gunksflyer

and one other thing -- you mention that popping in some more RAM would be a good idea instead. if budget weren't a primary concern, would you just toss in another two gigs of the kingston and fill up the mobo capcity? don't i run into a problem with going beyond a certain amount of unbuffered memory at some point? (sorry to be a real noob here, but i have to admit i don't understand memory properly at all.)moreover, is 4 gigs of memory it worth it if i'm going to load xp pro and not vista on this thing?

thanks man -- appreciate the input. someone else has just suggested I ditch the RAID configuration and I think you;re both right. do you think I should switch to a 10,000 RPM drive like the raptor?not overclocking, so i was thinking of using the ... gasp... stock heatsink. this case is apparently something of an air conditioner, so i thought that would be fine. mistake?

Hoping to get a reasonable experience with FSX now and be ready for that famous DX10 update, whenever that appears. CPU: C2D E6600 Mobo: Intel D975XBX2KR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 PSU: Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W 2xSeagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s (RAID 0) Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower SAMSUNG 18X DVD

FSX runs pretty well for me -- stutters are rare, and it runs pretty smoothly even when the FPS dips, but i do have one odd and really irritating issue: textures and scenery that flash. the biggest problems are ground textures around runways, but it will occasionally happen with aircraft surfaces and clouds. for instance, the crossbar on the ultralight blinks like mad in VC mode. it looks a lot like a problmem i used to have in FS9, which I got rid of by unchecking "transform and lighting." obviously that's gone in FSX.my video card (Radeon 9800XT) should able to handle this... i have the latest driver. my processor's not a brand new dual core, but it's not exactly a slowpoke either (athlon 64 FX-51). does anyone have any idea what the problem is, or how i might be able to fix it?

Another flickering issue, but I think this one is different from the one mentioned in the readme file (and a few posts up): runway and some aircraft cockpit textures are flickering/flashing badly. (The runway is a problem when you're on it or close to it; an example of the aircraft problem is the crossbar on the ultralight that you see in VC mode.) It looks like exactly the same problem I used to have with FS9, which was resolved by unchecking the "transform and lighting" option. That option doesn't seem to exist in FSX, and again, this doesn't seem to be the apron texture issue described in the demo's readme file.In other threads I noticed that in the past, other users seemed to have exactly the same issue (and solution) with video cards other than my own, but fwiw I have a Radeon 9800XT.Ideas?