Please Sticky This Thread Thank You :)

Gary,I want to highlight this thread and the library entry in a blog post on my blog, are you cool with that?TIAPhil

Sure thing Phil. :-)Gary

Its live now!

Actually, I just noticed the images in the first post are now dead, and since they told the body of the story, I'll repost them again here.Gary

As the original post images have expired, here is a repost, including corrections to date:After running over 40 benchmark runs over the last few days on both Vista 64 and XP Pro with FSX RTM, SP1, SP2 DX9 and SP2 DX10, not to mention a dash of overclocking, widescreen, TH2G, selective CPU core use and different FSX settings, I have finally cobbled together the results as shown below.First up is the test config and legend for the results:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181588.jpgNext is the test results themselves, limited to just the average FPS of the run (I have second by second blows of the full 5 minutes of each run and can draw up pretty graphs for any set of these runs if anyone wants them :-):http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181589.jpgThe conclusions I have drawn from this effort are as follows (calculations not shown in the name of sanity):1. SP1 gives just over double the performance of RTM and SP2 adds another 10% with DX9 on Vista 642. SP2 DX10 is 25% slower than SP2 DX9, however when bloom is enabled, DX10 performs the same but DX9 loses 37% performance on Vista 643. Max sliders is unplayable in SP1, SP2 DX9 and SP2 DX10 at around 6 FPS average and mass blurries set in within 30 seconds on Vista 644. My SP1 optimum setting configuration goes from a 13% benefit to a 5% deficit between SP1 and SP2 on Vista 645. Enabling widescreen support causes a 9% performance drops with SP1 and only a 5% performance drop with SP2 on Vista 646. Using TH2G, which increases pixel output threefold, elicits a nearly 30% performance drop in SP1 but a lower 23% performance drop in SP2 on Vista 647. Using cores 0 and 1 out of all four cores incurs a 3% performance loss, however gives a 7% performance boost when cores 2 and 3 are used on Vista 648. A 50% CPU overclock translates to a 34% performance gain, which is an efficiency factor of 68%, on both OSs9. Running 1066MHz FSB versus 1600MHz FSB results in neglible performance difference (<0.5%) on Vista 6410. The highest recorded performance was 37.16 FPS average with SP2 DX9 Global High settings and the CPU overclocked to 3.6GHz and limiting CPU cores used to 2 and 3 on Vista 6411. XP Pro is 4% faster than Vista 64 with RTM12. Vista 64 is 4-6% faster than XP Pro with both SP1 and SP2, with CPU overclocking causing the highest difference13. The gains in XP Pro going from RTM through SP1 and SP2 are approx 10% less than with Vista 6414. Reducing FSX core use from 4 to 2 cores with XP Pro resulted in a 2% (cores 0&1) to 7% (cores 2&3) performance boostFinally, some general comments I have are:1. Image quality was very consistent between most runs, with the only noticable degradation being mild blurries when I did a single core run and major blurries during any max slider run2. FPS is only one aspect of the FSX game experience and should be balanced against visual quality for optimal fun factor.Gary

Gary, as these will inevitably expire again in 14 days, if You would like, I could host them on my web page and post the direct links here, I have 20GB space, with unlimited bandwidth, so that won't be a problem. This way they will stay up! Let me know if you would like me to do this.

Gary,Thank you so much for your comprehensive and meaningful benchmark test and also the hardware recommendations! Exremely helpful. It answers most FSX hardware performance issues that were on my mind, incl. Vista64, DX9/10, TH2G, processor speed vs. multiple core, raid, sli setups etc.I am planning a new penryn system for christmas and this was just what i needed. Found this via Phil's link and just registered now here to say thank you!Allow me one question:Do you stick to your comments concerning no need for a SLI setup (2x8800gt) even for a TH2G setup with its high resolutions?Thanks again!Christoph

Hi Gary, sounds like from my brief reading you've done some hard work and we appreciate it.I noticed Vista was always 64bit, did you get same results with Vista 32 bit?I actually get a FPS gain of 30 to 40% with Acceleraton and Direct X 10 preview on and in full window mode. (From 20 to 35 at busy airports to 40's and 50's while flying). Than just with Sp1 or no Direct X 10 preview. And that is with most sliders 1/2 to full including add on Ai traffic which is My Traffic as they are the only one's who's afct will display liveries With DX10 preview, well 60 to 70% of afct. UT and Traffic don't show any liveries period.But that is another storyAnother question, you say you need 4gb ram, now Vista use's 1.15gb of my ram for the Virtual memory or swap file if you get what I mean.Leaving 2.8gb.Is this correct, as according to Dell and other XPS Vista uses it is.Be interested in your reply, in the meantime I'll download your file and check it out.My System is a Dell XPS 7104gb ramIntel Quad core 6700 2.66, Clocked to 3.19ghzGe Force 8800 756mg video card27 inch Ultra Sharp Monitor and 24 for left side view or whatever I choose.Vista Experince rating score of 5 plus on memory etc.CheersPhil

>Gary,>>Thank you so much for your comprehensive and meaningful>benchmark test and also the hardware recommendations! Exremely>helpful. It answers most FSX hardware performance issues that>were on my mind, incl. Vista64, DX9/10, TH2G, processor speed>vs. multiple core, raid, sli setups etc.>>I am planning a new penryn system for christmas and this was>just what i needed. Found this via Phil's link and just>registered now here to say thank you!>>Allow me one question:>Do you stick to your comments concerning no need for a SLI>setup (2x8800gt) even for a TH2G setup with its high>resolutions?>>Thanks again!>>ChristophI don't think you can have SLI with a multi monitor setup!

Tom, I was going to host them on my ISP website, but my account closes down in a week's time when we move out to return to live in Australia, so yes it would be good if you could host these pictures. In fact, it would be good if you could host the other graphs I have posted here and PM me with the links so I can repost the main data, perhaps in a fresh post. Thanks for helping out with this.Gary

No problem I have them saved now, I have to go out now, but will upload to my site tonight, and will PM you the links!

YOU GOT MAIL!!

Tom, thank you for your comment. I have neither used TH2G nor SLI before. Do you know why that can not be used together? I thought TH2G just gives the GPU the impression of being one very wide monitor?Regards, Christoph

You are welcome Christoph.Re SLI, whilst I do not have personal experience with SLI, I have seen enough posts here in this forum of the general consensus that the only time SLI / Crossfire makes an iota of difference is at super high res AND high AA/AF situations. I know that Tom says that SLI doesn't work with multi-monitors, but if you are running just the TH2G adaptor it is only seen as one monitor so it should still work in SLI. I'd say at that high a resolution SLI would be beneficial, but I am just purely speculating based on how many pixels are being thrown around despite FSX being mostly CPU bound - at some stage they've gotta push the video card hard!Gary