All computers are not built equal. You'll have to tweak your options to figure out what settings allow the smoothest game play on your machine. Note that the game will ALWAYS run faster with a FULL INSTALLATION than with a partial installation requiring the CD.

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Graphics - If your graphics card supports it, always use HARDWARE acceleration. This gives the best graphics performance and quality. Also set the buffering to whatever works best for you.

You may have to turn down some details to increase game performance. But remember that visibility distance is very important in races to see the next turn coming up as soon as possible!

You may or may not like crash damage effects. They are rather unrealistic, and some people think it draws on computer resources too much and helps cause communication lag when online. So it's usually a good idea not to use this feature.

Note: More than anything else, a high-end graphics card is important to smooth game play. If your computer is compatible, ask your salesperson about an "AGP" style card. Using just dial-up access with an old Pentium 2 with only 128 megs of RAM, chugging along pushing Windows XP, a nice Matrox Millennium G400 MAX (x4 AGP) video card allows great performance with all of the visuals set to maximum!

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Sound - Some people can live without any sound at all, but it can be more helpful than you might think. If you have stereo or even surround-sound capability your ears can tell you when another truck is nearby, and in what direction.

As mentioned earlier, the CB radio feature doesn't work no matter how nice a microphone you think you have. So just turn the amplification clear down and ignore rookies who still don't know any better.

Using an audio CD to play music can also slow down performance. You might get pauses in the game when switching song tracks. If this is a problem, try to live without it.