Hi everyone,I hope some of you experienced computer and flight sim wizzards might be able to help me here.After upgrading my PC many months ago, I enjoyed smooth flying in FSX with my FPS set to unlimited, I saw constant FPS of over 30 which impressed me.I have since installed REX, installing UTX and GEX yesterday. I've gone into FSX and flown with a default aircraft and in any view I choose, my FPS doesn't go above 10 and so I'm back to having jerky flight which isn't very enjoyable.I've carried out a full hard drive defrag using System Mechanic Pro, not the Windows default, after installing these items.Does anyone have any idea as to why the sudden drop? And what is the best method of rectifying this? I know this is an age-old problem that has been raised time and time again but any help or advice would be very much appreciated, I can assure you.Thanks in anticipation.Adam

Hi everyone,I hope some of you experienced computer and flight sim wizzards might be able to help me here.After upgrading my PC many months ago, I enjoyed smooth flying in FSX with my FPS set to unlimited, I saw constant FPS of over 30 which impressed me.I have since installed REX, installing UTX and GEX yesterday. I've gone into FSX and flown with a default aircraft and in any view I choose, my FPS doesn't go above 10 and so I'm back to having jerky flight which isn't very enjoyable.I've carried out a full hard drive defrag using System Mechanic Pro, not the Windows default, after installing these items.Does anyone have any idea as to why the sudden drop? And what is the best method of rectifying this? I know this is an age-old problem that has been raised time and time again but any help or advice would be very much appreciated, I can assure you.Thanks in anticipation.Adam

Same thing happened to me after I installed Windows 7 and reinstalled FSX and Acceleration. Great frames over 30 with unlimited settings until I started installing the addons. You'll have to do some tweaking of your scenery sliders and AI settings to compensate for the additional system load. Since you have UTX installed, I hope you have checked out some of the settings suggested by NickN in his post at the following link: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041. I found the water settings can be a major hit. Just turn the water setting down near the bottom and you'll see what I mean. So, if you plan on flying in an area where there will be little water, you can turn that off before you fly. AI, if set too high, will also cause a major hit. So, it's an old story, you just have to do some serious tweaking when running all the many outstanding addons for FSX.Best regards,Jim

Hi Jim,Thanks for your reply.I've looked at that huge suggestive list prior to getting any add-ons, prior to my hardware upgrade too but have to admit I've not read all of it.All worked ok even with REX2.0 intalled, however it's just started since I put GEX and UTX on.I think some tweaking and experimentation will have to take place to try and get some decent frame rates again. I quite like AI traffic though I'm contemplating buying a traffic add-on to make airport environments more realistic. Do such add-ons improve performance over default AI? Will adding more add-ons make my situation worse? I've a few Aerosoft airport packs I quite like, especially the Amsterdam Schiphol one due out in February. Again, thanks for taking the time to reply.Regards,Adam

Delete your cfg. Then let it create a new one. Then set up sliders as normal. The way you had them.If you have any payware airplanes don't load them until you try flying with one of the default planes.See if things improve. If things do improve. Back up your cfg file.Hope that helps.

Thanks DJJose.Which cfg file should I delete as there are quite a few. (sorry if this sounds dumb lol)Regards,Adam

I think some tweaking and experimentation will have to take place to try and get some decent frame rates again. I quite like AI traffic though I'm contemplating buying a traffic add-on to make airport environments more realistic. Do such add-ons improve performance over default AI? Will adding more add-ons make my situation worse? I've a few Aerosoft airport packs I quite like, especially the Amsterdam Schiphol one due out in February.

1) Get My Traffic X 5.2b pro - all the models used in there are DX10 compliant and extremely framerate friendly, even under DX9. Little to no impact noticeable, as long as you keep your sliders on reasonable settings (30% will give you shi(P)loads of traffic *g*)2) Most certainly so. Airoprts can be eating framerates like nothing else.

Thanks DJJose.Which cfg file should I delete as there are quite a few. (sorry if this sounds dumb lol)Regards,Adam

He was talking about your FSX.cfg. All that's going to do is reset everything back to the default settings but it doesn't hurt trying. I would rename it to fsx.old then restart FSX and let it rebuild. If you want to go back to your old config, just rename the fsx.old to fsx.cfg. In regards to that link I provided to NickN's FSX Setup guide, he has settings you should make in UTX to reduce the load on FSX. Best regards,Jim

He was talking about your FSX.cfg. All that's going to do is reset everything back to the default settings but it doesn't hurt trying. I would rename it to fsx.old then restart FSX and let it rebuild. If you want to go back to your old config, just rename the fsx.old to fsx.cfg. In regards to that link I provided to NickN's FSX Setup guide, he has settings you should make in UTX to reduce the load on FSX. Best regards,Jim

The last time that I remember this problem was when I installed some funcky nVidia drivers for a 8800GTX.jja

The last time that I remember this problem was when I installed some funcky nVidia drivers for a 8800GTX.jja

Hmm, now this sets alarm bells off.I've been running off of the default Windows 7 drivers up until last week when I found my nVidia CD and decided to see whether I needed the latest drivers. Turns out I did and let it install them, overwriting the Windows defaults. This may well have had an impact; I read on another thread someone had updated their drivers which left its mark and they reverted back to the previous drivers. Thanks for everyones suggestions so far; will give them a go and see how it all pans out.All the best.Adam

Just to update people who offered suggestions to my problem.After a few unsuccessful attempts, I managed to get FSX back to its old self without the need for tweaking. I removed all nVidia add-on software and restarted the computer. Windows then downloaded the driver it wanted and have just tried FSX and it's great once again.Thanks for those who offered their suggestions; much appreciated and have bookmarked NickN's extensive tweaking guide for future reference.Regards, Adam.

Interesting... I wonder which driver Windows 7 uses by default...! I am almost inclined to uninstall the nVidia driver and see what happens...!

I think 7 gets the latest WHQL drivers... But why on earth did you install drivers from that CD ? Drivers are updated every month or so and the ones you'll find on those CD are usually outdated... It would be interesting if you can give us the driver version number 7 installs so that I can compare with the latest I have from Nvidia.Cheers ;)

It wasn't plain sailing to begin with. I initially 'rolled back' the driver but when I rebooted, it installed the driver again and was back to square one. So I uninstalled the driver, my screen resolution decreased so everything on the desktop went huge. I also uninstalled everything on the Installed Program list that related to nVidia, one named 'drivers' the other named 'control panel'. I also uninstalled ASUS EPU-4 engine software which when I first installed it, sounded a good idea at the time, what with it supposed to save energy. I'm sure it does save energy but at a cost to performance! :( Utilising the Smart Scan tool on the nVidia website, I've got version 191.07 but they recommend I download and install 196.21 which was released on Tuesday the 19th of January. Regards, Adam.