Before I buy...

[CornHusker1215]

Hi,

I have a fairly nice rig:

AMD 64 3200+

Asus K8V Deluxe

9800 Pro 128

1 gig DDR

I get good performance when I run FS9 ALONE. But, since I always fly online with payware aircraft and AS2004.5, my performance often takes a hit, mostly with stutters.

Will I see a noticeable improvement in performance by running SB, AS2004, etc, on a second computer?

Also, my FS9 rig has Windows 2000. The rig I plan to link with WideFS has XP. I read in the WideFS pdf file that it can be hard to link these two operating systems with the protocol that gives best performance. Can it be done?

Thanks

[Pete Dowson]

I get good performance when I run FS9 ALONE. But, since I always fly online with payware aircraft and AS2004.5, my performance often takes a hit, mostly with stutters.

Will I see a noticeable improvement in performance by running SB, AS2004, etc, on a second computer?

It depends what is causing the stutters, but it sounds likely that it is the internet accesses from SB and AS2004 which may be the biggest culprit. Are the stutters regular or spasmodic?

If you were using a Pentium 4 3.2 Gb with hyperthreading, I would have said that you'd probably not notice much of a difference, because FS seems to only use one of the two "virtual processors", showing 50% processor utilisation. This should, theoretically, leave the rest for those other background activities. The Athlon had a bigger cache I think, but it isn't quite as good for multiple processes.

However, there are other possibilities. Disk access may be a cause of stutters too, and with more processes accessing different parts of the hard disk, sensible arrangement of data on disk, defragmentation, and possibly even more real memory (for caching) could help.

So, in the end, sorry, but I could not categorically answer yes or no to your question. In general, though, I would say keep as much off the FS PC as possible, and that is most especially true for Athlons.

Also, my FS9 rig has Windows 2000. The rig I plan to link with WideFS has XP. I read in the WideFS pdf file that it can be hard to link these two operating systems with the protocol that gives best performance. Can it be done?

Actually I think the mixed systems the WideFS document talks about is with Windows 98 or Me and Windows 2K/XP. Windows 2000 is very much just an earlier version of Windows XP so as far as WideFS is concerned they are both the same. You would have no trouble with either TCP/IP (the easiest to set up), or IPX/SPX (more complicated because (a) it is an optional install, and (b) the Clients need the "server node" identifying exactly by a series of numbers giving the Network Number (usually zero) and the MAC address of the Server's interface card. There's a sticky thread near the top of this Forum about that.

Regards,

Pete

[CornHusker1215]

Thanks for the prompt reply Pete,

As I said, if I run just FS2004 with heavy clouds, etc., I see great smoothness and 30 frames constant.

I think I can assume that I don't get that performance when I run AS2004 and SB, etc., because of the other applications.

I think with the great support you provide on this board, I shouldn't have too much trouble setting it up.

Thanks!

P.S. The stutters are spasmodic.

[Pete Dowson]

P.S. The stutters are spasmodic.

In that case they certainly sound likely to be due to the spasmodic activity in the other processes, and especially the Internet access.

Regards,

Pete