I have always wondered if those with high end PCs ever see the CPU utilization drop below 100% during flight?? With my paltry 2ghx CPU it is always 100%. I normally get 28fps avg with no autogen and simple clouds. I can use sparse autogen OR complex clouds and get 15fps.Regards,Dick Boley

I see 10%-15% and 53%-57% with similar settings to yours with my Core 2 Duo E6600, this gives 40-50FPS

>I have always wondered if those with high end PCs ever see>the CPU utilization drop below 100% during flight?? >>With my paltry 2ghx CPU it is always 100%. I normally get>28fps avg with no autogen and simple clouds. I can use sparse>autogen OR complex clouds and get 15fps.>Regards,>Dick BoleyAlthough it is misleading, dual core cpu's seem to show not much more than 50%-60% cpu usage as X15 (and others) report.Ostensibly that's because FS doesn't take full advantage of a 2nd or 3rd or 4th core.But, that one core is being *maxxed*. That means it's at 100%, but the cpu usage will show only about 50%. So that's misleading.Any single core rig is going to show 100%. I've never heard any well-thought-out response from any single core owner that said otherwise, and furthermore, 100% is what I have witnessed on all the single core machines I've run FS (any ver) on. FS is going to use every bit of a 1st core that it can use.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

That's interesting Rhett I hadn't realised this. I did notice today that when FSX stutters with my photo scenery the CPU usage drops to practically nothing, I would have expected it to be maxxed out, hard to understand what any of these things really signify.. other than I'm looking forward to around 12 months time when FSX is feeling better and the hardware is making light work of it.

That is indeed interesting info on the CPU usage with Dul Core CPUs. Sounds like a marketing person had a hand the the readout design!Imagine a multi-engine aircraft that only told you the sum of the readouts from the engines.Regards,Dick Boley

FSX doesn't take advantage of dual-core CPU's. It's a real shame because I doubt CPU *speed* will increase much the coming years (we've been stuck at 3-4 GHz for years), but we'll probably get more and more cores on the CPU. I wonnder if quad-core systems 4 years from now, still running at <4 GHz will run FSX much faster than today's systems...The reason CPU usage drops when FSX stutters with photo-scenery is probably because the sim isn't CPU limited at this point. It's probably either paging data (photo sceneries use a lot of RAM) or loading in new textures from the harddrive (especially if the fiber setting is increased beyond defaults). Getting more RAM, a faster harddrive and defragging are things I would try in order to remedy this.

I'm pretty much at the end of the line with 2GB RAM (XP) RAID 0 WD SE16 caviars (defragged) as far as the hardware is concerned. Me thinks ACES may need to do a little optimisation work for photo scenery in the SP1! Interesting though to confim this is not CPU limitation and I will look again at fiber settings.Not sure what the future will be for FSX - maybe it will all end up with MS recoding the entire sim from the bottom up to reflect the future hardware and avoid the problems FSX seems to give. Perhaps addon developers will need to start again with how they build stuff for the sim. Perhaps it has come to that. It does seem that dual core technology is the answer in the future for flight sim as it is generally CPU bound.Still for now FSX is great for me (only that slightly annoying photo scenery stutter now to deal with) and a fantastic sim, I can't help thinking that though it may have a few problems it is a glimse of where flight sims are going and that is certainly a very long way ahead of where they started out.

>only that slightly annoying photo scenery stutter now to deal withX15 have you made any FSX.cfg tweaks yet? I got rid of the stutters by usingfiber_frame_time_fraction=0.33If not IM me next time you're on-line and I'll talk you through it.regardsJim

Hi Jim,I have done some FSX.cfg tweaks, though I think my fiber_frame is set differently from some advice that was listed in a whole load of tweaks.I'll have to revisit this and try 0.33 - things have improved, setting res to 7cm and uninstalling FSUIPC4 have almost got me there!If fiber_frame_time_fraction=0.33 doesn't do it I'll let you know.Ta Gemma(PS lesson 2 Tuesday if the weather clears, can't wait and I'll check those codes!)

Rhett,>>But, that one core is being *maxxed*. That means it's at 100%, but the cpu usage will show only about 50%. So that's misleading.<http://exmixer.com/955EEfs9Screen.jpgX6800: http://exmixer.com/X6800fs9Screen.jpgjb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]

If I am remembering your shots correctly, your shots seem to verify what I said; you are getting about 50% usage in that one graph, and it seems logical to me that this must be a patently false reading of what is really happening.If you were only using 50% of that core, you would get frames like a P4 2.4 (insert any lower end cpu). You're obviously not getting that kind of poor performance, so therefore you must be using significantly more than 50% of that core--probably 100%. The problem is, the 2nd core is not being used all that much, which the other graphs show.In the other graphs, you are using much less cpu. This is FS, not using much of the 2nd core. No where do I see a graph showing 100% or near 100% usage. And you would surely have to be using near 100% of a core to get any kind of performance at all, even with a C2D.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Maybe I am thick but the CPU graph corresponds to the % of usage of all your cores, so when only one of two cores works at 100% the CPU graph will be at 50% while the CPU usage history next to it will show independent readings for every core. At least that's how I have always interpreted it.Regards,

FS9 and FS X can take advantage of dual-core CPUs but not by default. After starting the sim you have to use the taskmanager to manually set the processor affinity for the process ( fs9.exe or fsx.exe )to all of your CPU-Cores. After that the simulator uses both cores at nearly the same load instead of the first only with 100% of load. So you have more processor power used for FS. It can increase framerates and FS will run smoother. It worked for me :-) :DCiao MichaelSys Specs: AMD X2 4200+ / Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe / GF8800GTS / 2Gb RAM /Soundblaster X-Fi / 2x WD Raptor RAID 0 for FS / Vista 32 Home Premium

Yes that's exactly how to read it. The first screen shot shows 25% use of four cores (ie one core's worth total) and the second shows 50% of two cores (ie. again one core's worth total).Gary

Michael,>>FS9 and FS X can take advantage of dual-core CPUs but not by default.<