[VC-81_BOLTER]

This program is very processor clock time hungry and when you're offline your system can handle the virtual world you have fine. When you are online it must synchronize with all the computers that are connected to the host server at once. Not only does this multiply the work your CPU is doing it also must wait for the data it receives from the other players. Players whose computers may not be as capable as yours or may be on connections with higher than optimal ping times. Of course in a server with 45 players this problem becomes even more pronounced.

What can you do about it?

• Close as many background processes and services as possible. I have 16 running on Win XP. Some people have 30-35!
  
  Be certain you haven't got a firewall blocking the ports.
  
  Tune down your graphics a bit to help.
  
  Get a second sound card. They're dead cheap nowadays for one ($10 US) and it takes the game's sound off the motherboard and frees up resources. There's another advantage I will get to in a moment.
  
  Don't use TeamSpeak overlay. It hogs resources for little benefit.
  
  If you dare, change the process base priority in the task manager for il2fb.exe to "above normal" so that windows will place it above other programs in priority for CPU usage. That helps a little. It will affect TS though.
  
  Fly in servers with less than 10 players. Not appealing yes, but frame rate friendly if you need that badly enough.

With two sound cards you can assign one to game sounds and the other to TeamSpeak. This way the speakers on your desk carry the plane and bullet sounds and your headset only has voices. Far more realistic and immersive. I have been doing this that way since 2001.