Cloud/FPS problem?

[Wii]

I've always had this problem and I am wondering if it is just me. When flying "through" a cloud, do you normally get a FPS drop? I set my clouds on the lowest 3D settings possible and tried different cloud sets/resolutions and still get around 4-8 FPS when flying through a cloud. My most recent flight crashed because of it. Is it just me? Maybe my processor? Not the video card because I have tried different drivers etc.
Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 2.51Ghz
3Gbs DDR2-667 RAM
320Gb HD
8800GT with 7.15.11.8048 drivers (Nick recommended, and they do work great!)
Any clue? It is really annoying because it happens in both FSX and FS9.

[Opa]

Clouds in FS are notorious for their impact on Frame Rates - especially 3d clouds.  Try "simple clouds" and see if that improves the FR situation somewhat.

[Daube]

[quote]
Clouds in FS are notorious for their impact on Frame Rates - especially 3d clouds.

[Wii]

[quote][quote]
Clouds in FS are notorious for their impact on Frame Rates - especially 3d clouds.

[microlight]

Wii,

I increased the FPS clouds by converting the 32-bit textures into DXT3 using DXTBmp, for faster loading. There was a slight trade-off in the cloud texture quality but the FPS improvement on my system was worth the effort. Back the originals in case you don't like what changing the bmp files does.

[zacharace]

Wii,

I increased the FPS clouds by converting the 32-bit textures into DXT3 using DXTBmp, for faster loading. There was a slight trade-off in the cloud texture quality but the FPS improvement on my system was worth the effort. Back the originals in case you don't like what changing the bmp files does.

Someone has a tutorial on doing this, along with other FS9 performance tweaks. It might even be on this forum, although I'm not entirely sure. Google it.

[Flight_Master_PL]

I had the same problem. Moving slider on Anti-Aliasing setting from 16xS to 4xS fixed it. Hope that helps.