Aloha from the land of low frame rates.I just upgraded to an i7 930 with 12 GB of DDR3 memory. The mother board is a Gigabyte X58A-UD5 with two ATI 5770 graphics cards in a crossfire configuration. I'm using Catalyst Control Version 2009 and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.I ran a few 3D graphics tests using a number of programs and the old ATITool. The ATITool on my old Pentium D 830 with a X800GTO graphics card has a frame rate of 115 FPS and on the new computer the frame rate is 1250 FPS. I prepared for some nice smooth flying. The old computer has no problem making over 40 FPS with near maxium settings for scenery and mostly quality settings on the Catalyst Control so almost no aliasing is seen. I fired up the new computer and it has almost the same frame rates as the old computer with blue sky and normal country scenery. With more complex scenery such as clouds the old computer does better in the tests. The new computer behaves like my old one did with the X-300 graphics card. I'm not very happy. The graphics for FS9 on the new computer look poor, bad aliasing unless the Catalyst control settings are almost set to maximum quality. Drivers? I gave FSX a try and since I have not used it on the other computer I'm not sure if it is working normally for this type of computer. The frame rates were in the 20 to 30 FPS range except when I was very close to complex scenery such as a huge forest. The frame rates drop to 10 or so. I did have the settings on FSX set to the higher quality. The graphics quality was fine with almost no aliasing.Note: The new computer in every other way runs the pants off the old and I love the speed and Windows 7. It is a joy to use for all programs except the one I love the most. Any help at all would be appreciated. I will begin my usual approach by pure hit and miss changes to drivers and swapping out graphics cards.

One thing to note: FSX or FS9 do not support dual GPU's, only single. So really your only running ONE 5770 in FSX. This could be the issue, as the 5770 isn't the strongest of cards.Also welcome to the forums, and please sign posts with your name.

There are alot of new tweaks for FSX over these last couple months, especially the bufferpools=0 that you should check out, also have you OC that cpu?

Not unusual for higher end GPUs to need to run at higher settings. You should be able to get that rig to run FSX well without any tweaks. Is this a new installation of FSX, or an old one? Make sure you have a new cfg file. Then you can OC and add tweaks. Bob

And if you haven

Also, install ******* Altuve's shader 3.0 mod, you can find it in the main FSX forum. It really improves performance for ATI cards, and will reduce or negate performance drops in heavy weather.

I'm confident the main issue are those two ATI cards in crossfire. First, remove one and see what that does. However, The 57xx cards do crappy in clouds in FSX, you'd want a 5870 or, the best thing - get an nvidia card. Something like a GTX285 or 480

I'm confident the main issue are those two ATI cards in crossfire. First, remove one and see what that does. However, The 57xx cards do crappy in clouds in FSX, you'd want a 5870 or, the best thing - get an nvidia card. Something like a GTX285 or 480

The ATI cards perform well with the shader 3.0 mod, I hate to be a broken record, but the performance hit in clouds with ATI cards is gone with this mod.

I'm confident the main issue are those two ATI cards in crossfire. First, remove one and see what that does. However, The 57xx cards do crappy in clouds in FSX, you'd want a 5870 or, the best thing - get an nvidia card. Something like a GTX285 or 480

Thanks for the very useful information, a new nvidia will be on the way next month. I went through the same torture with my old computer when trying to get the graphics running properly. I have a drawer full of graphics boards. I should go into business. I will also upgrade to the latest drivers which I'm sure will do nothing.Chip

I'm confident the main issue are those two ATI cards in crossfire. First, remove one and see what that does. However, The 57xx cards do crappy in clouds in FSX, you'd want a 5870 or, the best thing - get an nvidia card. Something like a GTX285 or 480

The advise is much appreciated. I will try removing one of the cards and am planning to purchase a good nvidia card that you recommend. Chip

The advise is much appreciated. I will try removing one of the cards and am planning to purchase a good nvidia card that you recommend. Chip

Before ditching your 5770 cards, give the shader 3.0 mod and the VSync fix a try. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised. When you do the shader 3.0 mod, be sure to add the following lines to the [GRAPHICS] section of your fsx.cfg:SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1 (change the number if needed to recompile the shaders, this is necessary after installing shader 3.0 mod)ALLOW_SHADER_30=1ForceFullScreenVSync=1ForceWindowedVSync=1

Good to know, still a lot of ATI users reporting no change... but they don't have the 57xx series cards... maybe that's the issue

Good to know, still a lot of ATI users reporting no change... but they don't have the 57xx series cards... maybe that's the issue

Turn off hyper threading in bois see what that does...I have the 980x and with hyper threading on my system acts like a old school penn in fs9.

And if you haven

Other things that help are to optimize Win7 and FSX, this includes defragging all drives, refer to the below links. It is expensive for a defrag program, but O&O Defrag v12 works great for Win7, instructions for O&O are included in the Win7 Optimization guide.Win7 Optimization guide from NickN, look for his posts on 4/11/10 at 4:31 PM and 5/14 at 12:15 http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_post...D=198187#198187I suggest that you read the complete thread before you start.