There's no substitute for horsepower

[Willy]

My old comp was a 10 year old custom build AMD Athlon XP 2000 running at 1.7ghz with 1g of ram and a nVidia FX 5200 with 128mg ram. With the scenery and autogen turned down to about medium, 75% AI, I'd average about 12fps in populated areas, 20 in the boonies and in some dense areas with clouds visible, 2-4fps. I got good at flying a slide show and trying to stretch my framerates.

The new comp is also a custom build, but a Pentium D 3.0ghz dual core, 4g ram and a nVidia 7900GT card with 256 ram. I've locked the frames at 25 for multiplayer compatibility and with the scenery and autogen turned up, 100% AI and high detail clouds, so far I've been getting 24.8fps almost constantly with an occasional bobble down to 22ish for a split second.

Yep, there's no substitute for horsepower. FS9 is like a new sim with all my favorite aircraft and scenery already installed.

[rayrey10]

Congrats on the new rig, Willy! I would like to get a new PC sooner than later, "later" is winning that fight.

[rpjkw]

Willy, I'm buying the parts for an UPGRADED rig. My current CPU isn't much newer than your old one. I quit FS9 all together because slide shows make for lousy flying. I have a new AMD Phenom X4 970BE, Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU cooler, Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 mobo. Next month I'll grab a eVGA GTX 460 1GB video card, 8 GB G.Skil 1600 RAM, Window 7 64 bit. Then I'll be able to enjoy FS9 again and, who knows, I might play with FSX.

Your post has me really chomping at the bit! I can't wait!

Bob

[Willy]

Bob, I bought this one from one of the staff members who originally built it for FSX a few years ago, but it had issues with that sim so it got an "early retirement" from him. But it does run FS9 great though. Right now, I'm installing my paint and AI traffic tools on it. Can't find my blasted Paint Shop Pro disk though....

[modelr]

Willy, you got an excellent FS9 machine there.

My new machine has AMD A8 3870 4core running at 3.0MHz, 16G Ram, and Radeon XFX HD6750 w/1GB DDR3 memory. I haven't unlocked my frames, but I get solid 29.8 - 30 FPS, with all I can throw at
it, including full FSGenesis mesh, BlueSky photo scenery, full AI, UT, and LAX full on. SMOOOOTH as silk.

My FSX still stutters a little, but I think it's my HDD, (USB) not being properly defragged, yet. P3D runs silky smooth, even at 8-12 frames, (first try, no adjustments, yet, in default area.)

Enjoy, my old machine was very close to yours, and it ran FS9, in all it's iterations, (stock, Golden Wings, Silver Wings, Fully loaded,) very well at a steady 29.8FPS.

Best thing I did was install WIN7 64bit. Really does help.

[Lionheart]

Congrats Willy!

:icon29:

I remember when I got a new rig in the early FS2004 days. Special effects turned on, like dust behind the tires. I was really excited.