After FSX was released, I waited 2 years for the hardware to "catch up" to the new demands of the program. Last year I went out and got what the BestBuy Geeks said was the best they had at the time, a Gateway FX 6800-01e system with Intel core i7cpu 920@ 2.67 ghz., 3.00 GB DDR3 1066mgz ram, and an ATI Rdeon HD 4850 graphics card. I since have added a 6 GB memory kit for a total of 9 gb, and a TripleHeadtoGo with 3 19" monitors. Performance is just acceptable, and I get framerates from 30+ in rural areas to only 5 near San Francisco and KSFO with occasional stutters and pauses. I also have Ultimate Traffic II enabled but scaled the traffic down quite a bit. After 2 years I thought I could finally enjoy FSX to its full potential, but I can't, especially with any addons. I since learned that Gateway locks the system so that overclocking is not an option, and also that FSX is more cpu intensive rather than Graphics card intensive. Since I can't overclock, does anyone have any other suggestions? Does anyone in the AVSIM community have my same system with FSX and if so, how does it run for you? I think I have my sliders tweaked as much as I can. Adding the 2 extra monitors didn't seem to make much difference for me, nor did adding the 6 gb memory. Would a new video card help at all? I heard that FSX doesn't fare as well with ATI cards as it does with NVIDIA. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. Regards, Tom

Simming in FSX has five potential bottlenecks:1. CPU,2. RAM,3. GPU, 4. GPU to VRAM Bus, and5. CPU to GPU PCI Express1. CPUUnfortunately FSX uses the CPU to rasterize as opposed to delegating the task to the GPU so it is very CPU intensive. If "money is no object" (what an oxymoron!) you can wait until March 10, 2010 and get the 32nm 6-core Core i7-980 XE (aka "Gulftown") which will supposedly easily overclock to well over 5 GHz on water as 32nm thermal output is 50% less that of 45nm, Hz for Hz. Now while the extra cores won't help much except to load photo scenery, the one core running at 5 GHz should get you out of the low fps doldrums.2. RAMThe faster, the better, but anything over 6 GBy for a 64-bit OS is a waste as FSX can not use more then 3 GBy as it is a 32-bit app and 32-bit apps can only use up to 4 GB, including the part of the operating system they need to "see" (the entire OS for a 32-bit OS and the 32-bit mode of a 64-bit OS in the case of a 64-bit OS.) Since you can not reduce the RAM used by the OS to run FSX to less than 1 GBy, FSX has a max of 3 GBy to play with (1 + 3 = 4 GBy), so if you have 6 GBy you can have FSX use 3 while your OS uses theother 3 for a total of 6 GBy (and 3 GBy for any 64-bit OS for FSX use is plenty).3. GPUThe ATI Radeon HD 5870 at 2.4 TeraFLOPS is twice as fast as the HD 4870 at 1.2 TFLOPS as the number of stream processors ("shaders") increased from 800 to 1600, so you will be in a better position to put up with those fps-gobbling clouds. While the HD5870 already allows you to conect 3 monitors thus obviating the need for your Matrox TripleHead2Go, if you wait until about March you can get the Eyefinity version of the HD 5870 with 6 (SIX) video outputs. Ant it will also run faster than the HD 5870 due to a faster clock (same deal as the HD 4890 vs. the HD 4870).Still, know that the more and larger monitors you use, the more pixels the GPU has to feed and the more image processing (smoothing algorithms) will consume GPU resurces lowering your fps. So there is a bit of trial and error regarding number and size of monitors vs. fps.4. GPU to VRAM BusThis is the number of bits that the GPU can receive from VRAM (video RAM) at a time and is an important bandwidth-limiting factor. In the ATI camp the maximum is 256 bits (beware the X2 cards can be mentioned as 512, but ths is really 2x GPUs at 256 each, and we all know the second GPU is totally useless and can even make your fps stutter!), while on the NVIDIA side you can get up to 448 or even 512 bits with their GeForce GTX cards, which is why they are so good with FSX.5. CPU to GPU PCI ExpressFinally all the video data has to travel from the CPU to the GPU, so the PCI-X bus is also a bottleneck.So the verdict is wait until March and get the Intel Core i7-980 XE CPU and the (unnannounced) ATI Radeon Infinity-6 HD 5??? viceo card.Cheers,- jahman.

How did this community come to the conclusion that FSX uses the CPU for rasterization? Also, TFLOPs are not the only GPU performance metric, and actually have little bearing on FSX since this metric refers to how many instructions the ALUs (shader cores/CUDA cores/stream processors/etc.) can complete per second and FSX makes little to no use of the GPU's shader cores.

How did this community come to the conclusion that FSX uses the CPU for rasterization?

Landclass, terrain mesh and altitude data are all raster and vector data that has been done on the CPU as in all versions since FS5.Autogen also uses a form of rasterization as well.SP1 & SP2 added more and more support of hardware rasterization to try to improve things. I guess one would need to know the difference between software or CPU rasterization vs Hardware or GPU rasterization, but no matter.Link for ESP (FSX), it would be a good starting point for you:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526979.aspx

There's no such thing as "raster data".Please stop posting this pseudo-technical nonsense and mis-leading people.

You make me laugh!Whats this? >http://www.extension.org/faq/32327Why dont you go post that question in the terrain design forum and see what kind of response you get...heh hehor post it here in this forum, I'll even open the door for you: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=77We use Vector and Raster point data Everyday on GIS sytems and it has been used extensivly in FS for years and what it is now built upon, without you would not see coastlines, rivers, lakes, roads, city, suberbs and country textures would not be defined. Digital elevation points and mapping testures to the terrain etc. etc. etc.Senseless personal attack removed by modIts is all over the SDK link in my previous post above under "terrain"

This is the only warning I'm going to give you. Either stop with the personal attacks or you're out of here. And that goes for everyone.

I stand corrected in that raster data is indeed a real term, but not one that is used in rasterization outside of the world of GIS, which seems to be your area of expertise.

I stand corrected in that raster data is indeed a real term, but not one that is used in rasterization outside of the world of GIS, which seems to be your area of expertise.

My expertise?I can make good mixed drinks, about it......

Tools designed to enable users to create add-ons have no relationship to the method by which the application renders terrain or objects.

Tools designed to enable users to create add-ons have no relationship to the method by which the application renders terrain or objects.

Oh? You have created some add-ons with the SDK toolkit, and You didnt find any relationship to the methods by which the FSX graphics engine renders, hmmmm. I hate that when that happens. Hey, thanks again for the info and the laughs!

Simming in FSX has five potential bottlenecks:1. CPU,2. RAM,3. GPU, 4. GPU to VRAM Bus, and5. CPU to GPU PCI Express1. CPUUnfortunately FSX uses the CPU to rasterize as opposed to delegating the task to the GPU so it is very CPU intensive. If "money is no object" (what an oxymoron!) you can wait until March 10, 2010 and get the 32nm 6-core Core i7-980 XE (aka "Gulftown") which will supposedly easily overclock to well over 5 GHz on water as 32nm thermal output is 50% less that of 45nm, Hz for Hz. Now while the extra cores won't help much except to load photo scenery, the one core running at 5 GHz should get you out of the low fps doldrums.2. RAMThe faster, the better, but anything over 6 GBy for a 64-bit OS is a waste as FSX can not use more then 3 GBy as it is a 32-bit app and 32-bit apps can only use up to 4 GB, including the part of the operating system they need to "see" (the entire OS for a 32-bit OS and the 32-bit mode of a 64-bit OS in the case of a 64-bit OS.) Since you can not reduce the RAM used by the OS to run FSX to less than 1 GBy, FSX has a max of 3 GBy to play with (1 + 3 = 4 GBy), so if you have 6 GBy you can have FSX use 3 while your OS uses theother 3 for a total of 6 GBy (and 3 GBy for any 64-bit OS for FSX use is plenty).3. GPUThe ATI Radeon HD 5870 at 2.4 TeraFLOPS is twice as fast as the HD 4870 at 1.2 TFLOPS as the number of stream processors ("shaders") increased from 800 to 1600, so you will be in a better position to put up with those fps-gobbling clouds. While the HD5870 already allows you to conect 3 monitors thus obviating the need for your Matrox TripleHead2Go, if you wait until about March you can get the Eyefinity version of the HD 5870 with 6 (SIX) video outputs. Ant it will also run faster than the HD 5870 due to a faster clock (same deal as the HD 4890 vs. the HD 4870).Still, know that the more and larger monitors you use, the more pixels the GPU has to feed and the more image processing (smoothing algorithms) will consume GPU resurces lowering your fps. So there is a bit of trial and error regarding number and size of monitors vs. fps.4. GPU to VRAM BusThis is the number of bits that the GPU can receive from VRAM (video RAM) at a time and is an important bandwidth-limiting factor. In the ATI camp the maximum is 256 bits (beware the X2 cards can be mentioned as 512, but ths is really 2x GPUs at 256 each, and we all know the second GPU is totally useless and can even make your fps stutter!), while on the NVIDIA side you can get up to 448 or even 512 bits with their GeForce GTX cards, which is why they are so good with FSX.5. CPU to GPU PCI ExpressFinally all the video data has to travel from the CPU to the GPU, so the PCI-X bus is also a bottleneck.So the verdict is wait until March and get the Intel Core i7-980 XE CPU and the (unnannounced) ATI Radeon Infinity-6 HD 5??? viceo card.Cheers,- jahman.

Tlhanks jahman for the detailed info. I understood most of it. :( As I said, I'm not too experienced with the latest hardware. When this processor and ATI card do come out, do you know if I will be able to add them to my current system easily, and will I need a new power supply, cooling, etc.? Do you think they will work with my current motherboard? I have never done this before. The only processor I ever replaced was in my system years ago when Intel had a miscalculation in their 386 and we got a free replacement. It popped in with no trouble by lifting a single lever. Thanks again, Tom

Intel core i7cpu 920@ 2.67 ghz., 3.00 GB DDR3 1066mgz ram, and an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card.

Replacing the graphics card with an HD 5870 is easy as you use the same driver (although best to upgrade to the latest Catalyst driver before the upgrade.) See: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspxUpgrading the CPU is more difficult: Thing is when you install Windows it looks at your system and installs the HAL layer appropiate for your CPU. The HAL layer is what Windows uses to talk to the CPU and is just about the "deepest" part inside Windows. So when you change your CPU a safe bet is to reformat your hard drive and do a clean install so Windows will detect you new CPU and your system will not be "contaminated" by any Windows settings relating to your old CPU.Of course your new CPU has to have the same hardware socket as your old CPU otherwise you will not even be able to plug it into your motherboard! In your case, according to http://www.intel.com/products/processor/co...cifications.htm your old CPU has "Socket type LGA1366", so your new CPU needs to also have this specification. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulftown_(microprocessor) the Core i7-980 XE will also use the "Socket type LGA1366" so you will be OK for the upgrade.Once you do your upgrades, please report back on how FSX performs on your new system!Cheers,- jahman

Oh? You have created some add-ons with the SDK toolkit, and You didnt find any relationship to the methods by which the FSX graphics engine renders, hmmmm. I hate that when that happens. Hey, thanks again for the info and the laughs!

That's actually the entire point of an SDK. You don't have to understand the inner workings of the application in order to create add-ons.

Oh? You have created some add-ons with the SDK toolkit, and You didnt find any relationship to the methods by which the FSX graphics engine renders, hmmmm. I hate that when that happens. Hey, thanks again for the info and the laughs!

That was provocative and disinformational :(

That's actually the entire point of an SDK. You don't have to understand the inner workings of the application in order to create add-ons.

In the case of the FSX SDK Quite the opposite sir.