but just a mouse press and its fires back up where I left off with no delay.

Here's a link to the Vista memory command to solve out of memory errors:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...99256&mode=full

After much expierimenting, I discovered that if I lowered my Texture and Mesh resolution sliders most of the way to the left, the ground textures were slightly less crisp/clear but my FPS went from an average around 12.5 to 23-25 with the target FPS set for 25. Thats with some traffic.