I just purchased a Realflight G3.5 and it works great on my wifes laptop, (1-2 year old Compac I think) but when I run it on my Dell E510 the plane doesn't move smoothly, it speeds up and then slows down. When I installed the simulator on both units, it said I need Direct X 8.1 which it downloaded on each computer. ( I don't know if this is relevent or not, I'm kind of a computer retard, so reply accordingly!) I know it's hard to diagnose anything without seeing it, but are there any ideas out there? Ross

I would guess your Dell is using integrated video. Do you happen to know what sort of video "card" you have installed? Most of these sorts of problems relate to the machine not meeting the specifications for G3.5.

I always suspect video card first, processor speed second, then amount of RAM... weakness in any of these areas will cause big problems for G3.5

-Case

CCC, thanks for the info. I wonder if it is my video card. I read an online review on my Dell after getting it and they really "dogged" the video card that comes with it. Sounded like that is the weak point as far as gaming, etc... Do you or anyone know of a reasonably priced card I could get that would do the job? Is this just a matter of switching the thing out, something I could do myself?
Ross

I was told by Dell that units not orginally ordered with some higher-order graphics card are built with motherboards that do not have the video card slot. So, if yours, like mine, is one of these, don't buy that card as you won't be able to install it.

I have a Dell 3000 purchased about 3 years ago that only has on-board grahics support, a P4, 2.8GHz, and 1 gig of PC3200 memory. Result? Using photofield sites only, no particles, and high physics I get about 10fps with occational drops to 4-5 fps. Not good but it enough that I've been able to learn to hover do light aerobatics.

As pappy mentioned, some of the pre-built Dell systems (and other brands too) come with the video "integrated" into the mother board, and no AGP or PCI-e slot available to upgrade. Your potential for upgrade will depend totally on whether your motherboard has an available slot for a graphics card. Even if your MoBo has a PCI slot available, (you can find many cheap PCI video cards now), you're looking for a PCI-e or AGP slot, not plain PCI.

Might be worth a call to Dell support... they seem to know what they're talking about when you give them your service tag number, etc... they might have some suggestions, OR they might just try to sell you a new computer!

EDIT: I've just looked up the Dimension E510 on Dell's site... I assume you've not done much (anything) custom to the machine? The specs actually look fairly decent, except for the video card part... "Hypermemory" is ATI's code word for shared vRAM and system RAM... BAD NEWS for sims. Hypermemory will slow down your graphics every time. I would give Dell a call, give them your service tag so they'll know exactly which machine you have, and tell them you want to upgrade the RAM and video capability of your machine. The worst they can do is not help...

-Case

CCC and P35, Thanks for your help! This is what I needed, as I didn't even know where to start. Thanks for keeping it on "my level" also. I will see if I can update this "magic box" or if I need to toss it and get a different one. [X(] Ross

I jsut bought a Dell XPS410 which HAS the PCIx slots to support 3rd party graphics cards. So long 10 fps...[8D]

While on the topic, I'm basically having the same problem with bad performance. It works okay on very low graphics settings. Will the ATI Radeon X800 All In Wonder card solve my problem? It's 256 mb ram.

My computer has 512 mb ram, 3200+ AMD athlon 64 processor (2.20 Ghz), and I am using the stock video card which is a ATI Radeon xpress 200

Specs for the ATI Radeon X800 All In Wonder are here:
Installed Video Memory 256 MB
Memory Technology GDDR3 ****M
Resolution 2048 x 1536
Color Depth at Maximum Resolution 24 Bit
Max Monitors Supported 2
Video Chipset ATI Radeon X800 XL
Video Compression Standards MPEG-2
Video Standards S-Video, Composite video

Thanks for any help.
Andrew

What frame rate are you getting? Press the "1" key to pop-open the frame that includes that info.

my frame rate varies. On a photofield site with low settings, my frame rate is 85-95. On this same site with higher settings, its 45-55. On a 3D field, my frame rate is about 8-15. Is it my card?

I know what you're saying. Real Flight is very demanding. I'm probably going to have to get a new card. Right now, I have a Nvidia GeForce 5200 w/ 128mb. If I lower all of the detail and hide most objects, then I can get decent performance with some fields.

I need to upgrade my video card also. I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with 1.8 processor and 1 gig of RDRAM. But my vid card is way too far out of date for a lot of the things with this program. Now my big problem. I know next to nothing about video cards or mother boards and have no idea what my board can support. Are all vid cards back ward compatable? I think, but not sure, my board is 4x. That's about all I know. Can any one help me out? Would Dell tell me what I need to know?
Thanks in advance.