UpDating PC

[bobhegf]

Fellows I need some help and cost. I want to update the preformance of my pc inorder to get better framerates for CFS2.When I am flying in VC mode with no cloudes or any infracture I get between 85 and 77 fps.When I add cloudes it dropes to about 38fps or lower and that is with no infrastructure.

Thies are the specks to the PC. It is a Gateway rebuilt. I am running a 300 GiG harde drive with a 600w powerunit I think. Genuine Intel (R) CPU 2140 @ 1.60GHz.
Memory (ram) 2045MB
32bit ops systum Vista Home Premium.

I need to know what I can do that will not cost to much to improve the fps for CFS2 atleast to 100fps if not more and keep the frame rates at about 50 to 60fps runnung CFS2 wide open.

[bobhegf]

My vid card is a ATI Radeon 4300/4500.

[simonu]

Its not easy to answer your question Bob because there are so many factors that affect frame rates. For me getting stable frame rates is more important than getting big numbers.
The TV and movie cameras run between 24 to 30 frames per second and that seems smooth enough to the eye because the stills are blurred with movement. Video games are different because the still images are sharp so movement seems less fluid but still, I am content with a stable 30 frames a second with effects like flak and smoke on screen.

Your rig, running 2 gig of ram and a reasonable graphic card is doing ok to get 70+fps. But at 1.6ghz the CPU is "relatively" slow and so becomes the bottle neck. I'm not saying you need a new CPU, that goes without saying, we all need one of those.
What you need to consider is things like
what proccesses are running in the back ground that you don't need when flying?

what addons have you installed that may slow down CFS2, you are aware that planes and infrastructure without levels of detail will cause frame rates to nose dive, the same is also true for certain image formats, extended bitmaps also contain levels of detail that speed up loading and make better use of graphic memory. Check the image format of your clouds and other textures especially if you have been editing them yourself.

Other things you should try are changing the various performance settings in CFS2 and check the difference running in full screen or windowed mode.

I'm afraid none of this will help you, it does not matter how good a PC is, or indeed how good the game is, it is all in the perception of the player. Thats you. If you cannot suspend disbelief then you will only ever experiance playing a video game. If you can suspend your disbelief, well then, happy flying and good hunting.