You don't say which ATI card you're using or how much vram it has, but I've only seen this myself in cases of vram exhaustion. It happened occasionally on my old nvidia 7900 with sp2, not once since getting an 8800 with 768mb though. If you're using the bufferpools tweak and increasing it beyond the default 5000000, try removing that, or bring your terrain and global texture sliders left a bit and see if they go away.Cheers,-mike

Barry, it's not an SP2 issue.Try Mike's tweaks, they can really help.(I suggest to let FSX build a new FSX.cfg)Check also if your graphic card/cables are well plugged and perform a 3DMark test to see if everything is OK with your hardware

Thanks David and MikeI am using an ATI X800 with 256 meg RAM.I will do the new cfg thing - and see what happens.Thanks Barry

Barry, I see in your other post that you used an aircompressor to clean your card.Check that the fan is still working, it might be a heat issue as well!Cheers,

256 meg card and SP2... ouch. I think you might be asking a bit much of it. I had an X850 256 meg back when I was using FS9 and found it to be pretty much incapable of handling FSX.Barry if you read my post again I'm basically saying to not use the bufferpools tweak, if you are in fact using it. Increasing it beyond its default value uses more vram which I think you're already running out of. You could try setting a value for it below the default though, say 2 or 3 million and that might help, but performance will probably suffer.If you don't want to get a new card, which I recommend, one with at least 512mb, you'll need to pull the sliders left and make the best of it I think. You could also try running the sim at a lower screen resolution, that will free up vram and generally stress the card less as well.Good luck.-mike

Hi DavidNo - the fan is working OKI have been doing some testing - firstly, when using MEMSTATUS, I can see that reducing the scenery settings reduces the amount of video RAM being used. However, it seems to make no difference whether my RAM usage is over my actual physical vid RAM amount -ie up to 280 MB (which obviously includes some system RAM) or if I turn the settings down so that I am using less than the total amount of vid RAM - say around 220 MB. FPS remain the same for both conditions.What IS making a difference is where I am flying - or maybe more specifically, whether I am flying a mission or free flight. So far, I consistently get these "spikes" when flying the "ground control" mission number 4 - but do not get them when I fly free flight in the default area of Friday Harbour. There I seem to get an occasional ground texture flash.Now that I think about it - all of these problems that I have been reporting of spikes in the air occured in Mission 4 consistently - and the large green polygons in the air occured in Mission 3 consistently. Will do some more work on it tomorrow. Have yet to replace the cfg file with a fresh one.Barry

Hi Mike I have not used any "tweaks" at all. In fact, I don't appear to have a "bufferpools" section in my cfg. Are you saying that SP2 introduces a heavier vid load?In my posting above, I have said that I am indeed close to the max for this card - not that it appears to be affecting things such as sim smoothness or FPS.Something strange going on here.Barry

Hi Barry,I'd agree with Mike that a 256Mb card is probably not sufficient. I first tried FSX with a 9800Pro 128Mb and it soon 'died' trying to draw the scenery. Everything just went into a horrible blurry mess.I changed that for a 512Mb X1950Pro (still with my old P4 system) and it made a big difference regards graphics. FPS was still poor of course.Having built a new system with a 3870X2 the scenery is fantastic even with most sliders to max.I would look at a 512Mb PCI-E card if I were you.

Do you have VSYNC on or off? If off turn it on and see if that helps.

At the end of the day, it probably does come down to the video card. It is very strange - because changing settings seems to do nothing . In the areas that I am flying - mostly bush areas - I am getting smooth flight and FPS rock solid at 20 - regardless of what settings I have or what the vid card Ram usage reading in MEMSTATUS is.BUT - I have a consistent problem with these spikes in Mission number 4 - always there, and always a result of changing view direction -- even though, after changing over from ATI traytools control of AA and AF made me think that I had it solved (while in free flight) I'm not too sure about the V-sync thing - I always though that was for when you had very high FPS (above the framerate of your monitor) Barry

I'm using FSX with a 256MB ATI X1300 and 2GB of system RAM. My sliders are about midrange, Scenery Density at Dense, and Autogen at Normal. MemStatus routinely indicates Video Ram usage in the 300MB - 320MB range so video is clearly overflowing into system RAM. I have never seen these spikes or anything like them. The only video anomily I've ever seen is occasional texture flashing of the ground textures (usually taxiways and ramps) at two or three (default) airports.I'd like to have more video RAM but I don't think that 256MB is a show stopper. I know nothing about the X800 card; it may have issues tha I don't know about.R-EDIT: to add -- I'm running FSX, SP2, Accelleration. R-

The spikes are a result of your video card running out of memory. It showed up during beta testing of SP2 and that's how I know this.

>The spikes are a result of your video card running out of>memory. It showed up during beta testing of SP2 and that's>how I know this.Interesting Ed - thanks for that. I am wondering whether I should uninstall SP2 - I asked in another thread what was in SP2 and whether it was worth installing, but the answers I received were a bit ambiguous. I do really suspect SP2 to be my problem - as no amount of changing of scenery settings (right back to the very lowest settings) helps this problem. At the lowest settings MAMSTATUS is showing that my vid card RAM is nowhere near maxed out - but the problem remains.Abother starnge thing is that I have SP2 showing in my Control Panel/Add Remove programmes page as a separate programme able to be uninstalled - BUT there is no uninstallation item for either FSx itself or FSx SP1.Barry

If you unistall SP2, then have a look at your control panel, you should have an entry to remove SP1. Remove SP1 then an entry to remove FSX will be available.

GRAPHICS PROBLEM FIXED!! :-jumpy Removed SP2 and all is now OK:-cool BUT - the only entry I now have in my add/remove programmes list in Control Panel is for FSx -- no mention of SP1 at all. Is there some way that I can see within the Sim itself that SP1 is actually installed?? :-hmmm EDIT - never mind. I have found that the fix to "Lisbon Harbour" (as explained in FSInsider.com) is showing in my sim - so SP1 must be applied.It looks like I am now a happy camperBarry