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Got a small performance boost by disabling sliders. Wow...big difference between setting 1 and setting 2 for graphics. As far as object density goes - where would I go about setting that? I'm looking through the terrain-related sliders in CFS3 config and nothing is jumping out at me as far as what slider(s) I want to tweak...

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a try when I get home tonight - I'll report on my results!

I took an extremely conservative bet on a 7300GT card - chosen because it beats the performance of the 9600XT, but mostly because the mfg only calls for a 300W power supply (and it was only $50). Well, I'm happy to report that this card has allowed my antique system to clear the bar - just barely! I'm playing on just all 1's right now for sliders - and yes, yes, I know, I'm not getting anywhere NEAR the "real" OFF experience, but get a load of my system specs in my earlier posts...I'm happy just to be playing the game at all on my machine. I'm very consistently at the 30 fps mark (I've got my config file set to max out at 30 fps) and I'm not seeing any of the choppiness I was getting with the old ATI card. Even on landings - with a slowly rotating prop blade animating on screen, hangers whizzing by, etc - I'm only dropping to the low-20 range, which I can live with. I think I'm going to just play the game with the sliders on 1 for a while just because I'm tired of fussing with it and I just want enjoy the overall sim experience (which is wonderful, by the way!). At some point down the road I'll tweak with the sliders to see just how much performance I can squeak out. And of course at some point my squadron CO will approve my requisition form for me to build a new PC and all will be well...

Yeah, I'm definitely going the "do it yourself" route w/the next PC. To be truthful, the Vaio has really been a great machine for me all these years - it's really met my needs all along in all areas, but with OFF I think I've finally asked just too much of it! That's a really good thought to buy a new case...my only misgiving there is that these Vaio's (and Sony in general) seem to have quite a rep for non-standard specs, so lord knows what else I would run into in terms of sizing issues. Here is my last ditch attempt - I found this card... 100258L Radeon HD 3650 It makes no specific demands for a particular power supply minimum (although that might not necessarily be saying much, but I figure it's better than the cards that specifically call for a 400W power supply!) and reading through the customer reviews there is a lot of anectdotal evidence of people running this card with < 300 W power supplies. I can get it for $65USD w/free shipping right now on Amazon...I'm thinking of taking a chance on this one.

Ha, funny you should ask - someone at Sony has a sick sense of humor and decided to make the Vaio desktops with oddly shaped power supplies. I can't just go out price shop for any old power supply. Rather, I'm stuck looking for one of these uniquely sized units - not surprisingly, they're marked up quite a bit price-wise. For instance: http://www.atxpowersupplies.com/400-watt-Sony-MJPC-300A2-power-supply-LPM2-20-P4-M.php $86 (USD) for that puppy...as opposed to your run-of-the mill ATX case 400W power supply, which can be found all over for < $30 in many cases. Just as a matter of principle, it seems kind of silly to buy a nearly $90 power supply for such an old machine clearly nearing the end of its service life. And to your point about doubting whether it would run the 7600GS, you are right on the money. Whilst doing some Googling on the subject, I came across someone with a Sony Vaio w/my exact same power supply (295 W) who confirmed it would not provide enough juice to the 7600GS for him. Dunno, it kinda seems like I might be stuck. Maybe I'll keep Googling around a bit for a decent video card that doesn't have high-end wattage requirements...

OK, got the power supply specs: 295.4 max watts +12 V -- 17 amps +5 V -- 28 amps

Here are my current specs: XP P4 3.0 GHz 2.0 GB RAM (which is system max - ha) 256MB ABIT ATI Radeon 9600XT-VIO (AGP) I'm not 100% sure on the power supply specs & I'm at work now so can't check, but I'm almost postive it is in the < 300W range. My current system setup will run IL-2 beautifully on the highest graphics setting, but obviously OFF takes things a significant step forward from IL-2. One of the frustrating things is finding reliable benchmarking data - I'm having a lot of difficulties finding reliable apples-to-apples compare (i.e. I'm never sure if the benchmarking data I find out there is comparing PCIe/AGP or what). Really I guess what it boils down to is that I would consider a card if someone could identify one that would be able to beat out the 9600 but at the same time not outpace my other system "limiters" to the point of diminishing returns! I really have to say thanks again for all the help - I am really wowed by the # of people jumping in w/helpful advice! EDIT: I guess I'm real close to taking a chance on that 7600 Nvidia card. Although the card presented by Parky is tempting on paper, I'm guessing there is a high likelihood it would outstrip my power supply capabilities, and probably be "too much card" for my setup (considering it's a 1 GB video card and my entire MACHINE itself maxes out at 2 GB). I suppose maybe it would come down to this - looking at the card presented by uncleal (the Nvidia 7600GS), are some of you experts out there pretty confident this would outperform my current card (ABIT Radeon 9600XT)? You should be able to Google it and get the detailed specs to see for yourselves, but I know it's a 256MB card w/a 500MHz core clock (which is what originally scared me away from the 7600 card, b/c I noticed it's core clock is slower - 420MHz - but I know there is a lot more that goes into the equasion than just the clock speed).

Actually, I am in fact using a 19" widescreen LCD...the only modern part of my entire setup (unless you count the wireless mouse/keyboard!) That looks like a killer card for sure, Parky...but the notes say it requires a 400W power supply - yikes! I'm pretty sure my stock power supply is somewhere in the < 300 range. And it's a good ol' Sony Vaio, so it's got the weird sized power supply that the Vaio is (in)famous for - replacements are very pricey! In the meantime, I've finally had some luck twiddling with the ATI-specific sliders and the weird stuttering choppiness has gone away! I still get pretty nasty slowdown when I get too much going visually, but I can play through it. I might take a flier on a higher powered ATI card at some point, but for now I think I'll just enjoy the game on a lower graphics setting and keep working on talking my "squadron commander" into a new PC at some point in the not too distant future (which we are probably due for anyways...) Thank you all again for the help & advice!

Well, I popped my old ATI card back in - which by the way is one of these: ABIT Radeon 9600XT And sure enough, the performance more than doubled compared to my new PCI card. Now that I'm up to 2.0 GB RAM, if I kick all the sliders back to 1, I'm usually easily within the 30-40 fps range, with occasional drops < 20. My complaint is that - even with sliders cranked all the way back, I'm still getting occasional choppiness when the fps periodically takes a dive. I've been doing a lot of research on options for a replacement AGP card, and the funny thing is that it looks like this 9600XT actually has very decent specs for an AGP card. I can easily find cards with more RAM, but few cards meet the 500 MHz clock speed. I'm finding a lot of NVidia (which supposedly runs CFS3 smoother) cards out there that on first glance would appear to give me a boost, but I've noticed a lot of those appear to have lower clock speed than their ATI cousins...like a lot of the NVidia chipset AGP cards are in the 300 MHz range, from what I've seen. So what gives? Based on the above specs I posted for the 9600XT, is anyone aware of a card (perhaps an NVidia chipset, assuming the rumors about it running CFS3 better are true) that would give a signficant above & beyond performance boost? If I can't get a significant performance boost, I'm thinking I may be better off holding out for a new PC in the next couple years sometime. Thanks again for all the informative responses! I've really learned a lot.

I can't recall the model...unfortunately I'm at work, so I don't have it handy to look right now! Doing some further research (which is what I should have done BEFORE buying the PCI card, ha!), it looks like it was a big mistake to go with a PCI card, period. And just to make it clear, I'm talking about plain-Jane PCI here - NOT PCI-express, which I understanding to be a big improvement over plain-Jane PCI. Based on what I'm reading, it's really no surprise whatsoever that I would get better performance out of a 256MB AGP card vs a 512MB PCI card. I think my best course of action for now is to roll back to my old AGP card and maybe look at investing in a 512 MB AGP card at some point in the future - it looks like they can be found quite cheaply these days, in the < $50USD range. Edit: I'm looking at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130452 Anyone see any specific reason to object?

Thanks for the quick responses, fellas! I definitely should have posted here first for advice BEFORE making the plunge for a new card...oh well, "only" spent about $40 bucks on it, I guess - just an expensive "lesson learned"! I didn't realize that about the PCI slot being slower than an AGP slot, that's good info. Maybe at some point in the future I'll look to go to a 512 MB AGP card...in the meantime I think I'll roll-back to my old 256 MB card and just enjoy the game as-is. And of course continue to keep lobbying my wife to convince her we really do need a new PC!

Hello all! New here, but certainly not new to flight sims/WWI warbirds... A question for the experts out there - I have an older machine that I'm attempting to run OFF on. I know the specs are way towards the low end, so I'm going into this with the full understanding that OFF may not be practical for me until I upgrade to a newer machine altogether, but it was too tempting not to make a run at it with my current machine! At any rate, when I first installed OFF, my specs were as follows: XP P4 3.0 GHz 1.5 GB RAM 256MB ATI clone video card (AGP) I'm thinking "no chance it'll run with these specs". Well, actually...it ran pretty decently! I set the graphics sliders right at the low end suggested and it was a very passable gaming experience - I actually got between 30 & 40 fps. There was a little choppiness here & there and occasionally the fps would momentarily drop down towards the 20 range, but I would definitely say it was playable. OK, flash forward to yesterday - I got an extra .5 GB of RAM to max out (ha) my machine at 2.0 GB and also received the clone NVidia GeForce 8400 512MB card (PCI) I had ordered. I'm thinking if it ran "passably" without the extra RAM and the 256 ATI card without making any of the card-specific tweaks laid out in the FAQ's, then even with no tweaking right out of the gates surely I'll see a performance boost with the new RAM/card...right??? Not exactly. The game absolutely crawls now. Exact same graphics settings netted me - at best - 10 fps. Cranking everything back to 1, I'm lucky to get 15 fps (maybe if I point the nose up at the sky so I'll I see is blue, I'm lucky to get up to 17 fps or so!). I've tried taking a stab at some of the NVidia-specific recommendations on the FAQ's, but nothing has even phased it. What I'm hoping is, there is some obvious setting that I'm forgetting about and not getting assigned correctly that is causing the performance issues, because on paper it certainly seems like I should expect to see some improvement with this new card. On the other hand, my fear is I may just have a machine that is old enough (bought in 2003) that this new video card is "too much card" for it (if that's even possible??? I'm not a big hardware guy, I just know enough to get by!). Help anyone? It would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!