Hi all,with my specs (see below) I can fly most of my planes (also add ons like Piper Cheyenne, LDS 767, etc.) with 25 fps (fixed at 25 fps).I have all sliders to the right and I use nhancer for my Nvidia card.Only the PMDG 747, which I bought 2 days before, is giving me only 12-15 fps in the 2D-Panel, in very dense sceneries like Heathrow (add on scenery) only 9 fps.The virtual panel is again 2-4 fps below.I have set the panel performance down to 5 yet, which didn

Biggest FPS drop culprits in my experience:1) Bloom2) Aircraft Shadows3) Autogen (anything over sparse)4) Traffic (usually I set it to 10-15%)In your case, I'd purchase another couple RAM sticks to bring the total up to 4GB and go read on Phil Taylor's blog regarding how to allow FSX to understand 3GB (there are a couple tweaks involved).If you REALLY want to splurge, go for a Quad Core CPU. To become really extravagant, think about upgrading to 8GB of RAM and Vista64. It feels like moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a three story house.

Forgot to mention:FSX is too eager when you fix FPS to anything, trying hard to maintain fluidity and thus dropping FPS to less than your target (sometimes MUCH less).I'd suggest setting it to Unlimited and seeing if it causes problems for you - we've found it feels much better (even with a couple not-too-often stutters).

Hi Lefteris,I use Vista 32 bit.My understanding is, that Vista 32 bit doesn

I thought, with Acceleration (which I have) FSX recognizes 3 Gigs of Ram, isn

Whats your nvidia settings ? Have you enabled FSX's AA ?Also update your audio drivers.Regards,-Navneet ReddyA320 F/Owww.airdeccan.net

>>I tried another 1024 GB yesterday, but I lost Dual Channel capabilityDid you add 1 x 1GB DIMM or 2 x 512MB DIMMs ? I had read somewhere that a total of odd no. of DIMMs will negate Dual Channel capability.

>>Phil Taylor's blog regarding how to allow FSX to understand 3GB >>there are a couple tweaks involved).Lefteris,Do you have the link to this blog ?Thanks.....Zach

>Is this the performance I have to live with, or did I oversee>something, that could help improving the performance of the>PMDG 747 in FSX?>Hi Thomas,In my opinion, this is not a hardware issue.I have the exact same performance as you do with virtually the same system spec's aside from Vista, which to be realalistic should be sufficient to run FSX and an add-on aircraft. The only time I see an improvement with FPS is when I'm at 30,000 ft. As soon as the ground textures come into play, everything drops.I don't get this problem with any other FSX plane.From what I can see, the computer just can't keep up with the textures of the aircraft for some reason. When you refresh the sim, it takes forever for the aircraft textures to come back again. Just my two cents worth.

Well, to answer the questions above:My Nvidia settings are "everything maxed", FSAA and AA set in FSX.What I did now is, I set the fps to unlimited and reduced autogen from very dense to sparse......and what can I say, I have now between 22-25fps on the ground and 40-50 fps in the air with the PMDG 747.Everything looks less sharp and spectacular now, but therefore the PMDG is flying smooth like silk now.Thanks Lefteris and the others in this thread for helping me!RegardsThomas

Here you go http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylorBestThomas

Lefteri,With the above recommendations, have following observations for frame rates while taxiing at KMIA the taxiway just south of rwy 26L using the default B737-800 (my baseline prior to getting the PMDG 747-400X) as follows:- After applying the above recommendations plus changing the FPS target to "unlimited", my FPS went from below 10 to mid 20s and stayed in the 24 - 27 range.- The overhead of "Aircraft casts shadow on itself" seems to be a good 4-5 FPS.- The overhead of "Aircraft casts shadow on the ground" is about 2 FPS.Dell XPS 420, 2.4 GHz Quad, 2GB, nVidia 8600 GTS 256 MB.Many thanks for your recommendations.Zach

>Biggest FPS drop culprits in my experience:>>1) Bloom>2) Aircraft Shadows>3) Autogen (anything over sparse)>4) Traffic (usually I set it to 10-15%)>>In your case, I'd purchase another couple RAM sticks to bring>the total up to 4GB and go read on Phil Taylor's blog>regarding how to allow FSX to understand 3GB (there are a>couple tweaks involved).>>If you REALLY want to splurge, go for a Quad Core CPU. To>become really extravagant, think about upgrading to 8GB of RAM>and Vista64. It feels like moving from a one-bedroom apartment>to a three story house.Lefteris,Are you saying that 744X does work well with Vista64 and 8GB of RAM? What would be the performance benefit?Regards,

I don't necessarily see a performance benefit (hardware remains the same) but you won't feel any of the restrictions felt in 32bit operating systems.Keep in mind that FSX is STILL a 32-bit application, but at least the operating system will allocate full memory to its other applications as well.

>I don't necessarily see a performance benefit (hardware>remains the same) but you won't feel any of the restrictions>felt in 32bit operating systems.>>Keep in mind that FSX is STILL a 32-bit application, but at>least the operating system will allocate full memory to its>other applications as well.Thanks,May I ask your opinion though.. Do you as a developer, find vista perform better with 744X under that configuration than XP?I'm currently running XP SP2 on C2D Q6700 and 8800GTX 768MB. If I upgraded my memory to 8GB and to vista64, is it likely I would see any performance benefit?Regards,