A few months I got sick and tired of FSX, due to various circumstances. At that time I was using Vista, very specific nVidia drivers, nHancer, and very specific settings for FSAA (the ones that got by far the best looking results). I also used the FS_Limiter and the ENB-series dll, which I would not fly without because it was THAT good. All this of course came at a cost... I had to lower the autogensettings in the cfg and in FSX, because specially trees brought the system to its knees... But when everything was running smooth, it looked killer. Although a bit sparse... Unfortunately it never ran smooth everywhere, and so I kept on tweaking, even though I tried hard not to... Anyway, a few months ago I got fed up with it all and uninstalled FSX.In october I installed Windows 7 and last week I really felt like giving FSX another try, also to see if W7 would do wonders for FSX. Well, it didn't. Within no time I was irritated again by the choppy fps in certain places (like above a lot of trees). I hadn't installed nHancer yet, not the ENB-series dll or any other stuff that used to be mandatory for me. I decided to approach FSX from a different perspective. For instance, why use the best FSAA when at a resolution of 1680x1050 some 'cheaper' FSAA would be nice too...? I also changed some nVidia settings to performance instead of the highes possible quality. I lowered some settings (mesh and things like that) but fps was still crap. Then I decided to give the DX10-preview another try. I didn't like it before because you have no vsync with it, ENB won't work with it, nor would the FS_Limiter and there were more disadvantages (progressive taxi, shimmering things). So I changed to DX10, loaded a flight and wow... that fps was high! I changed to ingame FSAA, set autogen to extremely dense, water to high 2x... still a very high fps! I also noticed that the little micro pauses I had with DX10 under Vista were gone...! The shimmering taxiways seemed to be gone too or at least they didn't bother me. And everything looked GREAT even without the ENB-dll!I just did a test near Mount Beauty (FTX with OZx) above Extremely dense trees (without any changes to the cfg). With DX9 I got less than 10 fps (moving to 3), with DX10 fps refused to go below 45...!!!The fun thing is, because it has been a long time since I have flown, I have forgotten how the 'very best' FSAA looked, how the ENB-series looked, I have forgotten EVERYTHING and all I know NOW is that FSX with DX10 looks bloody awesome...! Flying very low above mountains with thousands of trees is absolutely worth NOT having vsync, ENB, super duper FSAA, etc. etc.So, my advice for those that aren't happy with FSX performance: don't play the game for half a year or so. Then re-install it (add FTX to the bunch!), choose DX10, don't go out of your head with super duper settings (FSAA, mesh) but go nuts with autogen and you might be pleasently surprised with what you get. Starting all over again from an empty page did WONDERS for me!In the past I have spend months and months comparing various settings because I wanted THE BEST. Now I do not think I have THE BEST, I do not even know anymore what THE BEST is, but what I DO have I absolutely love: unbelievable fps and a awesome looking sim. To me it IS the best!

Thanks for sharing, good to know the fsx journey of others.I hardly use fsx progrresive taxi anymore , reason is i now have FScommander, its the swiss army knife of fsx, cause its got very many uses. FScommander moving map is now what i use ofr airport taxi. Only cool if you got two screens so you can see your a/c on fscommander as you taxi the airport.Im in DX9 cause two many small things and ome addons arent happy with dx10, for example i always use the four dot axis indicator, axis indicator does not show clearly in dx10.Think if you got a top PC system dx9 will be better than dx10 for you. Just too many compromises with dx10. I think dx10 is fine till you can upgrade your pc.i7920 @ 3.8Ghz with nvidia gtx285 and dx9 is just fine, as long as you take it easy on the sliders.

Think if you got a top PC system dx9 will be better than dx10 for you. Just too many compromises with dx10. I think dx10 is fine till you can upgrade your pc.

Yes, DX10 has got issues and that's why I didn't use it, but right now I couldn't care less about those issues, because FSX looks great and, even better, runs great. About upgrading... I have an i7 920 @ 3.3, a GTX285 and 6 Gb RAM. I don't feel like upgrading anytime soon. :( And even with setup, as I said, DX10 blows DX9 out of the water and a lot of circumstances. Yes, I know, at a cost (no vsync, not the best FSAA, no ENB) but since I forgot how 'the best' looked, I don't care: right now I think I got the best: great graphics and great performance.

Thanks for reminding me too that I should go for Win7. To add to the upgrade I

What board and processor are you using, J?!

Board: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 iX58, CPU (as you could have read in my second post :( ) i7 920 running at 3.3 (with stock cooler!).

Sorry, missed that :( . I

Im using the e8600 right now and have it running well at 4.0. FSX runs fantastic at DX10 or 9. I prefere using DX10, but switch back to DX9 for night flying. Some taxi lights at most addon airports don't show up in DX10 at night.Also there was a thread a short while back about how to stop the runway/taxi flicker in DX10 by adding a concreate texture to the airport. I have not looked into this yet, but since I rarely use the default airports, it has not been an issue that really bothers me.Rob

Very similar experience ,found your post searching for dx10 , windows 7 etc. Im in a bit of a pickle actually because of my spec and whats happening for me. I used Nickns guide to install. Spec: i7 860 @ 4 ghz oc , P7P55D , 12GB Kingston KVR1333D3N9 Ram ( im pretty sure i have the timings wrong and dont know how to set them but they are on auto ) standard disk etc. Windows 7 64 bit The strange thing is my fps sucks on DX9 but when i turn on DX10 whoaa , smooth as silk, locked at 30fps .. I mean its like a different sim. I honestly dont know why im getting bad FPS on dx9 but im starting to care less. When i fly about KBOS with the fly tampa complex scenery its staying locked at 30fps. When i get out of the complex scenery i can lock it at 40 fps odd. Anyway i just thought i would chime in , because it seems that whatever i have done wrong for the DX9 setup is being ignored with things very much enhanced in DX10 ( my understanding from reading around is that it should run worse in DX10 and not better. edited to add: No flicker on taxiways ( latest nvidia drivers ? ) Cant get external AA working with nhancer have to use ingame , i think if i can get external working it will be higher fps lock if wanted )I also found this post , http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-cpu-gpu,6645.html which suggests that some of the graphics work is being done by the processor itself and not the GPU. Speaking of the GPU its rarely moving above 50% on any one core and often languishing at 25% even though im locked on 30 and smooth . This also dissapoints the geek in me since i clocked the machine for fsx and its not using the full cpu power ( CPU is fine on prime and the cores do run up to 100% )

I must be the only guy around here having zero problems at all with DX9/W7/Nvidia. I am now even flying OrbX YMML approaches on 20fps in Level D VC. I have Dense/mid range sliders and untweaked fsx.cfg. Spec in sig though, my rig is on roids.

I previously ran Vista 32 and DX10 looked terrible with equally bad textures on various test settings. Now, having upgraded to W7 64, to say i am delighted is an understatement after giving the DX10 preview another shot. I wasn't even expecting anything better but I was amazed! I gained about 10fps depending on where I was flying, and little or no hesitations. I can't imagine using dx9 again. I have many commercial add-ons and so far haven't had any problems with them to speak of. The only issue I do have is the flickering taxiways on certain airports but I can live with that. My system is q9300 quad stock speeds/3gb ram/w7 64/nvidia 8800GT overclocked. I'm buying more ram soon to hopefully see more improvements. One additional suggestion: If you have REX2.0, try using the DX10 optimized water textures on mid 2.0 setting or higher within FSX and see what you get. I was blown away when flying down in the islands (flytampa grenadines look amazing!). FPS still stayed in the mid-20's and smooth and the water textures were unbelievable. One thing I will mention is that I don't spend lots of time flying on the east coast or densely populated areas so I can't speak to my performance there, but where I have flown, I see nothing but improvements. I don't know if W7 has more to do with it or the 64 vs 32 bit. W7 was a worthwhile purchase though for me without question.I'm not sure everyone would benefit the same way but I just thought I would share my experience. I am now a converted DX10 preview fan after 3 years.

I must be the only guy around here having zero problems at all with DX9/W7/Nvidia. I am now even flying OrbX YMML approaches on 20fps in Level D VC. I have Dense/mid range sliders and untweaked fsx.cfg. Spec in sig though, my rig is on roids.

Is this a known combination " no no " ? I benched your system and mine in Sis and theres no perf difference to speak of so it must be something im doing, i had just assumed that I was doing something wrong.In my case the increase from dx9 to dx10 is in the order of 1000% faster.

No flicker on taxiways ( latest nvidia drivers ? ) Cant get external AA working with nhancer have to use ingame , i think if i can get external working it will be higher fps lock if wanted )

I also have the latest drivers and can't remember having seen shimmering taxiways. And yes, with DX10 external (nHancer) FSAA won't work. But the ingame FSAA, together with my 1680x1050 resolution looks great. Okay, Combined x8 (or whatever it is called) might look better (if you really pay attention and start comparing), but at what cost...? I rather have 50 fps above trees than 5...!

I must be the only guy around here having zero problems at all with DX9/W7/Nvidia. I am now even flying OrbX YMML approaches on 20fps in Level D VC. I have Dense/mid range sliders and untweaked fsx.cfg. Spec in sig though, my rig is on roids.

Dense/mid range, yes, well, that helps, of course. I like autogen at Extremely dense and DX10 allows me that setting with > 40 fps (I have fps at unlimited). If I would run DX9 with autogen at Dense, I would also get better results, but still not as good as DX10. (Specially trees are VERY bad for fps under DX9). Man, things have never looked so great in FSX (and FTX)! Last evening I did another flight from Porepunkah to Mount Beauty (OZx airports and my favorite (very) short flight) and it looks awesome with all those trees down there!!! I don't really know if this is also due to Windows 7, but it seems so: I tried DX10 before (Vista) but it just didn't run that good (micro stutters!) Where I always had to make compromises with DX9 (mainly less autogen) and always had the nagging idea things should be working better, I don't have that feeling anymore with DX10. Yes, okay, I've got no 'best' FSAA and no ENB, but since everything looks awesome I haven't got the idea I am maing compromises right now. After all these years I finally am satisfied with what I've got!

I have very similar computer than some people here ([email protected], GTX285, 6GB RAM...) and I followed Nick's guide and I have absolutely no problems with DX9 performance. At the beginning (when I skipped a few steps in Nicks guide) the performance was terrible, but after proper Nhancer setup, putting FSX on its own drive and defragging, it's smooth as silk locked at 30 FPS in Level-D 767 VC with ASA, REX, GEX, UTX, FSGlobal2008,... Autogen at very dense, all sliders to the right except Water (Low 2x) and road traffic 0% ... the only party pooper is AI traffic. Without traffic im ALWAYS at 30 FPS locked@30 in almost any payware AC. With traffic - I'm using UT2, with new beta, the performance is much better so with Airline Traffic at 100% and GA at 0% the number won't go below 19 FPS (24 on average) - on EDDM - but that's just when I'm heading big terminal buildings... when turned away, it's 30 again. Oh, yes, and after installing GEX Europe the performance in big tree areas is much much better! Like there is no problem anymore. DX10, for me, has just too many bugs and problems.

I have very similar computer than some people here ([email protected], GTX285, 6GB RAM...) and I followed Nick's guide and I have absolutely no problems with DX9 performance. At the beginning (when I skipped a few steps in Nicks guide) the performance was terrible, but after proper Nhancer setup, putting FSX on its own drive and defragging, it's smooth as silk locked at 30 FPS in Level-D 767 VC with ASA, REX, GEX, UTX, FSGlobal2008,... Autogen at very dense, all sliders to the right except Water (Low 2x) and road traffic 0% ... the only party pooper is AI traffic. Without traffic im ALWAYS at 30 FPS locked@30 in almost any payware AC. With traffic - I'm using UT2, with new beta, the performance is much better so with Airline Traffic at 100% and GA at 0% the number won't go below 19 FPS (24 on average) - on EDDM - but that's just when I'm heading big terminal buildings... when turned away, it's 30 again. Oh, yes, and after installing GEX Europe the performance in big tree areas is much much better! Like there is no problem anymore. DX10, for me, has just too many bugs and problems.

Well, it all depends on what you like, apparently. I like road traffic a lot because it makes the world alive, while (oddly enough) I don't care for airplane AI... I also like water at High 2x: Low 2x is a no no for me! And very dense is nice, but extremely dense is nicer...! Yes, I fly GA a lot. ;) I also don't care for setting up a lot and tweaking all kinds of things and I certainly hate the defrag suggestions... (tried it all on my previous computer without results like you get). This DX10 works like a charm without having to tweak and setup a lot of things. I like that. ;)

Well, it all depends on what you like, apparently. I like road traffic a lot because it makes the world alive, while (oddly enough) I don't care for airplane AI... I also like water at High 2x: Low 2x is a no no for me! And very dense is nice, but extremely dense is nicer...! Yes, I fly GA a lot. ;) I also don't care for setting up a lot and tweaking all kinds of things and I certainly hate the defrag suggestions... (tried it all on my previous computer without results like you get). This DX10 works like a charm without having to tweak and setup a lot of things. I like that. ;)

Well, yes, I mainly fly airliners :( Even when I had road traffic at 20% (I put the picture of Mr. FPS in the "Missing" section of the newspaper) I didn't see much of it and it's one of the most demanding things is FSX. If you want A LOT of FPSs just turn off road traffic. Next most demanding (in general, maybe third) thing is Water at high settings. As I said I fly big jets and I didn't see much difference between High and Low... except in like +10 FPS I gained with Low 2x. I also didn't tweak much... just the affinitymask and TBM. And about defragging.. this made the most difference of all (considering stutters). You said you tried defrag.. did you use O&O and defrag like Nick suggests? I simply can't believe you didn't see any results if you did exactly that. Except those things I have everything on max and I'm maintaining 30 FPS (locked@30) ~95% of the time.I guess for GA other things are important.