I've got an Asus P5N-E SLI board, with two HDDs precofigured with Nvidia fastraid (Raid 0, I assume). The performance in all my games is stunning, except for FSX where, maxed out except for autogen (medium) and traffic (almost non-existant) I'm getting about 10-15 FPS in not very populated areas. I've tried dropping the sliders right back, and get no noticable difference in FPS. I heard that RAID is no good for FSX, though I can't bear the thought of remastering the PC, possibly taking the raid controller out and going to simple SCSI drives. I bought a new HDD, though, and am installing it as I write. What I want to know is, should I install FSX again on the new drive (which I think will not be part of the RAID setup - if disk manager is anything to go by)? Will this make a difference, as I read a few post that suggest FSX on its own drive is better? Or is the fact that there's a raid setup make no difference?Thanks in advance

What are your other system specs, processor, RAM, etc. ?As far as I know, RAID does not help FSX, although I am not sure if RAID drives hurt it, either. Hard drive issues mostly affect load times, not frame rates, unless your system is calling on your hard disk to provide virtual memory, in which case you would need more RAM. I should clarify that you can get some variable frame rates and stutters from poor HDD performance, but your HDD setup won't boost frame rates overall. Defragging your drive helps a lot, with a higher quality defrag offering better results. I prefer keeping FSX off of the OS HDD; for me this helps eliminate stuttered frame rates. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

What are your other system specs, processor, RAM, etc. ?As far as I know, RAID does not help FSX, although I am not sure if RAID drives hurt it, either. Hard drive issues mostly affect load times, not frame rates, unless your system is calling on your hard disk to provide virtual memory, in which case you would need more RAM. I should clarify that you can get some variable frame rates and stutters from poor HDD performance, but your HDD setup won't boost frame rates overall. Defragging your drive helps a lot, with a higher quality defrag offering better results. I prefer keeping FSX off of the OS HDD; for me this helps eliminate stuttered frame rates. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

Thanks for that. I have a quad core Intel Q6600 at 2.40 Ghtz (from memory), 4 gigs Ram and a Geforce 9800 GT. I should also have stated that while I get a low frame rate, the thing that makes FSX a frustrating experience is the stutters, which seem to me related to disk activity. Framerates can drop as low as 6 at times, but tend to settle around 12. Though sometimes, like yesterday, I just lose faith with it. I was coming in to land, and just before touchdown got a series of stutters which threw me off, and I ended up dumped on the tarmac with smashed undercarriage. Again, many thanks

No thanks just yet...While you can have ups and downs in your frame rate, anything below 15 fps on a consistent basis is too low! There are some other basics to try:Windowed mode vs. full screen modeLocked frame rate versus unlimitedDX9 vs DX10turn off bloom, turn down the water detail to 1x HighOn your system you should have better frame rates! Maybe your add-ons are dragging down frame rates? Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

I've had it pretty well tuned with all the things you mention. I have animations turned off, as with bloom and DX10 preview I have autogen set midway, and traffic prettywell none existance. Clouds are about midway. Everything else is full.I'm also running UTX and Flight Enviroment X, and other than a few airfields and AC, that's it for addons.I'm wondering now about RAID. I have RAID 0, but I'm just reinstalling Vista now after a non FSX problem, and am thinking of turning it off. I'm about to search for some RAID info.All the best.

I am a big proponent of SSD (Static Drives) especially for FSX. FSX will load in seconds rather than minutes. Of course all of the rendering issues that we have come to know and luv in FSX will still exist but any disk activity issues seem to disappear. The best that can be found today is this one http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-p128-ssd-review/If you think you want a faster or bigger SSD - wait until next week. make sure to turn off indexing and seach if you are running Vista. Win 7 (experimenting with it now) works better with SSD's. Also, I heard that if you have enough RAM (6gig +) you should be able to turn off your virtual disk. Enjoy jja

I am a big proponent of SSD (Static Drives) especially for FSX. FSX will load in seconds rather than minutes. Of course all of the rendering issues that we have come to know and luv in FSX will still exist but any disk activity issues seem to disappear. The best that can be found today is this one http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-p128-ssd-review/If you think you want a faster or bigger SSD - wait until next week. make sure to turn off indexing and seach if you are running Vista. Win 7 (experimenting with it now) works better with SSD's. Also, I heard that if you have enough RAM (6gig +) you should be able to turn off your virtual disk. Enjoy jja

THose SSDs look really interesting. I'm assuming they will just go into any modern board.I had a lot of problems with my machine yesterday, and, after various failed attempts to get vista onto my machine, ended up removing the RAID) setup and fdisking all three drives. I put FSX on and tried it out, and was disappointed to find I was getting even less framerates than before, but then I remembered I'd not put SP1 or 2 on (SP2 being the crucial one, as it allows FSX to see more than 1 gig of RAM - from memory). ANyway, after I'd put them on, I was getting framerates in the mid to top 20s. Success.Seems to me it's right what I've read about RAID being no good for FSX.Of course, I then got an out of memory fail after about ten minutes of flying, so I'm off persuing that one. Isn;t that just life? Or FSX life, at any rate...All the bestPhil

THose SSDs look really interesting. I'm assuming they will just go into any modern board.I had a lot of problems with my machine yesterday, and, after various failed attempts to get vista onto my machine, ended up removing the RAID) setup and fdisking all three drives. I put FSX on and tried it out, and was disappointed to find I was getting even less framerates than before, but then I remembered I'd not put SP1 or 2 on (SP2 being the crucial one, as it allows FSX to see more than 1 gig of RAM - from memory). ANyway, after I'd put them on, I was getting framerates in the mid to top 20s. Success.Seems to me it's right what I've read about RAID being no good for FSX.Of course, I then got an out of memory fail after about ten minutes of flying, so I'm off persuing that one. Isn;t that just life? Or FSX life, at any rate...All the bestPhil

I think that it is a no brainer that SSD's will replace magnetic HD's in the next few years. Some guys are setting them up in raid 1 configurations but it seems like that is just 'gilding the lilly'. The best part is that they are quiet, generate little heat (tiny power requirements) and are super fast. They have a SATA II interface so yes they work on current MB's. Also, you can get creative and mount them just about any place in your case. I use sticky velcro. Finally, the seek time is so low with an SSD that it cannot be measured. So the big benefit with FSX is when it needs to load lots of textures scattered about. I'm going to do a new FSX install and put everything in the root (c:\fsx) folder and that should be helpful also.Anyway, SSD's will really come into their own when Sata III is the new IO standard.jja

They do sound good. I'll look forward to spending a fortune on them, like I've spent a fortune on all the rest.:)

I've had it pretty well tuned with all the things you mention. I have animations turned off, as with bloom and DX10 preview I have autogen set midway, and traffic prettywell none existance. Clouds are about midway. Everything else is full.I'm also running UTX and Flight Enviroment X, and other than a few airfields and AC, that's it for addons.I'm wondering now about RAID. I have RAID 0, but I'm just reinstalling Vista now after a non FSX problem, and am thinking of turning it off. I'm about to search for some RAID info.All the best.

This should answer your raid question - and give reasons why it is a no-no with FSXhttp://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=246337and this for further tuning - http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/Ya...?num=1208959973Vic

Well, that's definitive. Good catch, Vic, and of course (again!) a big thanks to NickN to work this out, so we don't have to. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

Just a followup on Win 7. Results are very good with it on the new SSD and using DX10. Much Much improved over Vista. I was taliking to some of the guys at work today and they said that MS overhauled how Win 7 does thread scheduling or some such. Anyway, it works much better with Flight 1's Mustang for me.jja