Reccomended Improvements

My System Specs: Dell Inspiron 6400
Core 2 Duo 2.0gig
1.0gig RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400

I'm running Microsoft Flight Sim X and find that even on 'moderate-low' settings my computer has issues keeping up. It tends to freeze once in a while, the HD spins like a mother, then everything returns to normal. This happens more frequently while flying close to the groung/taxiing. Any suggestions on what part of my system I should upgrade? Ie: is this a ram issue, graphics card issue, or other?

 

If the hard drive is being accessed frequently while gaming, then that is an indication that your system is out of physical RAM and is using the pagefile on the hard drive for virtual RAM. That is extremely slow and would explain some (or all) of the stuttering.
You could also download FRAPS to check your frames per second:
http://www.fraps.com/
30 and above is good.

I would suggest shutting down some background apps to free up some RAM.

 

Well if your want it to acess the HDD less, that means more RAM. 2GB would help with that. Other then that, your processors is definitly capable, and you have no chance of upgrading the card, so thats out of the question. So I would say upgrade to 2GB of RAM, and definitly do an msconfig and get rid of some of those usless start up processes that just eat up reasources. Also do a de-frag. These basic maintenance's might help a little bit with playability, but the RAM upgrade should definitly help smooth it out some.

 

Well, its a new game for a start, so it could be a general issue that will be fixed with an upcoming patch. Have you looked on any game site forums to see if anyone else has similar problems?

Have you defragged your hard drive since installing the game?
Lowering the game settings?

 

If you are only playing off-line, consider disabling your anti-virus and disconnecting from the internet. Norton and Macafee are notorious resource hogs.

 

The FSX Demo just runs terribly for the most part unless you have very high end hardware.

The final retail version will be much better, I have encountered such issues as you have, and my GPU is nearly twice as powerful as yours.

So, if your a flight sim fan and you really know the retail will be better, then you wont think much of the demo and just buy the retail.

 

"If the hard drive is being accessed frequently while gaming, then that is an indication that your system is out of physical RAM and is using the pagefile on the hard drive for virtual RAM."

That's what I was thinking... I'd noticed that most of the performance issues centered around generating objects and sprites instead of actual graphics rendering. I just don't want to spend money on something that won't help.

"Have you defragged your hard drive since installing the game?" yes I have, it's also a brand-new laptop (bought within the week) so there's not a whole lot of random stuff eating up resources.

"Lowering the game settings?" Yes, it will run quite well on minimal settings, but there's really no point in getting flight sim x if you're not going to use any of the cool features.

"consider disabling your anti-virus and disconnecting from the internet" Unfortunately most of the coolest stuff that FSX does involves connectivity, but I could definately lower my Avast! settings. Good suggestion.

"The FSX Demo just runs terribly for the most part unless you have very high end hardware." I AM running the retail version. (deluxe edition rush shipment, doncha know!) Regardless of my lagging issues, this is by far the best sim I've ever seen, it was totally worth it.

So what I'm getting is that a RAM upgrade is my best choice. I'll get on that ASAP. Thanks for your help, everyone.

 

Try uninstalling all of the bloatware. Dell puts a lot of that on their systems. A complete reinstall of the OS and drivers would be even better.

Unfortunately the x1400 is not that powerful of a GPU--the game may simply be too demanding to allow you to enable all the settings. You may have to go with lower settings to get smoother play.

1 GB should be enough for now, but 2 GB wouldn't hurt. Some games do eat up 1 GB of RAM very quickly.