I dont see the (CHUNK) effect you speak of and have found 14 to work, but not really anything earth shattering. What I am suprised to read is that you run such a high un-locked FPS with no problems. I must lock it down to 30 or its like riding a raging bull. What I have recently tried and it has made a great improvement is to turn my AA down to mult 4X. I was running the 8x combined and would get a stutter hear an there but with 4x muli... smooth as glass especially when the frames drop some in heavy areas. BTW, I love reading your posts, you have a great way of wording things.Jim

Hi Jim!The FSX forum is a great place to share successes, and to try and help other's disappointments. I have certainly had my share of 'em, lol. Besides my config file shared on another post, I also use nHancer, set up strictly to Nick Needham's specifications. I have not waived from them, trying this or that. No need to. I also have tuned Vista 64 bit Ultimate to his recommendations, and I attribute my great system performance to his form inputs. Absolutely. In fact, he made FSX 'work' for me on my P4 where before enacting what he suggested, it was basically unusable.So, with my config as stated, COMMERCIAL traffic between 50-75 percent, SHIPS AND FERRIES, from 100 down to 0, if I am interior flying, that's about all that changes per flight. My SHIPS show a hundred percent as I had just come off of West Coast flying this morning. I usually keep it though to '0'. I never use leisure boats, and keep it always set to 0. Thank you for your encouragement. I enjoy posting positive energy, as there is so much to enjoy with FSX. In fact, I can't remember having done so much 3,500 ASL flying around in G.A. aircraft as I have since buying the i7975/GTX285 system. There is so much to see!!!!!!!!!!! I started my Phoenix to Detroit last night with the StationAir 6 float..and followed the highway north out of the city. I kept to around 6,600 feet and was amazed at all the canyons, buttes, etc that was perfectly rendered. Simply amazed at what can be seen in the coding! I NEVER had this offered to me when having used the P4. 3.4GHz. It was all a blur, zagged highways, nothing to enjoy, other than a strong imagination of what MIGHT be seen with a powerful system. Now...it's all about enjoying every nautical mile of FSX...and thousands of flight hours in doing it.P.S. Jim, what do you exactly mean by your reference to a 'raging bull'? When having used my P4 for FSX, I found the best performance in unlimited, and when the 30 FPS limiter tweak came into play, was even better. So, with the i7, I either use UNLIMITED FPS without the software-limiter, or when I do, I have it set to 30 fps. Either way, very smooth and life-like scenery animation.Cheers!Mitch

i7 can use the following for four cores ... works for me.[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=15

i7 can use the following for four cores ... works for me.[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=15

Now here's the mystery, for me anyway. If I monitor the CPU usage for my i7 920, I see activity mostly on cores 0,2,4,6 when FSX is running. That equates to an AffinityMask=85 according to my arithmetic. If I set that value in JOBSCHEDULER, I see activity mainly on cores 0,2,4,6 as expected. So, it would appear that an AffinityMask=15 would force FSX to run on two real cores and their related two hyperthreaded CPUs (or to ignore the HT cores??)???@Mitch: Did you monitor CPU usage or just set a value and run FSX with the stuttering you reported? Did you use anything other than 14 or 15?Rick

Mitch,Thanks for the info. I think I realize the FPS disparity is ... GA planes or not. For instance, I could max the water and remain locked at 30 if I used the Realair spitfire. But the PMDG MD11 hehehehe ... no. I'm also using 4096 REX textures.After losts of testing I decided on affinitity of 14. Using a single core for FSX didn't help FPS any but caused textures to take a looooonnng time to load. Using all the cores caused minor stuttering. I'd guess this is because Windows wants to do it's stuff when it wants.It helped to look at someone else's config and performance description.Tim.

more info ...255 - all 8 in use254 - 7 in use with the first remaining free252 - 6 in use with the first entire CORE remaining free127 - 7 in use with the last remaining free 63 - 6 in use with the last entire CORE remaining free 1 = 1 core 0001 3 = 2 cores 0011 7 = 3 cores 011112 = 2 cores last 110014 = 3 cores last 111015 = 4 cores 1111http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041

Sesquashtoo, take a closer look at your fsx.cfg file, you have a duplicate nvidia settings line. I'm surprised your fsx isnt crashing like crazy all the time. I highly suggest a rebuild of it first

P.S. Jim, what do you exactly mean by your reference to a 'raging bull'? When having used my P4 for FSX, I found the best performance in unlimited, and when the 30 FPS limiter tweak came into play, was even better. So, with the i7, I either use UNLIMITED FPS without the software-limiter, or when I do, I have it set to 30 fps. Either way, very smooth and life-like scenery animation.Cheers!Mitch

Mitch, I meant that when I run unlimited I get random surges of motion. Lock it at 30 and all is well. I still have mixed feelings about using the limiter and feel I get smoother performance without it using FSX to limit the FPS. One other question I have is with the FPS you are posting are you runing with VSYNC off?Jim

Hi Jim!The FSX forum is a great place to share successes, and to try and help other's disappointments. I have certainly had my share of 'em, lol. Besides my config file shared on another post, I also use nHancer, set up strictly to Nick Needham's specifications. I have not waived from them, trying this or that. No need to. I also have tuned Vista 64 bit Ultimate to his recommendations, and I attribute my great system performance to his form inputs. Absolutely. In fact, he made FSX 'work' for me on my P4 where before enacting what he suggested, it was basically unusable.So, with my config as stated, COMMERCIAL traffic between 50-75 percent, SHIPS AND FERRIES, from 100 down to 0, if I am interior flying, that's about all that changes per flight. My SHIPS show a hundred percent as I had just come off of West Coast flying this morning. I usually keep it though to '0'. I never use leisure boats, and keep it always set to 0. Thank you for your encouragement. I enjoy posting positive energy, as there is so much to enjoy with FSX. In fact, I can't remember having done so much 3,500 ASL flying around in G.A. aircraft as I have since buying the i7975/GTX285 system. There is so much to see!!!!!!!!!!! I started my Phoenix to Detroit last night with the StationAir 6 float..and followed the highway north out of the city. I kept to around 6,600 feet and was amazed at all the canyons, buttes, etc that was perfectly rendered. Simply amazed at what can be seen in the coding! I NEVER had this offered to me when having used the P4. 3.4GHz. It was all a blur, zagged highways, nothing to enjoy, other than a strong imagination of what MIGHT be seen with a powerful system. Now...it's all about enjoying every nautical mile of FSX...and thousands of flight hours in doing it.P.S. Jim, what do you exactly mean by your reference to a 'raging bull'? When having used my P4 for FSX, I found the best performance in unlimited, and when the 30 FPS limiter tweak came into play, was even better. So, with the i7, I either use UNLIMITED FPS without the software-limiter, or when I do, I have it set to 30 fps. Either way, very smooth and life-like scenery animation.Cheers!Mitch

MitchWhat exactly do you mean by "....I also have tuned Vista 64 bit Ultimate to his recommendations"?Please can you provide the link to tuning the operating system?Thanks.Toni.

MitchWhat exactly do you mean by "....I also have tuned Vista 64 bit Ultimate to his recommendations"?Please can you provide the link to tuning the operating system?Thanks.Toni.

See here: NickN's OS tuning guide

Now here's the mystery, for me anyway. If I monitor the CPU usage for my i7 920, I see activity mostly on cores 0,2,4,6 when FSX is running. That equates to an AffinityMask=85 according to my arithmetic. If I set that value in JOBSCHEDULER, I see activity mainly on cores 0,2,4,6 as expected. So, it would appear that an AffinityMask=15 would force FSX to run on two real cores and their related two hyperthreaded CPUs (or to ignore the HT cores??)???@Mitch: Did you monitor CPU usage or just set a value and run FSX with the stuttering you reported? Did you use anything other than 14 or 15?Rick

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I used 14, 15, and a couple of others that I gleaned out of the MOBO forum. All caused 'chunk' stutters. I removed the entry and all came back to as smooth as butter. Oh...I did not monitor, but merely set the JOB Mask and set the number flag to one of four entries. All produced 'chunk'.

Sesquashtoo, take a closer look at your fsx.cfg file, you have a duplicate nvidia settings line. I'm surprised your fsx isnt crashing like crazy all the time. I highly suggest a rebuild of it first

It seems to do that, as well as that being produced in FS9 configs.Just for a laugh, I'll remove the bottom (latter) nVidia settings and see if something changes for the better, or the worse. My great performance is with this config as is, mind you. :) No crashes or BSOD ever. Some flights have lasted hours in real time (of which mostly I fly....).

Mitch, I meant that when I run unlimited I get random surges of motion. Lock it at 30 and all is well. I still have mixed feelings about using the limiter and feel I get smoother performance without it using FSX to limit the FPS. One other question I have is with the FPS you are posting are you runing with VSYNC off?Jim

Hi JimAbout your asking if I run with the VSYNC off? To anwer your question; no...it is 'on' as per nHancer. As stated somewhere above, I followed Nick's set-up of nHancer TO THE LETTER. As per that, he instructs for VSYNC to be enabled.Cheers.

[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=xxxFor an i975 chip: ...settings of 15 ...Mitch

I don't think it has been mentioned in this thread yet, but the i7 range of chips have 8 cores so in order to leave one core for other tasks possible values for the AffinityMask setting are:Dec Value / Core #_____7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0254__1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 253__1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1251__1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1247__1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1239__1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1223__1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1191__1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1127__0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1A setting of 15 would give FSX use of only half your cores.

MitchWhat exactly do you mean by "....I also have tuned Vista 64 bit Ultimate to his recommendations"?Please can you provide the link to tuning the operating system?Thanks.Toni.---------------------------------------------------Here's the link: http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1208959973

I used 14, 15, and a couple of others that I gleaned out of the MOBO forum. All caused 'chunk' stutters.

Just a guess, noticing the differences reported here: I'm wondering if you've forgotten to stop the Core i7 hyperthreading option (in the BIOS)? Maybe the cores get numbered 0 real, 1 virtual, 2 real, 3 virtual, etc, so setting the AffinityMask to any lower 4-bit pattern restricts FSX to only one or two real cores (it cannot use the virtual ones). This seems to be borne out by this observation in one of the reports:

If I monitor the CPU usage for my i7 920, I see activity mostly on cores 0,2,4,6 when FSX is running.

If your system is only for FS, it is best to disable hyperthreading, as FS can't use it and it only wastes energy, making your CPU generate more heat than it needs to.Also, Highmike said

I don't think it has been mentioned in this thread yet, but the i7 range of chips have 8 cores

but definitely 4 of the 8 are not real, and FS cannot use them. I repeat recommendations made elsewhere -- disable the hyperthreading.RegardsPete

but definitely 4 of the 8 are not real, and FS cannot use them. I repeat recommendations made elsewhere -- disable the hyperthreading.RegardsPete

That was what I was trying to suggest, too, Pete. It seems to me that those who are applying an AffinityMask=14 or 15 with hyperthreading enabled are restricting FSX to only two real cores and hence are adversely affecting performance. I have not found a way to disable hyperthreading in my BIOS so I applied an AffinityMask=85 to (hopefully) restrict FSX to only the four real cores of my i7 920 processor. The sim does seem a bit smoother and I still see some small amount of activity in the HT cores, presumeably used by Windows or background processes in some way.Rick