the frame rates are killing me!

[Scottler]

Very true, Pcyco, even if it was said twice.  lol  I've already checked and I max out at a gig.  And since I don't have an AGP slot, I was "forced" to pick up a PCI card.  Not as great as an AGP card, but better than the onboard I was running previously!  

[brundlefly]

[quote]I got a prog that monitors ram usage.

[BUFFman]

Brundlefly:
 Here's a link to a website with game compatibility for your graphics controller : http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/s ... s+845main&
It only shows FS2002 but that means that FS9 should work fine.

 As far as the memory, the Compaq website shows the Compaq Presario 2.8 GHz (yours is a 2.6) with 2 DIMM slots expandable to 2Gb of PC2100 memory.  So you can go buy another 256Mb PC2100 memory and you should be fine with a total of 512 Mb.  If you want, spend the extra green and get a 1 GB stick of memory and sell your 256 Mb stick on Ebay.

[Pcyco]

Actually I have heard that FS9 does not run well on Win98. The multi-media enhancements of XP cannot even be compared to the older OS's. Its true that XP and 2000 use more resourses than 9X, but if you know how, alot of those resourse hogs can be disabled. Tweak and fine tune your system to fit your needs. My last system I had was a 1 gigahertz with 512 megs of ram, Geforce Ti4200 with 64 megs RAM and I had FS9 completely maxed on XP and it ran well. Here are links to a couple of sites which will help you out.
www.blkviper.com   for the registry files and
www.helponthe.net  for computer and software related problems.

[brundlefly]

thanks for the links . i've already cleaned my registry  (and a lot of other junk from my comp too ) and it seemed to help.

[ludo62]

I would upgrade your ram to at least 512 , and your videocard should be at least 128 meg for beter performance , try that  8)

[mike2992]

Ludo seems to be on the right lines, though i would not say more ram is essential. Sort yourself out with one of the new graphics(video) cards and you should be fine.

I have a sony Vaio with 256mg ram, 80gig hard drive 2.00gz (pretty bad) but a ATI X800 XT PE graphics card (amazing) which pushes framerates up to stunning levels.