Hi all, my rig has recently been upgraded and I've experienced some bizarre FS9 behavior. I have an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ on an ECS K8T890-A motherboard with 2GB PC3200 ram and an EVGA 6800GS PCI-E graphics card. FS runs great right after bootup (high FPS with everything maxed) but, if I do a lot of other high intensity tasks on the computer and then load up FS, I get this bizarre intermittent flickering and the plane jumps in position each time. After reading many posts on this forum and others I found out I can isolate FS9 to a single core. This cures the flickering but my frame rates drop significantly and panning is no longer smooth. Anyone else have a similar rig and problems like this? I'm not greatly concerned since I went dual core with my sights on future versions that can truly take advantage of the AMD X2 64 chip but it'd be nice to at least get some of the smoothness back without having to reboot often. Has anyone successfully overclocked this motherboard? I bumped the clock speed up a bit but the BIOS doesn't let you set many parameters and without fine control of the multipliers it makes me a bit nervous to go too much higher. Any hints and tips would be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Art Martin

I do not own a dual core system, but if I were you I would get the latest BIOS for your motherboard. Many of the newest BIOS have optimizations and enhancements for dual-core cpu support.Rhett

I'm now running:Athlon 64 x2 3800+ (not overclocked) on a BFG nForce4 motherboard with 2GB PC3200/400 RAM, and a PNY 6800GS PCI-E card... I'm close to your specs.Unfortunately, I don't experience the stutters you are seeing. I had a problem on my first build with the new machine and MSFS was having HUGE texture problems (lots of blank white textures being refreshed to normal every few seconds - not good!) After first fearing my new video card was hosed, I noticed that nVidia had released some new video drivers since the last time I fetched them.I uninstalled the old driver, and installed the new one - clear as a bell ever since.It almost sounds as if one of those high-intensity tasks you are running is still somehow in memory and taking processor cycles (or hording memory). The jumpyness you describe, with the plane surging to a new position after each one, seems to say that the computer is still calculating your place in space, but doesn't have the power to draw it. Does this heavy stutter occur after long periods of simming, or does it only occur if you perform your self-described high intensity tasks first?You probably have already done it, but after running your high intensity tasks, I'd look in the Task Manager to see if there are any stray processes still running and stealing memory and cycles. If it was your hardware, I would think that the problem would exhibit itself every time you flew, not only after you've used your computer for a while.I do hope you get it running nicely - the hardware combo you invested in is indeed a smooth performed with MSFS. Not quite UTOPIA, but pretty darn close. Far and away better than what I was seeing on my original P4/3.02 with an AGP 6800GT and 1.5gb ram. Good luck,-Greg

Hi GuysRelevant thread for me this..... Although my current rig is not bad, i'm thinking of going the AMD X2 route. I have been concerned that i might actually loose performance if FS9 is only using one core. Then there's the talk of gains if multi-tasking..... Does multi tasking include running FS9 and various addons?

I had the exact same problem with my dual-core setup (Athlon X2 4400) when I first set up. I had severe stuttering over intense scenery. Microsoft does have a hotfix out addressing performance problems on dual-core processors. Below is the Knowledge Base article for it:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=896256Once installed, all my stuttering problems went away, and I get smooth 30 fps over Ultimate Terrain with Active Sky weather. Unfortunately, they do not provide a direct download, and you need to call support to get it. I found a download through a search on Google.

Hi Art,I also have an Athlon dual core (see specs below) and I'm generally satisfied with it's performance - but.... I did have an incident where the FS9 startup screen started to flicker quickly along with the cursor and I had to reboot the computer and then start fs9 again. This continued to happen and I had no choice but to uninstall/reinstall FS9. I haven't had any similar problem since. I do notice that I get some flickering on setup screens in FS9 when I click OK or whatever in order to get back into FS9. Once in FS9 I don't seem to have flickering problems.Have you tried FSAUTOSTART by Ken Salter (fsasv1111.zip), needless to say available at AVSIM. This is a fantastic program which helps you easily (and temporarily) close out unnecessary processes and applications, GREATLY TREMENDOUSLY ETC. increasing available ram and possibly removing programs running in the background which could be affecting your FS9 performance.It's possible FSAUTOSTART could help your situation. If not it could still be usefull in improving your FS performance. It definately helped in my case.Good luck.

I really have my computer stripped down as far as things running in the background when I start FS so I'm basically doing manually what FSAUTOSTART does. As I said, these problems don't show up with a cold boot, only after I've been running other memory intensive applications as GMAX and Photoshop and other scenery design utilities. A scan of running tasks prior to startup shows nothing really running in the background other than necessary Windows tasks and my HP printer driver. I've even tried shutting that off but it really has no effect. I have 2 full GB of ram anyway so even if there's a bit of a memory leak from those prior applications it really shouldn't affect FS. I think it's related to the motherboard I chose. It's basically the bottom tier of 939 Athlon motherboards I could buy and I'll just have to live with its limitations until I can afford an upgrade. Thanks to all for their suggestions.Art

Doesn't appear to be any BIOS upgrades for this board. I've looked.Art

Well I've got no problems at all running FS9 on an X2 system:Enermax CS718 Black Al Case650W SST ST65ZF SLi PSU 12v201Asus A8N32-SLI DeluxeAMD 4800X2 S939 1MB (2.4MHz)Corsair Tx PRO 2GB PC35002 x XFX GeForce 7800GTX 512mb Extreme XXX Edition DDR3 Dual DVI VIVO PCI-E in SLI mode (84.21 Drivers)2 x 74Gb WD SATA 10krpm Raptor2 x 250GB WD SATA24 DELL WIDE TFT 2405FPWSamsung DVD ROMSamsung Dual layer DVD-RWSony 1.44 FloppyTrust USB sound systemLogitech Cordless Desktop S510WIN/XP/PRO/SP2George

Well in my post above I almost said something about the fact that I have never heard of your motherboard...but I didn't. Not knowing about it, I really couldn't comment intelligently on it. :)I don't even know if it's an nForce4 chipset board. I assume it is though.But generally speaking, I feel like the price difference between motherboards is small, vs. some other components. $80 (ASRock) vs. $120 (Asus SLI board), for example, isn't much difference. But the higher-end ASUS board would be a better performer than the value-priced ASRock (also made by ASUS) board.I think that one of the problems with the less expensive boards are things like BIOS upgrades, which may be non-existent or limited at best. And with dual-core, it seems like most board makers have progressively released BIOS upgrades for the SPECIFIC purpose of enhancing dual-core cpu support as the dual core chips are released.Rhett

on the dual core front, I noticed in Adam's terrain paper on FSInsider that the problem with the current terrain engine was that for compatability reasons, the decision was made not to use shader code to run most of the terrain computations, and all the terrain engine runs on the CPU. Then to prevent the terrain engine from sucking up all the CPU cycles, it was necessary to run it as a fiber in a single thread-- then they could have positive control of scheduling CPU for terrain. But the indication is that in FSX the terrain engine might run in a separate thread which could then run on a 2d core.I've hd good luck in the past with ASUS boards, but for good or ill it seemed like you had to keep looking for new BIOS revs.scott s..

I have an AMD X2 and don't see the flicker either. To address Phil's question, yes the dual core does help significantly with add-ons. I've just noticed tonight that running a plane with the Reality XP GPS, its gps emulation is completely utilizing the second cpu, while fs9 uses the other. I typically have active sky running and sometimes radar contact. There is a lot less impact when running other addons when you have 2 cpus to do the processing. Meanwhile with all that cpu crunching going on I'm sitting here surfing the forums and windows itself is as snappy as ever and my fs framerate stays at its locked rate.Don

Found the hotfix and installed it today. Man, what a change. I can even run multiple monitors in VC mode now, something that brought the processor to its knees before. Hopefully MS will put that fix into its Window's Updates so you don't have to go through hoops to find it or go through their support nightmare. Thanks for the tip.Art

Glad the hotfix worked for you. It sure made a difference on my system. I stumbled across that on other gaming forums. I am surprised that MS hasn't put this into a update yet since it seems to be helping alot of gamers out there.

After checking back into this thread, I noticed a few references to the MS Hotfix...For kicks and giggles, I installed it on my PC even though I thought it was performing well. Woah.MSFS is far smoother now than it was before - While I do lock my framerates to a lower number (25ish) to prevent annoying dips and distractions on approach and final, the overall smoothness and presentation of the simulation are noticably better. I had no complaints before - now it just looks GREAT. I was able to add more graphical details and retain this level of performance.In addition to MSFS, the hotfix also improved performance with other applications - such as the ones I use to encode my DVD's into MP4 for use on my Home Theater PC. THANK YOU to those who brought up the hotfix - it's gone into my stable of REQUIRED patches!!-Greg