Hi all,I've just received my new PC, here's the spec:- Hard Drive 640GB Serial ATA Raid 0 "Stripe" (2x320- List D09XP5a - XPS 710- English Windows Vista Ultimate- Dimension XPS 710 Core 2 Quad-Core Processor QX6600 (2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB cache)- Internal Media Card Reader 13-in-1- SINGLE 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX- FP/BL 1908FP - UK/Irish - Ultrasharp 19'' Flat Pan- English Microsoft Works 8.0 (Word Processor, Sprea- 16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives- Memory - Upgrade to 2048MB 667MHZ (From 1024MB 667- Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme - VISTA ONLY- ROXIO Software for Vista - Creator / MYDVD 9.0- Dimension Resource DVD for Vista (Diagnostics & Dr- Memory Dual-Channel 4096MB <4x1024> 667MHz DDR2- Free Upgrade- Hard Drive - 320GB to 640GB RAID I've installed FSX along with some AI traffic from world of ai. When I ran it, I was getting very poor FPS performance. For example at EGLL I was getting 5-8FPS when in the R22. With the spec of the PC, I thought I'd get better than that! On my old 4 year old PC (XP/FS9), I'd get around 20-25FPS at EGLL with even more AI traffic and being in something like the PMDG 744 or the LDS 763. All the FSX settings are set to default.Can any suggest why my FSX performance is so poor, and what I can do to improve it please?Any help/advice would be very much appreciated.

Well, first off, FS9 is much much MUCH easier on your PC than FSX will be..... What settings did you set with regards to traffic, scenery, etc(I dont know what default is on your pc...it varies from one to another)? For one, turn off bloom and self-shadowing....set water to 2.x low or medium later if things work out.Set road traffic to less than 30% Boats and ai ships I set at 15%Flight AI to no greater than 79%autogen dense, scenery very dense, Did you install SP1? And, as you might know, SP2/Acceleration is coming out in two days... Should helpDefrag your hard drive tooAlso, while running, open your task manager and see if all 4 cores show some activity on them...we'll start with that...

Have you applied SP-1 to FSX? Did you get the hot fixes mentioned on Phil Taylor's blog in regards to memory performance? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936357And take a look at the other suggestions listed on his blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/default.aspxHopefully, some of these will improve your performance in addition to what Ryan mentioned.Regards,Jim Karn

Hi guys,Thanks very much indeed for your replies. Yes, I did install SP1. I wasnt aware of SP2 coming out.I'll give your suggestions a go tonight and see how it goes.

Hi,I've just tried the two "hot fixes", the first one installed fine, the second when however gave an error saying words to the effect "not for this system". I double checked I was downloading the correct version (Vista 32bit), but still gives the same error. I observe no noticable FPS improvements with the hot fix installed.I'll wait for SP2 to see how that goes, I may be back for more advice :-)Thanks again!

Since you bought an off-the-shelf computer, you are automatically hamstrung. But the good news is that you can fix this.You are going to have a significant amount of tweaking to do. For starters, you need to unload all of the non-essnetial software/running processes/services that Dell no doubt has running on your system at all times.This will probably involve you creating a bare-bones profile of sorts. Not sure what Vista has in this regard.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

hehe.... for starters...I find a copy of XP, and not vista, an oem copy off newegg or something, and format the whole drive....then install drivers one by one, and only the software you like to run.Then install FS, etc etc, and try a defrag program like DiskTrix Ultimate Defrag or O&O or diskkeeperhttp://www.disktrix.com/UDIntroduction.htmhttp://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/profess...rofessional.aspBACKUP all your data if you're going to do it this way...

Hi..it's me again,I think I may have found the, or at least one of the issues, why my FSX performance isn't too good. As I say I have a quad core, I'm currently running FSX and have task manager open. One of my 4 cores is maxed out, whilst the other 3 appear to be relaxing having a cup of tea! Overall CPU usage is 26%. Could this be the problem? If so, is there way to direct the other 3 cores to do some work when FSX is running?Thanks again for your help.

If you are stationary, then FSX generally only maxes one core and occasional spurts of the other cores. Once you start moving, the other three cores should fire up to loand and process upcoming scenery. Gary

>Hi..it's me again,>>I think I may have found the, or at least one of the issues,>why my FSX performance isn't too good. As I say I have a quad>core, I'm currently running FSX and have task manager open. >>One of my 4 cores is maxed out, whilst the other 3 appear to>be relaxing having a cup of tea! Overall CPU usage is 26%.>Could this be the problem? If so, is there way to direct the>other 3 cores to do some work when FSX is running?>>Thanks again for your help.Have you applied the affinitymask setting in your FSX.CFG file?ie: (JobScheduler) - Replace with square bracketsAffinityMask=3For a quad system, I've heard the best results can be achieved by using 2 0r 3 cores, leaving core 0 for system functions. Valid settings are1 = 0001 (Core 0)2 = 0010 (Core 1)3 = 0011 (Core 0, 1)4 = 0100 (Core 2)5 = 0101 (Core 0, 2)6 = 0110 (Core 1, 2)7 = 0111 (Core 0, 1, 2)8 = 1000 (Core 3)9 = 1001 (Core 0, 3)10= 1010 (Core 1, 3)11= 1011 (Core 0, 1, 3)12= 1100 (Core 2, 3)13= 1101 (Core 0, 2, 3)14= 1110 (Core 1, 2, 3)15= 1111 (Core 0, 1, 2, 3)I think in your case the best one for you to try would be 14 (Core 1, 2, 3). Or one of the 2 core choices, that don't use Core 0.

Sorry to be a pain, how does one assign cores for specific applications?