Need A Little Push Here

[Guest Alphahawk3]

Yeah, I did miss the fact he's running 2 quads (didn't think that was possible) so I guess that comparison falls pretty flat then. Well, back to tweaking then I guess... :( Cheers/Jonas

Jonas, Got to admit he has got one heck of a rig and the screen shot....looks like a photo. Trust me...you can get the i7 920 to run FSX...I am thinking of going to Vista to get the 64 bit system...which a lot of folks tell me runs it even better than XP. I don't know anything about Vista but I followed Nicks guide to the letter and it did wonders for me. FSX takes all of 5 seconds to load once a I click it now. I have just about all maxed out and yet I feel I have room for some weather engine or some more adons...time will tell.....good luck.

[Guest firehawk44]

Captains,After two years of "standing beside" watching everyone enjoying themselves with FSX I've finally got myself a box that can handle it. Or at least that's what I thought...As a christmas present to myself I bought and built a core i7 920 based system (4 cores) with 6Gb of DDR3 and the most powerful GPU in the world: The Radeon 4870 x2 with 1Gb of video memory. On top of this little monster I installed Vista Utimate x64, FSX (SP2). In FSX I added GEX Enhanced, UTX and REX. I then installed the Aerosoft Cheyenne X as a sort of reference model (that's one of the models I've been wanting to fly but couldn't in my old rig). I then took it for a spin from Dillingham Hawaii and later from Princess Juliana. Both of these flights gave ~20 FPS (I maxed FPS to 25) which was far below my expectations. I then tried the the Cheyenne X from La Guardia, NY. The frame rate now dropped to ~7!Well, actually, I'm not really dissappointed because the performance is so lousy I suspect something very basic must be very wrong here. Admittedly, my settings are pretty high with everything on/maxed except: Water = high 2.x; Mesh resolution = 10m; Texture resolution=60cm; Cloud draw distance=80mi; Airline traffic=70%, GA traffic=9%; Airport traffic density=Medium; Road vehicles=7%; Ships 'n' ferries=10%; Leisure boats=15%So, with (amost) the most powerful machine imaginable I'm still seeing a slide show here. Could someone please point me in the right direction? Is there something I need to do in FSX or Vista to get decent FPS? Are there any "mandatory" tweaks I need to perform? Any forum threads I need to visit?Cheers/Jonas

How are your FPS when you return your settings to default? (Your can save your current settings w/i FSX then go back and customize and return all settings to default. Name this config default.cfg so you can return to it if need be). If they are low at default, then you have a problem other than FSX settings. I do agree with another responder that your aircraft AI is set a little too high though....Jim

[tfm 169]

... Admittedly, my settings are pretty high with everything on/maxed except: Water = high 2.x; Mesh resolution = 10m; Texture resolution=60cm; Cloud draw distance=80mi; Airline traffic=70%, GA traffic=9%; Airport traffic density=Medium; Road vehicles=7%; Ships 'n' ferries=10%; Leisure boats=15%So, with (amost) the most powerful machine imaginable I'm still seeing a slide show here. ...

Jonas,Sorry if I'm stating the obvious: but you don't mention whether you use light bloom. It is, of course, essential to turn this OFF when running under DX9. Otherwise, as others have said, your results don't actually look very surprising for an un-overclocked PC with a 4870x2 card. As Nick has said, the CPU cannot do everything on its own: it needs a strong supporting act from the other components. But as a rule of thumb, most of the people satisfied with FSX performance are running quads at AT LEAST 3.6GHz or duals at AT LEAST 4GHz. The new i7 gives a slight clock-per-clock advantage over the Wolfdale CPUs, but not enough to justify sacrificing significant Hz. And your 4870x2 card - while very good for most purposes - is a bit of a handicap for FSX. Fiddling around with your installation (separate hard disk drive/partition, different operating system, new settings in the .CFG file etc) can help with different issues - such as stuttering or slow texture loading. But it is unlikely to deliver significant improvements in raw "baseline" FPS.From the experience reported by others who have bought the i920, I suspect you could do really well from your kit: but you'd have to spend some time tuning it - not only the CPU but the RAM, for best results.TimTim

[Petraeus 147]

I do agree with another responder that your aircraft AI is set a little too high though....Jim

That all depends on whether or which traffic package is being used. Based upon the relative size of the traffic.bgl files the packages use, and hence the number of planes they spawn, I would have thought that default FSX AI would be no problem at all for this system, Ultimate Traffic would also be OK, but MyTraffic would start to present a problem. With WOAI, it's a matter of personal choice how big to make it.

[JayKae 1]

Hey guys, you also have to understand with this system that I only run FSX on it.. nothing more, nothing less, it is a dedicated FS computer, I have hardly any processes running but why I am posting here.... the setting of the slider to unlimited is a magic item on this rig, if I would leave it to limited I get slight stutters and sometimes even blurries and lower FPS than what I set it to at various locations... go figure

[Guest Alphahawk3]

Hey guys, you also have to understand with this system that I only run FSX on it.. nothing more, nothing less, it is a dedicated FS computer, I have hardly any processes running but why I am posting here.... the setting of the slider to unlimited is a magic item on this rig, if I would leave it to limited I get slight stutters and sometimes even blurries and lower FPS than what I set it to at various locations... go figure

My rig is just the opposite.....keep it locked or it stutters badly...jumping from 14 to 80 Fps and everywhere in between. I keep it locked at 25 and all runs well. I have noticed this same problem with identical configured rigs....has to be FSX is sensitive to the impedance of hardware..I don't know....not a programer. But saw this a lot with military processors where all is the same and even though the equipment was functional the digital checks might check out on one radar and not another but they both were fully operstional for combat using a set of alternative checks.. We just eliminated certian digital checks that never made a difference anyway.

[moggel 0]

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious: but you don't mention whether you use light bloom. It is, of course, essential to turn this OFF when running under DX9. ...

Sorry if I was unclear. Everything is "maxed" except what I stated in that list. By that I mean I'm running DX10 Preview and bloom. I've tried going back to DX9 of course to see if there was any difference and I also discovered that bloom was both very costly and also not very good looking in DX9 so I prefer DX10 wherever the textures allow it (alot of payware scenery uses textures that's not DX10 compliant unfortunately).

[yellowjack 28]

This thread has some "Old wives tales" creeping in.FSX is not about the speed of a CPU or how many cores you have.FSX not about how many other applications you have on your PC.FSX is not about where you have your data stored or if it is defragmented.FSX is not about the graphics card.FSX is not about how much memory you have or how fast it is.FSX is not about how overclocked the graphics card(s), cpu, disks, Northdridge, Southbridge, bus or memory is.FSX is about all of the above. FSX is basically about moving data from a storage location, processing it and displaying the results.Moving data from storage location = i/o path lengthProcessing the data = slider postions and dataDisplaying it = Graphics sub system including CPU & memoryThis means FSX performance is derived from a broad spectrum of potential bottlenecks that will vary from machine to machine.Experience with FSX should have taught us all that FSX is performance is bound by CPU rather than graphics card performance, the CPU is bound by its speed and being fed data to process without waiting. As for the OS, I have used XP SP3 and now Vista 64 with the same hardware and there is little if any performance difference between the two (on my machine at least). Buying the biggest and best is only the start to FSX performance tuning, it buys potential and that is all, it is not in itself a shortcut to good or best FSX performance. Each user must then find a way to make the most of this potential.My PC is locked at 35FPS for FSX (most sliders on or near max) and I can exceed that in most places except big and busy airports in busy areas. My answer is simple I don't fly into big airports in busy areas, there are plenty of others to choose from. Whatever your hardware at this point in time and with FSX as it is, no one is going to get good performance everywhere especially with some of the "Eye Candy" add-ons. The best performance tip for me was Nick's Name Defrag (reduces the i/o path length) and the least salubrious remark was that a particular PC is used for FSX only. But its only entertainment after all.

[Mango 0]

Very well said John (specially that you buy potential) - not much to add. Well, at a certain CPU speed (i would say 3.8 to 4 GHz) and a 1920x1200 or higher resolution, you will find the GPU starting to bottleneck. Very noticeable at more demanding weather conditions. I replaced my 8800 GTX with a highly overclocked 280 GTX and saw a nice improvement.

[yellowjack 28]

Very well said John (specially that you buy potential) - not much to add. Well, at a certain CPU speed (i would say 3.8 to 4 GHz) and a 1920x1200 or higher resolution, you will find the GPU starting to bottleneck. Very noticeable at more demanding weather conditions. I replaced my 8800 GTX with a highly overclocked 280 GTX and saw a nice improvement.

That is interesting Mango. I shall have to think about a replacement for my venerable 8800GTX although I normally run at 3.7GHZ @ 1920 x 1200. So I am on the cusp so to speak.

[fsx 0]

Guys, I don't mean to be negative here, but I do find it incredible that more than 2 years after its release, even with new generation hardware, FSX is still a non-starter with regards performance. Wasn't it the MS tag line that FSX was designed with future hardware in mind ? There are many folks that have invested thousands on new gen I-7 systems for whom performance remains to be an issue. Not many of us have the ability to overclock 920 and 940 CPU's, which seems to be quite mainstream for those 'in the know'. I hope FS11 is to FSX, what FS2002 was to FS2000. And I certainly hope MS drop that ridiculous 'designed for future hardware' approach (which to me now reads as 'it's full of bugs') and provide a finished product which we can all run and enjoy on at least I-7 gen hardware, without volumes of tweaking. Thank heavens for Nick Needham.Eric

[Guest Astradan]

Moggell,As others have said, the aspect of your research that has let you down, is in buying the ATI GPU ...... this is certainly not a good card for FSX! ......... Objective performance comparisons show the plain old nVidia 8800 GTS 512Mb, eats the ATI for breakfast.There are also many reports and reviews across the web that show that SLI (or crossfire) give lower results that single GPU cards. You could deactivate the 2nd (2x) GPU, but if I were you I would chalk it up to experience and sell the ATI, and buy a 8800 GTS 512Mb (cheap now and still the best with FSX!).With that awful (and expensive) ATI card removed and a 8800 in it's place, you should get much, much better performance with FSX, with your new system.Good luck !

[JayKae 1]

:( :( :( A Dual 4870X2 being eaten for breakfast by that? ... Doubt it very much B)

[Geofa 108]

Guys, I don't mean to be negative here, but I do find it incredible that more than 2 years after its release, even with new generation hardware, FSX is still a non-starter with regards performance. Wasn't it the MS tag line that FSX was designed with future hardware in mind ? There are many folks that have invested thousands on new gen I-7 systems for whom performance remains to be an issue. Not many of us have the ability to overclock 920 and 940 CPU's, which seems to be quite mainstream for those 'in the know'. I hope FS11 is to FSX, what FS2002 was to FS2000. And I certainly hope MS drop that ridiculous 'designed for future hardware' approach (which to me now reads as 'it's full of bugs') and provide a finished product which we can all run and enjoy on at least I-7 gen hardware, without volumes of tweaking. Thank heavens for Nick Needham.Eric

"And I certainly hope MS drop that ridiculous 'designed for future hardware' approach"Considering Phil in the fsx11 thread below has stated that we can expect the next version of fs to appear in the end of 2010 I at least am very glad for the "future hardware approach". Since I "play" no other game than fs this allows me to "add" more and more features via turning up "sliders" gradually as my hardware improves in this long time period, and allows the sim to grow during this eternity for a software cycle as my hardware does.As far as a "non starter" due to performance-the converse also applies. With a wise choice of slider settings the sim was very usable on my older system when fsx first came out with good slider choices. Most features are now high or nearly maxed now on my now medium range system, and I expect everything to be able to be maxed at end of its cycle in two years when I have again upgraded my system.This of course leaves users with the ultimate choice of customizing the sim to run with the features they consider important on their current machine-perhaps too powerful a decision for some to handle. I certainly prefer this approach. We could however go back to the way the sim was in the 1980's-90's-no sliders, and what you saw was what you got for that time cycle. I hope not-especially now since a time cycle looks to be 4-5 years instead of the past 1-2-and I didn't always like the choice someone else mad for me as to what was important.

[kiwikat 506]

Guys, I don't mean to be negative here, but I do find it incredible that more than 2 years after its release, even with new generation hardware, FSX is still a non-starter with regards performance. Wasn't it the MS tag line that FSX was designed with future hardware in mind ? There are many folks that have invested thousands on new gen I-7 systems for whom performance remains to be an issue. Not many of us have the ability to overclock 920 and 940 CPU's, which seems to be quite mainstream for those 'in the know'.

You are really going to have to further explain yourself if you are going to make comments like that...I have a year and a half old laptop that runs FSX at 35 FPS solid. Sure everything may not be maxed out, but I can enjoy anything from cessnas to the top of the line PMDG releases and get very smooth performance. It looks worlds better than FS9 could ever look too. You DON'T need a supercomputer to run FSX. If you are obsessed about the sliders, you have the "slider high" as I've called it on other forums. So many FS9 users are obsessed because they can't run FSX maxed out. Is there some psychological thing going on there where people feel the need to run things maxed out?You could build a tower for 800-900 USD that would blow my laptop out of the water in FSX. Just BTW.If you are lucky enough to have the money and can buy a decent quad (like the 920 or Q9550) paired with some decent ram and a decent graphics card, again, not top-of-the-line hardware, you can run FSX nearly maxed out with VERY good FPS. My friend has a Q9550 overclocked, GTX 260 core 216 superclocked edition, and 6 GB 1066 DDR2 ram and he can run FSX maxed out and get well over 35 fps. Those are far from the best and most expensive hardware you could buy these days.I don't know what the expectations are of the people who say stuff like this person did, but I've got a feeling the "slider high" is part of them. Stop hitting shift-z and enjoy your experience for once. I find it incredible that people keep obsessing over THIS.