Aerosoft Advise: What Hardware To Buy

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

I too would be interested in your conclusions Mathisj !

Thanks

Deniz

Sorry this is all running very late but that is because it very complex and there is a large article being written on what we found. But let me say one thing... get a $60 ATI 4650 based card for FSX.

Assuming you are not running Vista 64 bit (that is the worst OS for any version of FS) this is simply the fastest card there is. Depending on settings and other things it simply blows any other graphics card away with 25% to 125%. And what's even stranger, the more expensive the GPU the slower it seems to get. And this is not a report from my system, this is something we worked on for months. We even send some reviewers that had $600 duo GPU systems these cheap cards and asked them to repeat the reviews. Without a single exception they went from marginal to great fps. And like me they are now putting those expensive cards on ebay. I'll atach a few images. Same system, different graphics cards. I can't see the difference in looks.

Loads of people will not believe this and that's okay (I got stocks in the companies that make the high end cards!). I can only say that on XP and Vista 32 bits I yet got to see a system that went from a high end GPU to the 4650 and did not get at least 50% increase in many places. The images are from a cheapo 2core machine with a Nividia 8800GTS and a ATI 4650 that I don't even know the exact name of, who cares? The images with the high FPS are the ones with the $60 graphics card.

[limp 29]

That's funny, I actually bought a 4670 for a friend... I am a bit astounished of your results... FSX is cetainly the most unpredictable program there is

[jespergb 1]

The ati card - could you try doing similar test in high resolution like 1920x1200 to see if the cheap still is an advantage?

Your test mathijs - is VERY interesting - but also very strange. What should make the cheaper and slower cards make it faster. Ok we know FSX is CPU bound but what should make the cheaper card better - does it use less cpu or ? I really look forward to read your article about this.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

The ati card - could you try doing similar test in high resolution like 1920x1200 to see if the cheap still is an advantage?

Up to 1650x1050 (can't run any higher) there is hardly any difference between small window and full screen so I don't expect any problem. As always windowed mode has more stable framerates.

[macroth72 38]

Assuming you are not running Vista 64 bit (that is the worst OS for any version of FS)

Mathijs! That all sounds VERY interesting to me and I'm nearly on it to try if it gets my a bit faster. Actually I use Vista 64, Q6600 @ 3Ghz and a Nvidia 8800GT/512MB. I know you can't guarantee, but do you think it may speed up my configuration even with my "worse" OS ? I just saw there are also cards with 1GB RAM, will this also speed things up or is this more or less irrelevant?

[jespergb 1]

Up to 1650x1050 (can't run any higher) there is hardly any difference between small window and full screen so I don't expect any problem. As always windowed mode has more stable framerates.

Intresting about windowed - is that really more stable? i thought if was opposite?

[macroth72 38]

That's funny, I actually bought a 4670 for a friend... I am a bit astounished of your results... FSX is cetainly the most unpredictable program there is

Hello Limp,

I'm just thinking about doing the same as you did, upgrading my Q6600 to an i7. Now as I read your experiences above I'm not sure if it is worth the upgrade. As you are running your config for a while maybe you can help me with my decision ?

[limp 29]

Well it's been running now for two months... My FPS are stable and almost always over 25 in unlimited... I can fly without any problem in EDDF (Aerosoft) with Wilco's E-Jet and everything is very smooth

[limp 29]

One thing though, in windowed mode with dual screen I get horrible FPS around the tens...

[FAlonso22 2]

The images are from a cheapo 2core machine with a Nividia 8800GTS and a ATI 4650 that I don't even know the exact name of, who cares?

Hi

8800gts 320-640mb or 8800gts 512mb?? There is many differences between the old gts and new gts generation.

I knew that the cpu is the hardware part more important with fs versions, but the 4650 is a very poor graphic card. I´m surprised.

Regards

[macroth72 38]

Depending on settings and other things it simply blows any other graphics card away with 25% to 125%.

Hello Mathijs. Do you have any more information regarding your configuration and and FSX settings?

[Guest pao]

Hello Mathijs. Do you have any more information regarding your configuration and and FSX settings?

I can't agree with you Mathijs will all respect... I bought an Alienware laptop with the latest DualCore processor X9100 @ 3,06Ghz 4GDDDR3Ram a 7200rpm harddrive and a dual crossfire ATI HD3870 (testes with and without crossfire enabled). The results in FSX were very bad... the fps were acceptable but the overall image stability was giving me headaches... I have tried all ATI drivers available tightnow and nothing changed.... I have read that ATI cards were not optimized for FSX and looking at the wierd image (hard to explain but a kind of water/waves effect while moving around the aircraft in spot view) I understood Nvidia was far better optimized... Now there may be a huge difference with the newest ATI 48xx series however, all other games perform wel with the 3870 so.....

Conclusion I have sold my alienware laptop after 2 weeks (and lost 900 USD in the transaction...).. I'll wait a bit for the price to go down and will go for a DELL I7 765 with a GTX295 to be ready for the next couple of years....

Cheers,

Greg

[macroth72 38]

I'm afraid I have to agree to Greg. I ordered myself a Ati 4670 Card with 1GB RAM and did MANY test in very different locations and settings. I got no better result with the Ati card under no condition, so I got my 8800GT back inside. All was only a bit slower under clear conditions, but when I added some nice FEX + ASA weather my fps got really down with the Ati card, so it is a no go for me and I will return the card. It would have been too nice....

[RemarkH 80]

I'm afraid I have to agree to Greg. I ordered myself a Ati 4670 Card with 1GB RAM

But Mathjis wrote about a 4650!

May be there is a difference???

Remark

[trisager 16]

Sorry this is all running very late but that is because it very complex and there is a large article being written on what we found. But let me say one thing... get a $60 ATI 4650 based card for FSX.

Hi Mathijs- was that article published somewhere?

Tom

[macroth72 38]

But Mathjis wrote about a 4650!

May be there is a difference???

Remark

I don't think so, because the 4670 has almost the same GPU except the higher clock rates for GPU and RAM. I don't think lower clocks make it run faster , but who knows...

I got my 8800GT back and tweaked my settings a bit, so I can live with my config at this moment...

It was worth a try, but for me the result wasn't positive, so maybe you have more luck with it.

[RemarkH 80]

Hi Mathijs- was that article published somewhere?

Tom

Mathijs likes it thrilling ...

I guess it will be published in FS-Magazin 3/2009 (appears 02.April)

Remark

[RemarkH 80]

I don't think so, because the 4670 has almost the same GPU except the higher clock rates for GPU and RAM. I don't think lower clocks make it run faster , but who knows...

Hallo,

the "4650" normally does not have 1 GB RAM!

Ich habe schon öfter gehört, dass mehr als 512 MB RAM sich (bei einem 32Bit-OS) möglicherweise nachteilig auswirken.

Aber vielleicht erfahren wir ja demnächst im FS-Magazin mehr über die Vorlieben des geheimnissvollen FSX.

Please excuse my German. In English I need 1 hour for 1 sentence

Remark

[roymar 0]

Well, scroll up and read my initial post. That's the cheapest CPU, moderate priced motherboard and the cheapest ram I could find. I'm cheap, lol.

Hi Mathijs,

I would be interested in comparing results since we appear to have similar setups (except for memory)

My system comprises;

Asus P6T Deluxe Intel Core I7 X58 | Nvidia Quad SLI | ATI CrossFireX | X16 PCI-E S1366

Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core (2.66GHz) - Socket LGA1366, 4.8GT/s QPI, 8MB Cache

3x2048MB OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 (1800 MHz) | Low Voltage | Triple Channel | Reaper HPC | OCZ3RPR1800LV6GK

CoolIT PURE Silent Maintenance-Free Fluid Sealed CPU Cooler

EVGA Nvidea GeForce 9800 GTX+ Video card

Since overclocking was the purpose of the choice of components, I decided on a Water cooler for the CPU and am very pleased with the Coolit unit,both from an efficiency and quietness point of view.

For my readings I use Core Temp 0.99.4 and CPU-Z.

I went for the 6 MB of RAM since I had decided I was going to try installing Windows XP 64bit and DX10 for Windows XP and see how and if both FS9 and FSX improved using the extra memory and DX10 on a non-Vista system.

Spent a couple of weeks tweaking the settings and stumbled onto an interesting configuration that boosts the apparent i920 fixed ratio of 20 to an actual 21!

The best stable (operation and temperature) result I have reached gives a core speed of 3660 Mhz.

Core voltage 1.28

Core 0 Idle Temp 42deg c Working Temp either FS9 or FSX max 59deg c

To get this, the only changes I made in the bios AI Tweaker menu are:

AI Clock Tuner from "AUTO" to X.M.P. (this setting is supposed to allow you to tune in a preset RAM configuration when suitable RAM is present). Since my RAM is not "X.M.P." rated, a line appears saying "extreme Memory Profile is disabled" but never-the-less it is this setting that allows the CPU multiplier to increase to 21!)

BCLK Frequency set to 175 (Higher setting causes Core Voltage to increase to 1.45 v or above with corresponding significant heat increase).

DRAM Frequency set to DDR3-1403Mhz

QPI/DRAM Core Voltage set to 1.30000 volts.

No other changes made.

Flightsim Results

I find locking the FPS to 40 in both FS9 and FSX gives better stutter free and autogen results than unlimited and in FS9 the frame rate stays mainly at 40 (+/_ 1) even at EDDF (Aerosoft Mega installed) with all controls maxed and full AI traffic. Smooth as silk,no stutters and in my subjective opinion the DX10 does significantly improve the scenery looks.

In FSX, the FPS never gets close to 40 and remains in the 12 to 30 range depending on scenery and weather density.It is still nowhere near as comfortable flying as FS9 for commercial plane (B737) flying, but adequate for prop plane VFR operation. Here again there is a definite improved look generated by DX10.

This is only a brief overview,but thought you would be interested.

Kind regards

Roy White

[limp 29]

I find locking the FPS to 40 in both FS9 and FSX gives better stutter free and autogen results than unlimited and in FS9 the frame rate stays mainly at 40 (+/_ 1) even at EDDF (Aerosoft Mega installed) with all controls maxed and full AI traffic. Smooth as silk,no stutters and in my subjective opinion the DX10 does significantly improve the scenery looks.

Hmmm, Roy, you said you tried it under Windows XP 64... Firstly FS9 does not support DX10... Only FSX and when it is running on Vista...

No DX10 is present on XP...

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Flightsim Results

I find locking the FPS to 40 in both FS9 and FSX gives better stutter free and autogen results than unlimited and in FS9 the frame rate stays mainly at 40 (+/_ 1) even at EDDF (Aerosoft Mega installed) with all controls maxed and full AI traffic. Smooth as silk,no stutters and in my subjective opinion the DX10 does significantly improve the scenery looks.

In FSX, the FPS never gets close to 40 and remains in the 12 to 30 range depending on scenery and weather density.It is still nowhere near as comfortable flying as FS9 for commercial plane (B737) flying, but adequate for prop plane VFR operation. Here again there is a definite improved look generated by DX10.

Well for sure you got a problem somewhere. I believe it is the graphics card and the OS. I seen these very low fps more often on a combination like you got. XP or Vista 32 bits plus a cheapo graphics card will almost certainly triple your FPS in FSX. I got a slower CPU and a $55 graphics card and as I shown a lot, I hardly see anything under 30 fps with settings that show at least the same as FS2004 on max settings. In general, if you can't reach your set min FPS, put it on unlimited. Most likely you'll see at least 5 fps in that setting.

Your other tweaks in the hardware are most likely impressive but I'm not buying a lot into that for FS. I have seen to often that FS uses some stupid counter somewhere to determine what to do at what time and tweaks can sometimes have a complete averse effect on that. That includes tweaks to hardware and most certainly tweaks done to the FSX.cfg file.

Attaching two images. One from a while back, no idea on the settings, but it shows Manhattan with a whopping lot of objects in view at a steady 35 fps and one I made just now as I write this post showing the Catalina landing at Lord Howe at (even for me amazing) 150 fps. As you see the last shot shows water at the highest setting, full mesh, high coverage of textures etc and I can tell you the Catalina is one of the most complex aircraft I have ever flown. Both the scenery and the aircraft are more complex then FS2004 could ever compile. I have heard before that the images I show are faked, but there is a simple test for that, you come to one of the shows I attend for Aerosoft and I'll show you the hardware and the fps. If I can repeat what I show here you'll pay diner, if I can't, I'll pay diner.

[Andy B. 40]

Anyone with any knowledge of FSX knows that the frame rate jumps ridiculously high when you enter slew mode or pause mode as you have done here in that shot, so its not a very good representative example. When the sim is paused or in slew mode the CPU isn't having to update the physics engine 150 times a second, so FPS will be far higher . It is pretty safe to say though that the Catalina will be an amazing plane with excellent frame rates when its complete, I know "H" is the master and I have complete faith in him and the team, they did a stunning job on the Hughes.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Hi Mathijs- was that article published somewhere?

Tom

Will be published next month (but it will be German). We'll have it online though and the statistics and images show the story rather well. The bottom line however is simple... FSX is fastest on a 32 bits OS and using a simple graphics card. The more expensive the GPU, the more there is a problem in timing.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Anyone with any knowledge of FSX knows that the frame rate jumps ridiculously high when you enter slew mode or pause mode as you have done here in that shot, so its not a very good representative example. When the sim is paused or in slew mode the CPU isn't having to update the physics engine 150 times a second, so FPS will be far higher . It is pretty safe to say though that the Catalina will be an amazing plane with excellent frame rates when its complete, I know "H" is the master and I have complete faith in him and the team, they did a stunning job on the Hughes.

Perhaps you see that on your system but I can assure you that on all our machines there is very little difference between pauses/slew/unpaused/unslewed. The difference I personally see is 100% the same as sound on/off and that fit's perfectly with what we understand from the inner workings of FSX. To be sure I just tried in a few locations and I simply can not see what you describe as a "ridiculously high" jump in fps between unpaused/unslewed/paused/slewed. I believe you are mistaken in this, for some weird reason the complete engine of FSX keeps churning the data even in pause and slew (in fact it even starts to use a bit more!). Everybody can do the same experiment in seconds and confirm this. Just fly, check the fps, pause and check the fps, slew and check the fps.

If you see "ridiculously high" fps in slew or pause there is something very interesting going on as I see 'the same' in flight. And I'll bet you a diner on it. I say that I seen this 150 fps (I attach a second image take a few moments before NOT in slew mode and showing 147) in flight and you say it only happens in slew mode.

[JamesChams 108]

Admin. Staff,

I think Mr. Kok should be banned (for 4 days) for trying to start a "Flaming War" over FPS issues on his new i7 ...

And ban Mr. Shaun Fletcher too; for not having too much time on his hands to judge the screenshot contests.

Lastly, ban all those individuals who keep starting FS9 vs FSX hardware issues...

PS: I get 43-72 FPS when FSX is in motion and 120's-170's FPS when FSX is PAUSED/SLEWED.

Oh, and I'm NOT wasting any more of my time proving it to any of you "NON-Believers" ...