NewWorldOrder

Hi, That's exactly what I meant. And of course buying the fastest CPU you can afford is not the worst thing you can do. All I meant was that this is not absolutely neccessary. The performance of the system also depends on how well the componentsfit together. That was what I meant with balancing.And for the memory size issue: I have to admit that the statments I made based on knowledge and experiences that were made quite some years ago. At that time it was a fact that if installing more than 3GB into a system running on a 32bit OSwould result in unstable system operations. Maybe this is outdated in the meantime. Maybe there are solutions for this available now that haven't been around back then. Maybe they came with OS updates or whatever. I haven't put much effortinto this for some time now as I have become used to 64bit systems. So I assume that you are correct if you say a 32bit OS will run stable on more than 3GB RAM. And when it comes to the CPU load factor: I checked that and found out that the core assigned to FS is running on a load factor between 70% and 100%, while the other 3 cores are taking a break with only 3-5% load. But the "FS-core" almost never reachesthe 100%. Most of the times it stays at around 90% load while FS is running. But there are occasional peak when the 100% are reached. The load factor of all cores combined, with 3 of them almost inactive, results in an overall CPU load of around 50%.Of course, FS wise this is irrelevant as the core assigned to FS is running on a very high load. Because of that I must admit that I made some interpretation errors for whcih I want to apologize.But the fact remains that a well balanced system is the alpha and the omega if you want your PC to run at its' full capacity.That's being said, I hope we are all friends again. :( CheersMike

Hi,to those posters mentioning that my statements are incorrect: Wrong. but maybe I did not find the right words to describe what I mean. So with this I try to fix that. You are correct when you say that FS is not a modern program and that it does not handover graphics related calculations over to the GPU in the same scale as modern games do. But: Every CPU available, even the ones in the lower segment are more than fast enough to handle FS, even with extreme settings. If you take one of those low end CPUs, startup FS and look into any application which shows you the CPU load, you can see that it will not rise above 50% (most of the times). The result is that CPU power is not the primary issue here. Next thing is, that even the fastest CPU will not operate at its' full performance if the rest of the system does not fit to it. If you want to unfold your CPU's max, you have to build a well balanced system.That begins with the CPU and end with the PSU.The statement "get the fastest hardware you can get" is not the ultimate answer to this question. Take a high end system which is not very well balanced hardwarewise and compare it with a medium end system which has the best balancing it couldget and you will see that you can get better results with the slower system. It all depends how well the components fit and work together. But that is what I meant when I posted that I do not want to go into details too much.And when it comes to the graphics card: At least I observed that a modern graphics card is able to improve performance of FS in a great scale when it comes to displaying a huge amount of traffic, even if it doesn't take over all of the calculationsfor rendering and so on, as mentioned before. Of course, display size is a factor too. One example: If you had a 19" monitor attached to your older card and you are now using the same monitor on your brand new, high end card, there won't be thatmuch difference but still a noticeable one. But the gap gets bigger if you use a bigger, say 22" screen. That is because it is the higher resolution where the newer card can show what it is capable of, where the older one would go on its' knees.And believe me, I am into FS quite some years now and my FS has seen many system configurations. It has seen simple upgrades, where only single components were changed as well as completely new systems.That being said, I hope I found the right words this time.CheersMike

Hi,wrong. It has to do with how Windows XP ( for example ) is controlling the available amount of memory. When you switch on your system, you would see the 4GB of RAM as it should be. After the boot sequence is finished and Windows is running,Windows takes over control of the RAM. If you would open your general system information screen, you would only see 3.25GB attached. This is because Windows is then blocking some of the RAM for own internal drivers and modules as you mentioned. The BIOS however is still operating the correct amount of RAM. This leads to Read/Write errors because the memory controller has to handle two different informations, which leads to data being written into sections of the RAM, whichis blocked by Windows.There is a way to make Windows recognise the whole amount of RAM using a no-cache script which has to be implemented before Windows has booted. But from what I have seen with my own eyes ( I used to work in a computer store some yearsago before I changed to airfreight ), that solution is not the answer either. That was about the time when the first 64bit operating systems became available and customers wanted to have more than 4GB of RAM, but without upgrading to a 64bit OS.In both ways, the systems we tested with were running extremely unstable and we faced many system freezes and crashes. Searching through forums at that time confirmed that with Windows XP 32bit you won't be able to use more than 3GB ofRAM effectively and without stabilty issues.I hope I found the right words in English to explain what I had in mind.cheersMike

Hi acmech,FS9 does not have that huge impact on CPU performance. Important is the amount of RAM and, even if it has been around for some time now, a (relatively) powerful graphics card. Why is this? FS, as well as most other "modern" programs, are not that CPU hungry but they wantto have enough recources available when it comes to RAM and video. You can run FS without any problems on an old say AMD Athlon64 3000+. But the problem is this: When you arrive at a major airport and you have AI traffic at 100%, you gonna see a bunch of planes on your screen.That is the image you get on arrival.Responsible for displaying those is the graphics card. To control all the AI traffic you need RAM. Why not the CPU? Because the controlling engine gets loaded into the RAM once you start your FS. The more RAM you have, the more of it is available for the system to allocate to FS. The result is, that the system will be able to handle more complex operations which of course require more recources. As a previous poster mentioned, you are not able to pack your old system full with RAM. Therefore you need a 64bit OS.It doesn't matter which one you choose. But if you want this 64bit OS to operate smoothly, you need a 64bit CPU as well. This would force you to buy a new CPU,RAM,most probably new Mainboard. That's only the base stuff as I do not want to go into details too much.But attaching let's say 8GB of RAM into a system running with a 32bit OS would not make you happy. It would crash all the time as the OS would not be able to control such an amount of RAM.A new CPU would mean a dual- or multicore CPU. Although FS does not support multi-CPU operation, it could take advantage of it. Example: If you install a dualcore CPU, you would be able to "tell" the operating system which programs and applications should run on what core.So you would be able to tell the OS to run all programs on core 1 while you force FS to run on core 2. That would mean that core 2 would have nothing to do but processing FS, which would have a noticeable effect on game performance.Th same is with the graphics card: FS does not support all those features modern graphics cards have. But a nVidia GTX260 has much more power than say a GeForce 6600. This leads to the fact, that the GTX260 simply has more reserves to display all the stuff in your FS. and that would lead to the fact that the sim is running more smoothly. I know, you do not wanna read specs and how great they are. But I want to give you an example of what I mean. First of all, I also have every imaginable Addon available and I am running on 100% AI traffic as well, as I want my sim as realistic as possible. An older system I used was: AMD X2 6000+ , 2GB of RAM, GeForce 8800GT running on Windows XP 32bit. The average framerates were at approx 40 to 50, droppping to 10 to 20 when on a major airport. That is not quite satisfying.That is the system I currently use: AMD Phenom X4 955 , 8GB RAM, nVidia GTX460, running on Windows Vista 64bit ( Windows7 for all non-FS programs ). Now the framerates do not drop below 75. Never. And this is although FS does neither support multicore CPUs nor all the features of the newer graphics card. It's just because the system has more reserves which it can allocate to FS. I hope this post gives you an idea of what I am trying to say.Hope this helps a bit.Greetings from EDDS Mike

Exactly. now I am happy again :Applause:I didn't even think of that. But once mentioned, it was obvious that it was the source of the problem.

Hi,yeah, that's it!! Thanks a lot I have overseeen the resolution mode 1680x1050x32 and instead had the 1680*1050*16 mode active. thanks again, you made my day !!!CheersMike

No I did not, as there are almost 5 years of modding done in my FS and I do not want to do all that again, I do more modding than actual flying, just to get it as realistic as possible. But I changed the hardware before, video cards too, and neverhad this problem :( I could start crying :Cry:I reinstalled FS before by backing up everything and copy it into the new installation, but everytime I do this I am afraid anything gets damaged.

Thanks for the tip. I just ried that, but without success. It even got worse, as I got an error message stating that there is an incompatible module installed (fssound.dll). That dll is not incompatible, that's for sure.And it did not improve the image quality at all. :(@vortex: It's a 777, not a 767. What's wrong with it, is that if you look closely you can se the sharp borders between the different colors coming from illumination of the model. On top it is much brighter than on thebottom of the fuselage. But those transitions have been smooth before, not as sharp as it is now. It just looked more realistic.CheersMike

Hi all,I have a delicate problem and I hope someone out there knows how to fix it. I recently installed a new VGA card, a nVidia GTX 460. It replaced the old nVidia 8800GT I had installed before. Now FS looks quite ugly.Modifying the settings had no success. And using the setting in the nVidia control panel to override FS did not solve the problem either. Same goes for nVidia Inspector, which I tried too.I do not know how to explain what it looks like, therefore I added some pics to give you a vague idea of my problem. Before changing the card every transition of colors was smooth and looking real. You can see what it looks like now on the screenshots. It is really ugly:IMost of the pics are taken at night as it is more obvious than during daylight, but I can asure you, on daylight it doesn't look any better.I really hope that someone is aware of the problem as I spent the last few years to make heavy mods to my FS to get it as real as possible and I don't want it to be ruined because of this. :(:(:Doh:Thanks to all in advance.CheersMikeP.S.: My system:Gigabyte MA790X-DS4AMD Phenom II X2 5508GB DDR2 800 OCZ PlatinumGainward nVidia GTX460 Golden Sample2x Samsung Spinpoint 750GB HDD ; S-ATA Raid 0Windows Vista home Premium 64bit ( I know folks....it sucks )