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

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...with nothing to lose...I decided to reinsert the JOBSCHEDULER with your setting of 85.......Rick....YOU WIN MATH TROPHY of the YEAR. Your math, with a numerical input of 85 EXACTLY shows cores 0-2-4-6 with full activity on my system, and the other HYPER/SHADOW cores with minor background activity. I also run with HyperThread enabled. Not only did I NO LONGER have ANY sort of stutter by using the JOBSCHEDULER MASK...but in fact on turns and banks...now have WICKEDLY fast scenery update. YOU are the Man! You get the Blue Ribbon for the JOBSCHEDULER math contest.....LOL!With using hyperthreading, a setting of 85 is the magic bullet..., not 15, not 14, not 255, etc...With the right numerical entry, JOBSCHEDULER does in fact enhance FSX operation. In using 8-core (eight threaded) operation, the numerical setting of 85 is the winner! I rescind my original post as using a setting of 85 produced superior performance and NO CHUNK STUTTER!Rick...very, very cool! This thread produced, by way of response posts, an even better performance on my rig. This is what the FORUM is all about. A living THINK TANK in operation. :))))))Back to my (even better...) flight.... for your post enhanced my FSX experience even further!........Mitch

Just wondering...what was your emotional need to direct an insult?I posted cause and effect on my system.I won't post anything more about your 'wet' comment. Not worthy of further dialog.Mitch

Sorry. That was kind of snotty of me. There was something about your demanding tone of "delete this tweak it's a piece of junk..." when it had worked very well for me and lots of other folks that hit me the wrong way.

Sorry. That was kind of snotty of me. There was something about your demanding tone of "delete this tweak it's a piece of junk..." when it had worked very well for me and lots of other folks that hit me the wrong way.

-----------------------------------------------------------Apology accepted. We're Human. :)I guess it's a Human trait that we will inject personal inferences that was not part of an actual post as in your 'it's a piece of junk', of which as you know, was never stated. :) I have most likely also been guilty of that injection-technique (large smile), when having an occasional intense discussion with my Better-Half, lol. Probably all of us.... I re-read my original post, and after thinking about it, see how you could have been put off. I'll take 50 percent Mia Culpa on this one, lol! 'nuff said (smile).Did you see my last post? Success. I owe a case of beer to Rick Y, lol. If you use Hyperthread...85 will get you there at light speed, lol.Cheers,Mitch

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

If you have dual monitors it will always add that, you can delete the second nvidia line all you want, it will always come back if you have 2 monitors.

Mitch,I did scan down your configuration file as I was reading this thread and found:[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=400TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000 Quite frankly, the principle source of stutters on my PC are the trees. If, in fact, you have the trees per cell limited to 400, it is possible that much of your performance improvements are a result of this. Just curious.................Kingfish

Job Scheduler should be set to 14.This keeps the OS running on Core 0 (unaffected by FSX's demands), and conversely, runs FSX on Cores 1,2 and 3, unaffected by the OS's resource demands.People mistakenly set Affinity Mask to = 15, thinking that FSX will be better running on 4 cores, but this is not correct. Most of the resource demand would be placed on Core 0, which is also running the OS ! ....... this brings resource spikes, and thus stutters and unstable performance.AffinityMask =14 is the wat to go, for those in the know!David.

Mitch,I did scan down your configuration file as I was reading this thread and found:[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=400TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000 Quite frankly, the principle source of stutters on my PC are the trees. If, in fact, you have the trees per cell limited to 400, it is possible that much of your performance improvements are a result of this. Just curious.................Kingfish

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi Kingfish,Actually, this was a great inprovement on my P4 3.4., When tuning up my .cfg file, I thought to add this in once more on my i7 system. To the compliments and strength of the i7-975/GTX285 combo, it really didn't do a kick-start for smoothness, etc as I already had that 'out of the gate'. I left it in, because it really can't hurt the performance in any case. It DID help though with FPS on my P4! The JOBSCHEDULER tweak came after that one, so any inprovement as seen through the JOBSCHEDULER/85 setting totally stands on its own.Mitch

I'm not very good at math... if you're using 85 with HT on, what's the equivalent number when HT is off?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi Kingfish,Actually, this was a great inprovement on my P4 3.4., When tuning up my .cfg file, I thought to add this in once more on my i7 system. To the compliments and strength of the i7-975/GTX285 combo, it really didn't do a kick-start for smoothness, etc as I already had that 'out of the gate'. I left it in, because it really can't hurt the performance in any case. It DID help though with FPS on my P4! The JOBSCHEDULER tweak came after that one, so any inprovement as seen through the JOBSCHEDULER/85 setting totally stands on its own.Mitch

Mitch,My observation, based upon my experience and my PC (940 at 4.0 ghz and GTX 285) is that a signicant portion of the stutters that I experience are a function of how many trees I have and what area I am flying over. A limit of 2000 trees or even less is required if I fly over dense forests. If I fly over dense forests without any limit through this "Terrain" fix, my framerates drop dramatically. I have not had a chance to test a limit of "400", but it seems to me that this would help my frame rates immensely; and would also impact quite negatively the scenery below. So............you may not feel as if this is a consequence to you, i.e. the lesser number of trees; and I think that you are getting commensurately higher framerates as a result. Try setting the terrain fix at 2000 trees and see how the framerates and smoothness of the sim are impacted. I am also suggesting that other readers may not have noticed your "relatively low" number of trees in the Terrain fix. If they are running without the fix, or are using a more moderate fix of say 1000 to 2000; then they probably will not get the same results that you are getting in checking out other variables.My experience, the number of trees has a major impact on VFR flying in most scenery areas. If you are flying the big metal tubes (Or the Mustang) at 35,000 feet, the visual impact of 400 versus 2000 is of little importance.Kingfish

I'm not very good at math... if you're using 85 with HT on, what's the equivalent number when HT is off?

-----------------------------------------------------------------I'm not the one to ask, as I did not figure out, or originate the use of 85 for HT, on. I'm only enjoying the results......Perhaps Rick Y would like to step in here, or any other with a handle on this.....Mitch

Mitch,My observation, based upon my experience and my PC (940 at 4.0 ghz and GTX 285) is that a signicant portion of the stutters that I experience are a function of how many trees I have and what area I am flying over. A limit of 2000 trees or even less is required if I fly over dense forests. If I fly over dense forests without any limit through this "Terrain" fix, my framerates drop dramatically. I have not had a chance to test a limit of "400", but it seems to me that this would help my frame rates immensely; and would also impact quite negatively the scenery below. So............you may not feel as if this is a consequence to you, i.e. the lesser number of trees; and I think that you are getting commensurately higher framerates as a result. Try setting the terrain fix at 2000 trees and see how the framerates and smoothness of the sim are impacted. I am also suggesting that other readers may not have noticed your "relatively low" number of trees in the Terrain fix. If they are running without the fix, or are using a more moderate fix of say 1000 to 2000; then they probably will not get the same results that you are getting in checking out other variables.My experience, the number of trees has a major impact on VFR flying in most scenery areas. If you are flying the big metal tubes (Or the Mustang) at 35,000 feet, the visual impact of 400 versus 2000 is of little importance.Kingfish

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Actually Kingfish, truly, on my i7-975 having it set to 400 rather than not having it in the config at all...really, truly made little difference on my system FPS. That's why I am blown away STILL by the strength of the i7975/GTX285 muscle team. I certainly will play around with YOUR suggested settings and report back to you on this thread. In fact, I have a cup of coffee before me...a flight needed taking...and will throw up the 400 to 2,000 and be off. I'll get back to you... :)Mitch'er

I'm not very good at math... if you're using 85 with HT on, what's the equivalent number when HT is off?

I can't verify a setting with HT off since I haven't found a way to turn it off in my BIOS. I do believe, however, that once turned off, you don't really need to do anything else at all, unless you wish to reduce the number of cores for FSX. You could use the Task Manager to monitor CPU usage with HT off to see what numbers might work best (such as 14).Others here will, no doubt, have more definitive answers.Rick

Mitch,My observation, based upon my experience and my PC (940 at 4.0 ghz and GTX 285) is that a signicant portion of the stutters that I experience are a function of how many trees I have and what area I am flying over. A limit of 2000 trees or even less is required if I fly over dense forests. If I fly over dense forests without any limit through this "Terrain" fix, my framerates drop dramatically. I have not had a chance to test a limit of "400", but it seems to me that this would help my frame rates immensely; and would also impact quite negatively the scenery below. So............you may not feel as if this is a consequence to you, i.e. the lesser number of trees; and I think that you are getting commensurately higher framerates as a result. Try setting the terrain fix at 2000 trees and see how the framerates and smoothness of the sim are impacted. I am also suggesting that other readers may not have noticed your "relatively low" number of trees in the Terrain fix. If they are running without the fix, or are using a more moderate fix of say 1000 to 2000; then they probably will not get the same results that you are getting in checking out other variables.My experience, the number of trees has a major impact on VFR flying in most scenery areas. If you are flying the big metal tubes (Or the Mustang) at 35,000 feet, the visual impact of 400 versus 2000 is of little importance.Kingfish

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kingfish,With having boosted my TREES from 400 to 2,000 , my frame rate in UNLIMITED with no software limiter engaged: 48-52 mean average, with peaks and spikes from 62-112 FPS. Coast flying and over-water flying gives me my already stated FPS. Basically the same as ever. In my original post to somebody else, where I stated that I get in the low to high MEAN of the 40's FPS range, was so I could remain conservative in FPS stating., which covered ALL aspects and areas of FSX. On this post, I stated the verbatim FPS I get when flying just outside the mountain range near Victoria, B.C. Again, this was with your 2,000 in the TREE Limit. There was no stutter of any kind. The other custom tweak in place here, is of course the JOBSCHEDULER/85.Cheers!Mitch

If you have OC:ed and enable HT, do run OCCT and make sure your OC is still stable and temps are below 80C. Enabling HT will add aprox 10C.

I decided to try 127 in the mask, that would have one core left open to the O.S. as an earlier poster suggested.I did that...and CHUNK came right back to sit down on the tarmac.....I observed that all cores were busy except core 7 (the last)I then went back to a setting of 85 and bliss came once more to FSX. Also, ALL eight cores are being accessed, but you can clearly see that the MAIN, not HYPER-CORES are the predominate ones. There is certainly activity on the other four HYPER/SHADOW cores. For those that suggest that running FSX does not inpact the other 'four' threads...I have to disagree. There CERTAINLY is activity upon those secondary cores. As to what, who knows what is being asked of them..but certainly there is activity!It all adds up to me, for a great FSX performance with a setting of 85 on the JOBSCHEDULER and HYPERTHREADING enabled.Like everybody else says, 'system mileage' can vary, lol.Try it, it can't wreck anything! There's always the DELETE button. :)

If you have OC:ed and enable HT, do run OCCT and make sure your OC is still stable and temps are below 80C. Enabling HT will add aprox 10C.

I run with an overclock of 30x133.7 equalling 4011 MHz.My core temps peak at 65C with the mean average of 56C.That is on standard Dell Factory 730x H2C air-cooling.I am always in HT.