I'd say your graphics card will affect things more than your CPU as far as frame rates go, I've found faster cpus only reduce the load times. I'd recommend at least 256meg of ram though. Here's a trick, turn the colors from 32 to 16bit, you can hardly tell the difference and it improves the frame rate dramaticly. Also get the latest versions of drivers for your graphics card and plus you need directx 9 to run 2004.
With my Geforce2 MX400 32meg I can run 1280x960 with most of the sliders fairly high and consitently get 25fps. Plus it looks really sweet on my new 21in monitor, big change for me coming from a 15in, the guages almost look life size. (PS that's for 2002, don't have 2004 yet but I assume it will be simular)
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How can you not like the CRJ's, Snow?
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well the sound package I downloaded for it was looped really badly, the panel was nice but the plane is WAY too sensitive, granted I've never flown a real CRJ before but I would think the handling charteristics would be closer to the learjet than the 300S !