Greetings All,I have a new computer and was terribly disappointed with the IMC performance. My new rig has an Intel Q6700, ATI 3870 w/1024mb, a DFI Mobo w/PCIe 2.0, and few gigs of ram. I'm not really big on scenery, but it seems that even with everything turned off, and a few layers of visibility and non cumulus clouds my frame rates drop in the range of 5-9. Has anyone been able to set up some type of IMC conditions that are flyable? Care to share your tips and tricks?I fly the Flight1 ATR 72-500, FS2Crew, and My Traffic at 20%. When I break out of the clouds at +200 feet over the runway it brings me back to the days of my old Atari. Boy, that was fun. It just seems a little more difficult to get those same type of IMC conditions in the 21st century. :)Thanks,-Matt

ATI 3870 is not a good performer in heavy cloud layers. There has been alot of discussion about this in the Hardware forum. I had the 3870X2 and was getting around 10 frames in clouds--my 8800GTX gets low 20s in the same conditions.KyleFS box: Q6600 (@ 3.24 GHz), ASUS P5E3 Premium, 4 GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 (Cas 6-6-6-18-2T @ 1440 MHz), BFG 8800GTX 768, Soundblaster XFi Fatality, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Samsung Spinpoint F1 750 GB, Silverstone TJ09 case, PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 PSU, Vista Ultimate 64http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpg

The 3870 cannot handle clouds well at all in FSX. The only thing you can do to increase the framerate with the 3870 or 3870X2 is to keep the clouds and visibility layers to a minimum. The more you add the more your performance will decrease. Those cards just do not play well with FSX.Nvidia cards on the other hand do not exhibit the massive loss of performance associated with clouds within FSX. If you have the money to spare, and do not want slide show performance, you may want to consider opting for an Nvidia based solution.