#1 Don't say buy a new computer because I can't afford it lol!

Ok I have a fairly old system and I absolutely love FS2004 and I was wondering if anyone had tips on how to get some better performance out of the sim without sacrifising the goodies like the absolutely amazing 3D clouds.

Here are my specs...
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Intel Pentium 3 800MHZ
512MB SD RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (just bought it hopeing to boost framerates but that didn't work, just allowed the sim to look prettier, more on that after.)
Creative Soundblaster Audigy (allows the sound to be at high without fps hit, sounds great)

One thing I noticed is that at sparse there is more autogen scenery than at medium on fs2002. I really wish microsoft would allow a lower setting of autogen. Does anyone know how the FS9.cfg file can be edited to allow this?

Another thing. I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro in an effort to boost my framerates. With my Radeon 64MB I ran the sim at 14-18 FPS. Now it runs from 16-20FPS. I was able to boost all the textures and hardware effects. It has now occured to me that what is killing my FPS is the 3D objects, my processor can't handle all of them. I am going to try cutting out the autogen scenery but the 3d clouds must stay. I have them set to draw in at 30 miles, maximum coverage (not being able to have overcast skies is ridiculous), 40% 3D clouds. I set it to 2D clouds only and they looked about the equivalent of high res fs98 clouds. Why couldn't Microsoft have left the option of fs2002 clouds integrated into the new weather system for simple clouds instead of these jokes?

Does anyone have some tips on how I can get some higher framerates out of my comp without killing the 3d clouds? All I want is 20-24FPS consistently so control input can be smooth. I can't afford a new processor as it will require a new motherboard meaning I would need new ram as well so that is out of the question for now.

In the end I can't complain too much I love this sim it is far more realistic (you can do spins :) ) and the weather system is amazing (even better now that the real world weather servers are up to date, only about a 3 hour delay now, can't expect much less considering the processes involved). But I would just like to be able to fly smoothly like in fs2002.