FSX - would love to run on Ultra High Settings, but how?

[Straypuft 0]

i am currently using high settings, but would love to max out everything.i cant have very detailed airports and i have my autogen set to sparse, also, i cannot have alot of aircraft traffic, cars on the highways are at none, no boats, low weather and all this gives me about 15 frames per second.if i change anything else to go up in settings, my frame rate drops significantly to less than 10 frames per second. my specs are:Gateway GT5056Windows XPAMD 64 X2 3800+(im told this is 2 1 ghz cores)1 gigabyte of ram(onboard video disabled)Leadtek Nvidia 7600GS250GB PATA HDDrecently defragged.do i need more ram?maybe a better CPU?i dont know, i know very little about upgrading, all i know how to do is put the hardware in, but not how to tweak the hardware.thanks for taking the time to read this

[Guest allcott]

You can't. It's that simple. You need more horsepower than any desktop computer currently delivers. Wait two years.Just read the many, many topics in this forum.Allcott

[Guest bromster]

I've got a AMD 64 Athlon 2800+ with 1GB DDR 400 (single channel) and a 128mb PCI-Ex "Gigabyte" 6600GT. i can take my scenery past ultra-hi and still get 24 FPS at non-busy airports.I've included a screenshot of my settings for you to look at. i've adjusted them slightly after taking the screenshot. now my mesh resolution and mesh complexity are at Max, but i've lowered the texture resolution 1 notch lower. Be very careful with clouds. Thunderstorms DESTROY my PC's FPS.Also, it's VERY IMPORTANT that your max. framerate is NOT SET to "unlimited", and set to about 24 FPS. This is so that when your PC CAN reach 24 FPS or over, the computer can start rendering scenery etc. ahead of time to reduce the workload. This setting alone made a HUGE difference to my performance.I've noticed that my computer is always streaming data from the hard drive during gameplay, so i can safely say that 1GB is insufficient at high settings. With your PC specs, i would say another 1GB memory would make a BIG difference to your FPS. I've tried an extra 512MB in mine, with very little difference. However, my CPU usage is at 100% during gameplay, so that's what's holding my PC back as well.I hope this helps. don't give up on FSX, look for tips in the forum regarding settings.Bromster.

[Straypuft 0]

Bromster, thanks for the advice.lets say i have 2 512MB sticks, would i have to get 2 more 512's, or can i get a 1gb with room to add an extra 1gb in the future?(i have 4 slots)i heard something about how the sticks of memory have to match for better performance, would this matter?

[spilok 1,134]

I agree with everything....except, I do like the UNLIMITED setting, and I set my AA and Anisotropic settings in the Sim. My system loves these settings. Works great!

[MrEd 0]

The upcoming service pack will help performance. By the way, are you guys able to have any road vehicle traffic?

[spilok 1,134]

Road traffic? Absolutely. That's one of the big features of FSX that makes it more immersive.

[MrEd 0]

Yeah I agree that traffic makes for more immersion. That's why I was asking. I have noticed that every time I look (maybe I haven't seen the right ones) at graphics settings submitted, road traffic is set at zero and they just do boats. I guess they save processing power for other things. It's good to hear that you have autos on the road.Ed

[MrEd 0]

fyi I'm a Mac user trying to figure out when to make the move to pc for FSX. So far it seems that I should wait for the next processors set to launch in the second half of this year. It's torture waiting that long, but we'll see what the service pack does. Maybe I'll be able to make the move then. Multi core support would probably cynch the deal for me. Fat chance of that I suppose lol.Ed

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

>Bromster, thanks for the advice.>>lets say i have 2 512MB sticks, would i have to get 2 more>512's, or can i get a 1gb with room to add an extra 1gb in the>future?(i have 4 slots)>>i heard something about how the sticks of memory have to match>for better performance, would this matter?Your motherboard is probably using dual channel memory...which means it likes its sticks 2 at a time in matching pairs. You are probably better off to get a 2x1 gig set, put that in, and sell the 2x512 meg set. Mixing and matching can be bad.To increase performance, you need memory first, then CPU, then GPU. Definitely memory first.

[Guest LSflyguy]

I'm also planning to wait for the new "Penryn" CPUs before I do another hardware upgrade later this year. If Penryn chips can be clocked at 5 GHz or higher, as is being rumored, they'll make a HUGE difference in improving FSX performance. ACES reps have said they'd definitely like to expand multi-core support beyond the approximately 30% that a second core uses right now. But it's a difficult programming challenge, and whether they'll be able to do it (and whether it will actually make a significant performance difference) are unknown at this point. I'll go out on a limb and predict that SP1, plus new CPUs, will make it possible to run FSX at maximum sliders before the end of the year.

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

You will get a lot closer to maximum sliders in June with Barcelona from AMD. This is AMD's K10 core. Agena and Kuma are the desktop quad and dual core chips (respectively). They are supposedly 80% faster in floating point math than existing Athlon and Opteron chips. AMD claims core for core it is faster than Core 2 Duo. We'll have to wait and see.If you have an socket AM2 motherboard, you can just plop one in with a BIOS update.

[Straypuft 0]

i have socket 939,did they stop making socket 939 cpu's?

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

You can still get 939 CPUs, but the socket will not be supported with the K10 core.