i still cant seem to get good quilty from fs9. i think its the framrate but i dont know for sure. the game just seems to studder. there will be a frame then 2 seconds there will be another. its just not very clean at all.is there something i can download or change to get smooth gameplay? thanks   

intel celeron
2.70 ghz
504 mg ram
60 gb hard drive
intel 82845g/gl/ge/pe/gv grapics controller

if u need anything else tell me

Yea that could help, I can't see it solving the problem totally though if he's getting like 0.5 FPS?

Do you have anything running in the background? Maybe try disabling your AV and if you don't need to be connected to the net you could disable the firewall too.

Nice C-17 by the way. 8)

Hi SteelX,

Like Fozzer...... I'm thinking the integrated graphics card is the real root of the issue.  Add to that problem a Celeron processor which has a little less "horsepower" than a Pentium or one of the good AMD chips.

Then,..... the 512 M of RAM sounds good at first blush........ until you take a bunch of it to "share" with the onboard graphics processor.  And I assume that you are running Windows XP?  That ALONE takes 128 meg just to load itself.

So if the graphcis processor is grabbing say 128 meg and XP is grabbing 128 meg....and then you add in a few background programs stealing a few bytes...... pretty soon you are really running FS2004 in 384 meg or less.  So that is not helping at all.

Try cutting back all your settings in the "Settings" panels to minimums...and then adding features back in one at a time.  See if some particular stuff is just kuilling your frame rates.

If you are geting a slide show with everything cut back to minimums... then there is some other issue.

Also I remember seeing here back in the way distant past when 2004 just came out someone having a similar "slide show" type issue that was actually caused by the joystick and it's drivers.  Look in the REALLY old threads at the beginning of this forum at the topic headers that sound similar to your issue.

Have you run Dxdiag from the "Run" option in Windows yet?  What does IT report for you? 

And woah.... "504" meg of RAM?  Where did you get that number?  The normal nominal RAM number over 500 is 512.  504 sounds a bit suspect to me.  Maybe you have a bad RAM chip?  Maybe someone with more knowledge about RAM wil say this is OK.... but I don't remember hearing that number being typical.

Hope these thoughts help.....  I've really been "around the block" with the whole hardware issue getting stuff to run well too....so I feel for you.  I eventually bought a whole new machine just to run this sim... and even it (see specs below on trailer) is not as optimal as aI thought it would be based on Microsoft's unrealistic "minimum" specifications.


best,

...................john

Quote:


steelx that graphics controller is integrated/onboard isn't it? Well I had one too and I was having all kinds of trouble. I bought an AGP card and it runs much better now.

Yo, steelx.  At Walmart you can get good prices on nvidia and ati cards.  the 64 meg. cards there are now less than $75.  In fact, you can get a 128 meg card for just shy of $100.  Save up what you canand go for it.  with the rig you have, you can't go wrong.  Also, check your local sunday paper for the office max and best buy flyers if there are any.  Sometimes you can get good deals on ram at those stores.  even 128 more megs would give you a noticeable improvement. Till then, I would set all sliders all the way left and check unlimited for minimum frames.  Also, turn your weather and ai down.  Set all to basic. see whathappens and then adjust upward from there.

thanks forzzer. i dont know very much about video cards. about how many meg do i want on a card? like cowbot said 128. is that pretty good for it? thanks o ya and what brand should i get? or does it not matter?

steelx,

Right at the moment the 128 M card is sort of the "standard" level of memory......so that is the "target" I think you should head toward. 

The ATI Radeon 9800 XT I have has 256M of ram...... but most applications currently don't really use all this.  It was the top-of-the-line best rated card about 4 months ago,..... but the new generation cards are coming out now so it has slipped already  .

Such is computer hardware..... gold today, junk tomorrow.   

Of more importance than RAM is the "horsepower" of the video processing main chip on the card.  These can vary all over the place even within brands.

Watch out for similar sounding card names when comparing prices.  The Wizzard 9000 and the Wizzard 9000 pro may be VERY different performing cards... and the "pro" appelation doesn't always mean it is better.  Caveat Emptor.

Look in the "hardware" forum for a couple of threads that have some graphs of benchmark performance tests of various video cards so that you can compare overall processing performance speed to price and decide on "bang for the buck".

If you ask about this video card subject.... you will likely get two basic "schools of opinion" about this whole thing....... "NVidea is great and ATI it terrible" and "ATI is great and NVidea is terrible".  Up to you to decide if either "camp" is correct  .

My guess is that ANY 128 Meg AGP card will GREATLY improve your situation over the onboard graphics you have. 

OH.... make sure that your mother board supports an AGP video card before you buy one.  The mother board has to have an agp slot available on it for you to install one.  From your specs... it is likely that you DO have one.... but be sure.

best,

...................john