Jump to content

FSX and my System - Why oh why can't it be smooth(ish)?!


FirmamentFX

Recommended Posts

Hi guys,

Ok firstly my system:

- XP Pro SP2 with .NET Framework 3.5

- Intel Quad Core Q6600

- 4GB DDR2-800 RAM

- NVidia 8800GTS (640MB, although it is being reported as 740...?!) - 169.21 Driver

- 300GB SATA-II System Drive

- FSX SP1 and SDK SP1a

At the DEFAULT Heathrow in the DEFAULT microlight thing I am getting 9.7FPS - occasionally dipping to 4 or 5 with my graphics settings not particularly high... This is with no addons either.

Are there any "recommended" graphics or other settings for this system? I am not too fussed about AI as this is my development platform.

Should I upgrade to SP2? Are there any performance benefits? I've stuck with SP1 at the moment for addon compatibility...

I also have Adobe CS3 Production Premium, Visual Studio 2008, Altova MissionKit 2008 and a few other development bits and bobs installed, BUT my reported commit charge is only 193MB before FSX is started.

Cheers!

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

nope, kofi... mine is similar, and the performance concerning FPS is average (~18 to 20fps)

the prob is his CPU. AFAIK, FSX supports only TWO cores, you can't do it like 4 x 2,4 Ghz is 9,6 GHZ. believe me: 2 x 2,4 Ghz isn't 4,8 Ghz either. It depends on the speed of one core. You will have to overclock your system to sth. between 2,8 and 3,4 Ghz. - AND DON'T YOU COUNT ON CORES 3 AND 4!

Programs and games have to be programmed on using all the cores and AFAIK the FSX is the only program that uses 2 cores. i am not even sure whether win vista uses several cores...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm, I get 25fps with my E6300 @ 1,86GHz?

But it is true that the performance of every single core counts. It is not possible to sumarize the frequencies of all cores.. thats not how it works. But nevertheless a Q6600 is fast enough for FSX. But of course you have to adjust settings. Everything to max won't work.

edit: Win XP Home SP2 and FSX with Accel Pak (SP2)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

nope, kofi... mine is similar, and the performance concerning FPS is average (~18 to 20fps).

Same here. FSX is the most demanding thing I've had on my computer in ages. Any other state of the art, new games run extremely smooth on my system but FSX cripples it. I guess after some tweaking you can get a good 5FPS extra or so and then you can of course tweak the autogen or use lowrez textures etc but who would want to do that...that's not why I bought this system. I thought it was going to run ok.

Mission for Microsoft. Build us a new engine, use all the latest techniques. Give up on this old piece of ##### that hovers in between the oooooold Flight Sims and some new technology and give us something that is tested for performance to the max!

Just my two cents...then again when I go fly somewhere over Nederlands Indie the framerates are superb at highest settings...but it all looks rather generic. I just love and hate FSX at the same time... :roll:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

and the performance concerning FPS is average (~18 to 20fps)

18-20 would be very nice for me given what I am getting at the moment :D

I'm going to try a few CFG tweaks, but I still don't hold out much hope... I'm reinstalling from scratch now, and am going to put FS2004 and FSX on there - 2004 for pleasure, FSX for development, on the basis that in a year or so I might be able to use the darn thing...

The Q6600 is still 2.4GHz... I should be getting something decent with that and the other settings.

Does changing the core affinity once FSX is running do anything?

you can of course tweak the autogen or use lowrez textures etc but who would want to do that...that's not why I bought this system. I thought it was going to run ok.

Exactly... My heavily "modded" FS2004 is far more appealing than FSX on the lowest settings...

I was hoping for good things from FSX. Turned out to be a bit of a white elephant. As someone said on another thread on here (can't remember which one exactly) - it does NOT pay to be a pioneer with Microsoft. The hassle I'm having with Visual Studio 2008 and XAML/WPF bears testimony to that...

Cheers,

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Aerosoft
nope, kofi... mine is similar, and the performance concerning FPS is average (~18 to 20fps)

the prob is his CPU. AFAIK, FSX supports only TWO cores, you can't do it like 4 x 2,4 Ghz is 9,6 GHZ. believe me: 2 x 2,4 Ghz isn't 4,8 Ghz either. It depends on the speed of one core. You will have to overclock your system to sth. between 2,8 and 3,4 Ghz. - AND DON'T YOU COUNT ON CORES 3 AND 4!

Programs and games have to be programmed on using all the cores and AFAIK the FSX is the only program that uses 2 cores. i am not even sure whether win vista uses several cores...

Well Vista for sure sends off processes to other cores, right now I see processes being handled on all of my four cores, just as Office 2007 does and many other applications and even more games.

And not sure what's causing this confusion, but FSX is written to support up to 32 cores. This is what MS states about it: "As far as practical limits on number of usable cores, currently SetThreadAffinityMask only allows explicit scheduling of threads on 32 cores ( the mask is a dword ) on Win32. So that’s our effective limit on number of cores. But as soon as there is a way to explicitly schedule them, we can handle 256 cores."

Now anything over 4 cores probably makes little sense and on my system the 4th core does not seem to busy most of the time (only to be running full at a strong turn). But when i limit FSX to 2 cores I see certainly a drop in framerate. I seen reports like this before and can't explain them, but most certainly I can get all my 4 cores to handle FSX and it does so without any tweaks. In fact we often see customers who done CFG tweaking and got in all sorts of problems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought my 3 GB of RAM was enough but still had FR problems....... I fixed my problems by spending $19.95 for a Memorex 4 GB thumb drive (Windows Vista) and enabled it for almost all of it to be used by Ready Boost....... thus upping my RAM to 7 GB..... I have a smooth FS now with good FR, and no crashes. For around 20 dollars US.

Earl Suitor

Berryville, VA USA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

what i did to bring my fps up was go to start+run+type msconfig and click ok or whatever it is+ go to startup+ and i disabled everything. now im getting 4 fps at kjfk and 10 at TNCM and 5 at EGLL. its better cause i used to have 1fps at heathrow and 0.5-1 at KJFK.

thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

what i did to bring my fps up was go to start+run+type msconfig and click ok or whatever it is+ go to startup+ and i disabled everything. now im getting 4 fps at kjfk and 10 at TNCM and 5 at EGLL. its better cause i used to have 1fps at heathrow and 0.5-1 at KJFK.

thank you

Are there any programs that absolutely have to run other than the fsx ?

I have tried disabling programs from the task manager and run into

actually slowing things down , or causing the dreaded

"Blue screen of death" :wink:

Randy '

Link to comment
Share on other sites

what do you have? xp or vista? my xp is very flexable with the programs i change. it will give me a message to say are you sure of this and i click ok and it runs a whole lot better. the mathematical term for fsx is

cpu+fsx=framerates

no cpu+fsx=low frame rates

good cpu+fsx=good frame rates

the trick to get more frame rates is more cpu. anyway you can get that will help fsx. now you know why people say its a powerful game. just dont mess up your computer in the act :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Yankeesfan;

First off please be patient with me as I am computer challenged(the only thing I do with my computer is FSX,The rest of the family uses it for every thing else)

My specs:windows XP

home edition 2002

service pack 2

Computer;Intel Pentium®4 CPU3.00GHZ

2.99GHZ, 1.00 GB of RAM

Nvidia 7600 GS running driver

version 6.14.11.6375

When I start up ,according to the "task manager" I have 40 items or

programs running,I downloaded a program called"Smart close "

a week ago hoping that it would sort out needed from non needed

and honestly it wasn't worth a pinch of coon sh...t if you know what

I mean,I had to do a system restore to get everything running again

ANY help or in-site would be Very much appreciated 8)

THANKS

Randy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hi,

like i said dont mess up your computer. if you go to start+run+type msconfig+and go ot startup you will see some programs that are needed and not needed. i uncheck everything and its fine and all of the needed programs will eventually turn back on. i have xp too so it should work. but i dont know your computer. the pecs help, but i cant go inside your conputer. you can try what you said but by all means if you have a bad feeling about it dont do it.

hope this helps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your interest so far Yankeesfan,I Went into the startup

msconfig and noticed under the General tab;Normal,Diagnostic and

Selective startup ,Clicked on Diagnostic start up and re-started my system

When that was done the task manager showed only 12 processes going

on in my system instead of the original 40,,so far so good.

I went to start FSX and it would only show the opening screen and not

respond any further.So I went back and re-started the computer under

normal start up and everything is back to normal 8) ,nothing ventured ,

nothing gained i guess. :?

Thanks again for trying

Randy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

were did you get the diagnos startup thing? when i go under that it lets me uncheck what i want and i usually click dont restart. go back and see if the programs are all running. everything in my startup was things that popup in my computer when i start it that waist a lot of cpu. to see if it is really working, go to some big airport and click ctrl+z or shift+z (i forgot which one) and i think you will notice a change for the good. once you disable the programs in the startup thingy only the programs that come back on are nessesary for your computer. the others were just cpu hoggers. but if something looks inportant to you than dont turn it off. if you accidently do than it will come back on. you should notice a 4-5 fps difference. maybe more.

hope this helps

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you eventually get way less FPS when flying in the VC view?

I noticed this on my systems, which I think could handle more, too, most people get more FPS when in VC view, for example with Tim Conrads freeware Waco UPF-7 for FSX SP2, looking at Honolulu, airport and city in sight, I get stable 22 fps (Locked there) when in Spot view, when I go to VC it drops to 13-15.... Others get the same or even way more FPS in VC than in Spot view.

Maybe we have the same problem, even it it appears to hit worse on your rig, it is better than the one I use, and most times my FPS are ok (After loads of tweaking and testing)...

Have you tweaked your FSX.cfg file? Some settings can really do bad things to fps... Others do wonders....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you eventually get way less FPS when flying in the VC view?

I often get better FPS in external view than in VC. But I would say this depends on how complex the VC and external views are for a specific aircraft.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi guys,

Ok firstly my system:

- XP Pro SP2 with .NET Framework 3.5

- Intel Quad Core Q6600

- 4GB DDR2-800 RAM

- NVidia 8800GTS (640MB, although it is being reported as 740...?!) - 169.21 Driver

- 300GB SATA-II System Drive

- FSX SP1 and SDK SP1a

I have almost the same system as you have (i have an 8800 GT), on which windows version are you? I have vista sp1, and FSX sp2.

When I first installed FSX, my framerates where smooth (locked at 20 and never dropped below 19). This slowly degraded over the weeks untill my fps looked like yours.

Yesterday I suddenly recalled having read somewhere about removing the fsx.cfg to improve fps. I removed this file, set my graphics settings again (everything to the right except AI) BOOM-> 20 FPS again (default airports and addon airports like aerosoft heathrow)!

Maybe worth a try? :)

I also would take a close look at your graphics driver and maybe reinstall those. It's very weird the amount of memory is not correct ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

were did you get the diagnos startup thing? when i go under that it lets me uncheck what i want and i usually click dont restart. go back and see if the programs are all running. everything in my startup was things that popup in my computer when i start it that waist a lot of cpu. to see if it is really working, go to some big airport and click ctrl+z or shift+z (i forgot which one) and i think you will notice a change for the good. once you disable the programs in the startup thingy only the programs that come back on are nessesary for your computer. the others were just cpu hoggers. but if something looks inportant to you than dont turn it off. if you accidently do than it will come back on. you should notice a 4-5 fps difference. maybe more.

hope this helps

Please look at this attachment

I HOPE it is self explanatory

enough :?

Thanks

Randy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yankees fan ;

I figured out what was hogging my system ,I have Norton antivirus and

when running,it was taking up alot of system resources, That alone when

shut off netted me 3 fps,so now when i start up I shut that down ,plus

disconnect from the net. 3 fps doesn't sound like much but every little

bit helps.Its too bad FSX is such a system hog :roll:

Thanks for your interest

Randy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Aerosoft
Yankees fan ;

I figured out what was hogging my system ,I have Norton antivirus and

when running,it was taking up alot of system resources, That alone when

shut off netted me 3 fps,so now when i start up I shut that down ,plus

disconnect from the net. 3 fps doesn't sound like much but every little

bit helps.Its too bad FSX is such a system hog :roll:

Thanks for your interest

Randy

Google AlacrityPC. Works like a dream although it makes starting FSX something that is close to a coffeebreak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. Privacy Policy & Terms of Use