GTS 250 - 20FPS in VC?

[Sharky05 2]

Hello guys! I just upgraded to GTS 250 512mb OC edition, and strange things happens. When i go to a major airport in VC mode the frames are going down. I have no problem with clouds, even with "heviest" (1024x1024 - 5mb). For example I am at LEPA - Malloca X from aerosoft with Wilco airbus in the VC and when i look at the buildings the frames are dropping too much, from 30-40 to 17-21. I tested F.E.A.R. 2 at max resolution and everything on maximum, its realy good, but in FS2004 not. Is this normal for this video card or I am missing something. I did all correctly - nHancer, do some changes in fs9.cfg and nothing. Here are some shots:http://img294.imageshack.us/i/loads.jpg/http://img709.imageshack.us/i/toobad.jpg/http://img718.imageshack.us/i/badfps.jpg/Thans for time, will be glad for some advices.

[Guest firehawk44]

Hello guys! I just upgraded to GTS 250 512mb OC edition, and strange things happens. When i go to a major airport in VC mode the frames are going down. I have no problem with clouds, even with "heviest" (1024x1024 - 5mb). For example I am at LEPA - Malloca X from aerosoft with Wilco airbus in the VC and when i look at the buildings the frames are dropping too much, from 30-40 to 17-21. I tested F.E.A.R. 2 at max resolution and everything on maximum, its realy good, but in FS2004 not. Is this normal for this video card or I am missing something. I did all correctly - nHancer, do some changes in fs9.cfg and nothing. Here are some shots:http://img294.imageshack.us/i/loads.jpg/http://img709.imageshack.us/i/toobad.jpg/http://img718.imageshack.us/i/badfps.jpg/Thans for time, will be glad for some advices.

That all sounds normal to me. FS9/FSX relies on the CPU more than the GPU. Therefore, your frames shouldn't go up much more with an OC'd GPU. If you want better frames, move some of your sliders back a notch. Other games use the GPU more than FSX so that's why Fear2 works better. Here's a link for further information - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/...y_cpu_scaling/7.EDIT: I just reread your OP and see that you are running FS9. It should still apply but not the link. Sorry!Best regards,Jim

[Sharky05 2]

That all sounds normal to me. FS9/FSX relies on the CPU more than the GPU.

How You can see the CPu usage is at 70% max. and this is all the time, not only when i did that shot. Also the GPU load is at 300mb out of 512 so I think my system is pretty good for FS2004, but still got bad results. Seems like FS2004 is very very bad optimized and nobody can get more than 25 FPS in heavy area - add-on scenery with add-on A/C in the VC.REgards.

[red1 0]

How You can see the CPu usage is at 70% max. and this is all the time, not only when i did that shot. Also the GPU load is at 300mb out of 512 so I think my system is pretty good for FS2004, but still got bad results. Seems like FS2004 is very very bad optimized and nobody can get more than 25 FPS in heavy area - add-on scenery with add-on A/C in the VC.REgards.

What resolution and AA/AF settings are you using, also you didn't mention the rest of your system, Those seem fps seem very normal running addons in that situation esp using that 250 card. I get 25-30 fps in heavy situations with add-ons.FS9 will never, or rarely, using 100% of your card.

[Sharky05 2]

The PC is E5200 @ 2.8/ 2GB DDR2/ GTS250 512 DDR3/ 550W psu/ HDD 120gb ATA/And the AA/AF are as recommend: combined 8xs, AF 8x. red1 You telling me that You get 25-30 fps with GTX 275 WoW. Another thing, when i set VC to low detail there is no problem.

[red1 0]

The PC is E5200 @ 2.8/ 2GB DDR2/ GTS250 512 DDR3/ 550W psu/ HDD 120gb ATA/And the AA/AF are as recommend: combined 8xs, AF 8x. red1 You telling me that You get 25-30 fps with GTX 275 WoW. Another thing, when i set VC to low detail there is no problem.

Your CPU is quite slow and old, your fps is very normal. Yes, the LOWEST fps I get is 25-30. That's with multiple overcast layers, up to 5 other cloud layers, with PMDG 737, in an addon airport with 200+ AI on the ground, and probably another 100+ in the air. That FPS is about as good as you're going to get in that situation. I'm also running 1920x1080 resolution.Once in the air, FPS stays locked at 50.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

"quite old and slow" is quite an exaggeration. It's not the 4GHz+ i7 that FS wants, but it's no P4 either.

[Sharky05 2]

So you guys mean that if i get new main board, for example with Q9550 it will be ok?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

CPU instructions per second is king when it comes to MSFS performance. Basically you need the most recent, most efficient CPU architecture at the highest clockspeed you can get the CPU to run at while remaining stable. This means you need to overclock. A Q9550 is not the newest chip on the block but it's still pretty fast. I run one at 4.1GHz and it handles FSX with mostly high settings pretty comfortably. You'll note the stock clockspeed on this chip is only 2.83GHz and I am running a 45% overclock to achieve these results.

[Crewecut 1]

Cheaper option would be to overclock an E8600 Core 2Duo to 4 GHz, (stocked at 3.33), but have a solid cooler on it, and case should be vented too. You CAN have a very decent FSX experience without a complete overhaul.Only 2GB RAM is not a lot, background operations sit on approx. one GB, so I

[red1 0]

Cheaper option would be to overclock an E8600 Core 2Duo to 4 GHz, (stocked at 3.33), but have a solid cooler on it, and case should be vented too. You CAN have a very decent FSX experience without a complete overhaul.Only 2GB RAM is not a lot, background operations sit on approx. one GB, so I

[Sharky05 2]

Thanks for the advices, but I'm still thinking its GPU, couse if I set the virtual cockpit to "low details" there is no FPS problem when I look at the buildings of the airport. This is just my thinking. I realy apreciate your comments guys. Now I'm gonna clock the cpu to reach 3.0GHz, I hope it will work. My target is 25-26 FPS steady. I don't use any AI traffic, just fly online at VATSIM, using the most popular add-ons from aerosoft, and others, aircrafts from digital aviation, wilco, pmdg(only md11) and some GA, clouds from REX and HDE 1.0. Now i run win XP x32, but used to run win 7 x32 (wich runs better than xp in my case) And I'm thinking to go back to Win7.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

If you were running some other 3d application like a first person shooter, your logic that the graphics card is the bottleneck would be applicable. However, you are running MSFS, which is notoriously dependent upon the speed of one's CPU. You can test this for yourself by underclocking or overclocking your CPU and watching the framerate change. Take your 2.8GHz processor and knock it down to 1.8GHz and see your framerate drop down to < 15 in the same scenario you described. Overclock it significantly and you may hit 25-30 fps.

[Sharky05 2]

If you were running some other 3d application like a first person shooter, your logic that the graphics card is the bottleneck would be applicable. However, you are running MSFS, which is notoriously dependent upon the speed of one's CPU. You can test this for yourself by underclocking or overclocking your CPU and watching the framerate change. Take your 2.8GHz processor and knock it down to 1.8GHz and see your framerate drop down to < 15 in the same scenario you described. Overclock it significantly and you may hit 25-30 fps.

Ok how do you prefere to clock my cpu. I am with the box cooler for E5200. Now at 3ghz (2.5 stock) the temperature is max 47-8 deg. C.How much i can get and where i can go with the clocking. The psu is 550w and the MB is gigabyte G31.One more think - how can i understand that my cpu is good enaugh, when at this point the cpu usage is about 70% (per core) and still this cpu is not power enaugh?Sorry for my bad english, just trying my best :(

[TechguyMaxC 516]

The reason your CPU usage is at 70% is because it has 2 cores. One core is at 100% usage, and the other is at 40%. This comes out to an overall usage of 70%. You can't force MSFS to use more of your other cores, so you have to overclock to get more performance out of the first core.I have run an E5200 @ 3.4GHz on the stock cooler without any heat issues. I don't see why you couldn't do the same. Likely you will need to adjust your CPU voltage a.k.a. "Vcore" to achieve stability at > 3GHz.