i7 and FSX

[Guest justinm001]

Hey PeoplesIve recently installed FSX on my new computer. I followed Nick_Ns tuning guide and its all working realy well on max settings. 40-70+ FPS.I've installed some scenary airport addons which brought the FPS down to 10-15 while flying in the airport (with no traffic/cars). Aparantly the specific scenary in question uses quite abit of resources I've been told. Ive noticed however it only appears to ever use like 30-40% of the total CPU (I have FSX SP2). I would of thought if it was having an issue with FPS it would use more CPU to accomodate ?? Seems kinda silly if im getting bad performance but the CPU isnt at its potential ?? The main CPU core is always running 100% and the other 3 are at like 10-25%.I have a i7 920 o/c to 3.8, gtx285-2gb, and 6gb of ram with win7 64bit installed.Its definelty using all the cores when FSX loads up and what not, but with this specific scenary it doesnt seem to want alot of CPU ?Is this a common problem with some addon scenaries and if so, if there something I could tweak in the .cfg file ? Also all you people with i7's... just out of curiosity, what does your total cpu run at when your playing FSX ?? Should all 4 cores be close to 100% ?thanks heaps :)

[sargeski 16]

FSX basically runs on one core. The additional cores are used for texture loading only. All four cores will never be near 100%. What you are seeing is the normal behavior of FSX.

[jjjallen 37]

Hey PeoplesI have a i7 920 o/c to 3.8, gtx285-2gb, and 6gb of ram with win7 64bit installed.thanks heaps :)

I didn't see much of an improvement over my old machine until I set my i7 860, on a ASRock P55, to 4.20ghz. At that speed it is a whole new ball game in FSX. The P55 is an amazing platform (no FSB) in how stable and cool it runs at that speed.Since you have 2gig on your GPU you can easily up your [bufferPools] to PoolSize=256000000 to cache more textures.Have fun!PS - Turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS. It is only really useful in productivity software.jja

[Geofa 108]

I didn't see much of an improvement over my old machine until I set my i7 860, on a ASRock P55, to 4.20ghz. At that speed it is a whole new ball game in FSX. The P55 is an amazing platform (no FSB) in how stable and cool it runs at that speed.Since you have 2gig on your GPU you can easily up your [bufferPools] to PoolSize=256000000 to cache more textures.Have fun!PS - Turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS. It is only really useful in productivity software.jja

I thought there was something wrong with my machine when I first got it-and had similar results.My Machine-a i7 920@2.67 ghz, 12 gb ram, win 7 64, and came with a 8400gs which I new was weak. I couldn't figure out what was wrong for about a week. Then I put in my 8800gt from my old computer and the numbers went up drastically. Now with almost every slider full right including autogen, ai traffic, add ins, rw, I rarely see below 28 and typically get mid 30,s to mid 40's. On the windows performance I get 7.4,7.5,6.9,6.9,5.9.In my case the video card made a huge difference.

[Bubi42 1]

I didn't see much of an improvement over my old machine until I set my i7 860, on a ASRock P55, to 4.20ghz. At that speed it is a whole new ball game in FSX. The P55 is an amazing platform (no FSB) in how stable and cool it runs at that speed.Since you have 2gig on your GPU you can easily up your [bufferPools] to PoolSize=256000000 to cache more textures.Have fun!PS - Turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS. It is only really useful in productivity software.jja

Please could you suggest the best bufferpools setting for a GTX285 with 1 gb of onboard memory.(Basic computer spec : i7 975 Extreme and 6 GB DDR3 memory) ThanksToni.

[jjjallen 37]

Please could you suggest the best bufferpools setting for a GTX285 with 1 gb of onboard memory.(Basic computer spec : i7 975 Extreme and 6 GB DDR3 memory) ThanksToni.

Thats what I use on my GTX285 1gig and it seems to work well. Cheersjja

[Guest UlfB]

Please could you suggest the best bufferpools setting for a GTX285 with 1 gb of onboard memory.

Many users use 200MB and it work OK. Some userse get problems in FSX with settings above 100MB. I use 100MB and it works OK for me.EDITED: A lot more info from Nick Needham here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041 Edited January 17, 2010 by UlfB

[Guest]

Please could you suggest the best bufferpools setting for a GTX285 with 1 gb of onboard memory.(Basic computer spec : i7 975 Extreme and 6 GB DDR3 memory) ThanksToni.

On my computer with an i7 920@3.3 and 6 GB DDR3 memory, I use a settings of 490000000 for my GTX285 with 1 GB onboard mem.

[gman! 1]

All of you have bufferpools waayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy (especially the post above!!:() too high. You are bound to get problems, and you are actually killing your FPS, and decreasing the memory that can be used for loading important things. FSX doesn't even fill up a 512MB card, and almost tops out a 256MB with the right settings. Bufferpools is supposed to keep textures that are constantly reloaded from system memory and/or the hard drive, in a section of the video cards memory. The things that get loaded constantly throughout FSX are tree textures, taxiway textures, autogen textures, road textures and grass textures. Even if you have default textures, a mix of default and HD, or all HD it still won't even come close to taking 50MBs. These files (individually) are actually only a few hundred kilobytes.Also read this, setting bufferpools to high may cause very weird problems, especially if you have HD textures.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=271292&hl=http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1691787 (Please read the whole page)To the original poster, try starting here for your FPS problemshttp://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=273128&hl=Since your running Windows 7, also check these out to prevent any problems:http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=267300&hl=http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=267596&hl=Good Luck! :(

[CFIJose 5,485]

300mb is the sweet spot. Then raise TML from 40 to 60.

[epza 0]

Hey PeoplesIve recently installed FSX on my new computer. I followed Nick_Ns tuning guide and its all working realy well on max settings. 40-70+ FPS.I've installed some scenary airport addons which brought the FPS down to 10-15 while flying in the airport (with no traffic/cars). Aparantly the specific scenary in question uses quite abit of resources I've been told. Ive noticed however it only appears to ever use like 30-40% of the total CPU (I have FSX SP2). I would of thought if it was having an issue with FPS it would use more CPU to accomodate ?? Seems kinda silly if im getting bad performance but the CPU isnt at its potential ?? The main CPU core is always running 100% and the other 3 are at like 10-25%.I have a i7 920 o/c to 3.8, gtx285-2gb, and 6gb of ram with win7 64bit installed.Its definelty using all the cores when FSX loads up and what not, but with this specific scenary it doesnt seem to want alot of CPU ?Is this a common problem with some addon scenaries and if so, if there something I could tweak in the .cfg file ? Also all you people with i7's... just out of curiosity, what does your total cpu run at when your playing FSX ?? Should all 4 cores be close to 100% ?thanks heaps :)

I'm at Military Air field Base in Afghanistan 4 years already and I'm using FS9 on my Laptop.I was hoping then one day I will buy very powerful computer to run FSX, at home but from the comments looks like this program still drops frame rates below 20 frame rates per second .This Is awful and tweaking again ?:) :( Happy LandingsJacek

[tf51d 284]

I thought there was something wrong with my machine when I first got it-and had similar results.My Machine-a i7 920@2.67 ghz, 12 gb ram, win 7 64, and came with a 8400gs which I new was weak. I couldn't figure out what was wrong for about a week. Then I put in my 8800gt from my old computer and the numbers went up drastically. Now with almost every slider full right including autogen, ai traffic, add ins, rw, I rarely see below 28 and typically get mid 30,s to mid 40's. On the windows performance I get 7.4,7.5,6.9,6.9,5.9.In my case the video card made a huge difference.

That's because of the much higher video memory bandwidth over the 8400GS, 57.6GBs vs 6.4GBs! While FSX doesn't take full advantage of the GPU, it does use it's video RAM, so it imperative there is an open pipe, the larger the better. Without it, performance will suffer even on the newest systems. The 8800GT is about where you will start to see a noticeable difference in performance, I have the 9800GTX which has 70GBs VMB, with a E6850 at 3.0ghz, and FSX performs well for me. I wonder how it would perform with the new ATI 5970 card, which has 256GBs VMB. That with a high powered I7, should really make FSX shine!!

[Guest justinm001]

thanks HEAPS for all the info everyone :) :)much appreciated. Epza - nah FSX is running reaaaly well, amazing graphics and great FPS. Its just this one specific airport addon (FTX YMML) - which the author actualy ses is very very cpu intensive.

[Guest justinm001]

hmmm actualy I do have 1 trivial issue with the default FSX you guys might be able to assist with, while your all being ever so helpful :)Sometimes the taxi lines that connect to the runways flash when im flying around various airports.It only seems to be the part of taxi lines (and taxi pavements?) that overlap the runway. Im not to concerned as it ONLY seems to happen at the airports, but if anyone has any ideas ?

[tf51d 284]

hmmm actualy I do have 1 trivial issue with the default FSX you guys might be able to assist with, while your all being ever so helpful :)Sometimes the taxi lines that connect to the runways flash when im flying around various airports.It only seems to be the part of taxi lines (and taxi pavements?) that overlap the runway. Im not to concerned as it ONLY seems to happen at the airports, but if anyone has any ideas ?

Assuming your running DX10, it's a bug! Shouldn't happen though with DX9.