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Guest JonP01

@JohnCi & JohnP01, performance issue with transform & lighting

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Last week I have upgraded my system to a P4 2400, 512Mb DDR FS800 (overclocked) Win XP Pro. I noticed an enormous boost from my old sys (PIII 800, 512 SDRAM, WinME). My VidCard remaind the same - GF3Ti200.Now following problem occures, after flying approx 10 minutes, the frame rate suddenly drops from 16.9 (I have locked it at 17) down to 5 or 6 sometimes even to 2.This happens when I fly into a dense scenery (e.g. add on airport) or when I turn during taxiing towards a complex building,. Then the FPS stays at this low level, no matter if I fly out of the dense area into sparse areas again or not.BTW I usually get 16.9 fps also at these dense areas, where it happens.I now have found out that ticking OR unticking T & L or to toggle between enabling or disabling T & L solves the problem immediatly. But not for ever, but only for a few minutes. When I then enter a dense area again, the whole thing EVENTUALLY starts again.I have changed my drives from 40.52 to 43.51 but the problem remained.Now I have found an old thread here at AVSIM, where you both describe the issue with T & L.http://forums.avsim.com/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchDoes anyone of you have an idea how I can set T & L permanently for the good without haveing to tick or untick it avery 5 to 10 minutes or so.Your help is much appreciated,Wolfgang

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Many thanks for posting Wolfgang.I have low frame rates at most of my add-on scenery so read thread you linked to, however my initial tests do not equate to those in the thread.Parked at stand A23, Symflyers EDDF, spot view, T&L on I get 8.3 fps.Without changing view, or position, if I switch T&L off I get 12.3 fps. Switch T&L back on and fps goes back down to 8.3.However in cockpit view the fps does not change, stays at around 8.3.Aircraft is PIC/POSKY merge 767 in Air2000 livery.I'll do some more tests during taxi at EDDF as that scenery seems to be one of the biggest hits on fps, apart from Sydney that is.Rgds

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For setting T&L, enable it in FS2002, then exit and restart....Since the fps drop you're seeing isn't normal, the other thing I may wish to suggest.... Uninstall tne drivers, then use Det. Destroyer to remove the rest of the traces. Find and install the 30.82 drivers.... They are a good baseline. Once you feel assured they are running well, then consider an upgrade. Avoid the Omega driver sets until you have the problem isolated.The other issue--overclocking. Always a chance things could be heating up, causing odd issues in the sim. Last, consider a reinstall of DirectX.... I'm running 9.x, and it is running very well...On the odd chance, if you're flying in the West Palm Beach area or in parts of France, there's some known issues with fps choking in those areas.... PBI has a bug related to the airport lighting that will drop fps to about 4.... I've heard the same mentioned in France when AI is enabled.Prior to my using T&L in FS2002, my fps (although lower) was still pretty consistent. That's why I'm thinking a driver issue, or some other conflict....-John

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Guest JonP01

Wolfko,I can't really add much more to what John has already said. I would probably be putting these issues down to Nvidia drivers or your mainboard throttling down the P4 CPU due to thermal management. I have personally never noticed the inconsistencies you mentioned regardless of whether T&L was on or off. It could simply be a case of your system cooling down in the few seconds it takes to change the T&L setting. Both the CPU and GPU cool down extremely quickly as soon as the load is taken off them - far quicker than people imagine.So rather than looking at FS as the culprit, I'd first be checking the cooling on the P4 CPU, GPU and video card onboard memory. As for drivers, I have definitely noted that some earlier versions of 40 series drivers caused some sims to progressively slow down into slow motion similar to what you have described. For example, in Rally Trophy, using early 40 series drivers caused that particular game to go from 85 fps vsynced to my monitor all the way down to about 5 fps after about 15 minutes. The fix in this case was to use a later driver series, 42 or later. However I have not seen this problem reproduced in any other game. As John says, go back to the 30.82 for the time being, as this driver seems to have been extremely stable and has very few issues. If the problem persists with the 30.82 drivers, then I would really be looking into the heat issues already mentioned.I forgot to add. Before you do anything, clock the machine back down to standard speed. The overclocking justs adds another variable into the mix which at this stage you can do without.

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Thanks for your replies and suggestions, guys!I now found the solution! It was sooo simple - please do not laugh at me!I REALLY HAD FORGOTTEN TO INSTALL THE CHIPSET DRIVERS AFTER UPGRADING TO P4 2.4 Mhz and WinXP!!!I didn't realize it, because all proegramms ran fine and FS2002 also only had problems with detailed textures (some sirports and also some planes)I found out about the missing drivers, when I realized that the AGP acceleration was disabled when executing dxdiag although I have directx9.0a installed.Now, since I installed the actuall chipset/mainboard drivers the sim performance is incredible!But I still wonder why activating T&L had solved the problem for some time. Regards,Wolfgang

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Hi Wolfgang,I don't have this problem, but I'm interested (as a person who builds my own PC's) how you stumbled onto the chipset drivers. Was it that DX wasn't being invoked? Thanks,Bruce.

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Hi Bruce,my appolgies for my late reply, but I had not checked this thread for a while.Maybe I was not quite correct when I said "chipset drivers". I bouht a case with a MSI mainboard, CPU and harddrive and installed, vidoe card, sound card, CD-Rom, Burner, DVD, floppy and WinXP Pro by myself.I installed drivers for the sound card and detonator drivers for my GF3, but I forgot about the drivers, which came from MSI on a CD together with the mainboard.When I experienced those performance problems as described in my initial post of this thred, I realized that tose problems were less, whe I reduced AA and/or AF. Since these 2 itmes in FS2003 are more video card dependend than CPU dependend, I thought the only 64MB of my GF3 were not able to handle AA and AF of too detailed scenery/aircraft. I amended the AGP apperture from 64MB to 128MB in the BIOS - with no visible effect. Then I thought maybe enabling AGP acceleration could help. When I found out that AGP acceleration in the dxsettings was grayed out(after executing dxdiag in the command line) I assumed that some missing drivers would be the reason for this. I remembered the CD, which came with the board and installed all the driveers which were on it. And voila - since then FS2002 runs just gorgious and also AGP acceleration is available via dxdiag again.I guess that was the effect of some AGP drivers which were on the CD. BTW I xcqan see no difference in performance, no matter if I enable or disable AGP acceleration.Regards,Wolfgang

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Guest JonP01

Hi Wolfgang,Glad you found out what was wrong. I'm curious as to what drivers you are now using for you Nvidia card? It seems some people have reported graphics glitches with Nvidia cards, even if they are the pre-FX generation. Some people have said the 30.82 are failsafe, however no one has yet comfirmed to me whether the text "ghosting" problem has been fixed - whereby the ATC and red text blurred and ghosted when anisotropic filtering was turned on (this was solved with drivers 42.30 or later, but these or some later drivers apparently cause some users some menu problems in FS2004).

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Thanks Wolgang!Some great "detective" work there!Bruce.

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