New System but can it cut the mustard??? Help me out!!

Pro Member First Officer
sonicninja First Officer

Hi folks, i recently bought the following system, specifically to play FS2004 and one or two other great flight sims:-

AMD Athlon 3500+ Processor
512MB DDR Memory
160GB Ultra-Fast SATA Hard Disk
256MB ATI Radeon 9550 Graphics with TV-out and DVI
16-Speed Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW Rewriter
Black Passant Gaming Chassis
17” LCD monitor with Integrated Speakers
6 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Ports (4 back, 2 front)
2 Firewire Ports (1 back, 1 front)
Ethernet 10/100/100
On-board RAID
6-Channel Surround Sound

When i installed FS2004 along with my many addons i spent the next 3 or 4 days trying to get the graphics/display settings right. So far using FPS set to unlimited i get between 9-40 FPS, the rates change every second, and when i set the FPS to about 20 the FPS go from 9-20 and change every second! Ive read up on the forums but im wondering if im doing anything else wrong, ive reduced other settings too but i feel like the game quality is being sucked out from me.......depressing after spending a grand on a machine that i thought would cut the mustard for FS2004......

Any hardware/software/setting tips would be greatly appreciated

Embarassed

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Pro Member Chief Captain
Jonathan (99jolegg) Chief Captain

I don't know a great deal about PC's, but your video card seems ok, and so does your CPU. Your RAM could do with upgrading sometime, but FS04 can run fine with 512MB. You should be able to run average to good settings in display for a good performance. 40 FPS is very good, average is around 25-30. Depends how long it stays at 40 FPS really 😕 . RadarMan or TTT can help you more 😀

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

As he said, excellent system (upgrade that ram).
Set the FPS at 30 and let it fluctuate, it has to because you go from heavily graphic areas (airports, cities) to barren land.
The higher you set the clouds the lower the FPS, as with water (shut off) traffic (lower to 75%) scenery and autogen (normal), shadows (off).
With settings like that you should get good FPS.
Use the latest drivers for your video card, and keep your sound (in the sim settings) at medium or even low, they use up ram.
Let us know how you do.

Pro Member First Officer
sonicninja First Officer

thanks for the tips, i have just ordered another 512mb of RAM and im going to take your advice on the settings i shall post my results later....

many thanks

😂

Does the amount of PAI traffic downloaded and installed effect the performance rates at all??

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

The amount won't but the aircraft showing up as traffic will.
Try everything out first, get it going the way you want and then start adding, one at a time.

Radar

Guest

Thanks for the tips/advice, those settings worked great, however i did increase the autogen and im still getting a constant 30 FPS which im more than haapy with.

Just waitin on my other 512mb RAM to arrive now, cant wait to try it out, ill post some screen shots once its installed.

thanks again 😂

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

👍 30FPS is perfect and the extra ram will make your textures render faster.

Radar

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