Hi everyone,first, please excuse me for asking for alot of info in one post.I have an Imac 22" running windows 7 32bit on Bootcamp. The system itself is a E7600 3.06ghz core duo. I have an ATI Radeon 4670HD in the machine using mobility drivers 10...something, anyway they are the most current. 4 Gig ram. I seem to be able to run default FSX OK with the default AC. I have my FPS locked at 30 which it stays most of the time unless I go into clouds it drops sown ALOT or If I'm on water the effects of this bring FPS down to 5-6 while you see the water spray effect, and once it clears FPS jumps right back up to 30 again. Is there any hope for me?? Also, I hardly run tweaks, as the sim is much, much, much smoother without. I've spent countless hours doing this. I have FS9 intalled on this machine as well, but really want to be able to use FSX with addons but am afraid to spend any money if they won't run. The only addon I have tried was the Nemeth EC135 helecopter and that ran like a slide show, so I don't know what to do? If I had the extra $$ I would get a new box with an I7 but that is not an option right now. Any feedback so I know wether I can take the plung and get a few add ons. I was looking at GE Pro which I have on FS9 and have heard that actually improves FPS. Is this true? PMDG's J4100, Carenado Caravan (this most likely would run ok) I appreciate your help very much in advance. Warm regards, Jeff

Jeff, you have a similar system to me, in fact I think your CPU is more powerful than mine. I get good performance in default scenery/aircraft and I run a few high quality aircraft such as PMDGs and scenerys such as those developed by ORBX. in the j4100 on the gate at ORBX YMML depending where I'm looking I get between 15 and 8 fps and it is rare to get a stutter. My settings when I use this scenery are,scenery complexity: very denseautogen: normalmesh: 10mwater: 1xhightextures: 60cmlevel of detail: full left.The above is off memory so may not be correct. I find this perfectly useable and fsx looks fantastic. I must mention I don't use tweaks I should ask what settings you are running with, I recomend the following for optimum fpsscenery complexity, high, autogen- normals finewater- a big one that is underestimated, never above 1x. You could set it to higher but the visual bennifit is negilable and performane overhead quite large.Set mesh to 19m this will be suficiant,rexture resolution, set to 1mlevel of detail try it on full but if still not happy pull it back to medium, I've not noticed this to hit performance.MAKE SURE SHADDOWS are OFF!especially aircraft on aircraft. They hit performance like nothing else.Make sure your not running weather on very high settings as that hits performance.Also traffic. Set cars to 14% this still populates roads with trafic to a satisfying level, but won't give you the massive performance hit of the higher settings.Boats, each slider about 50% seems to work well.Airport vechiles, mediumai aircraft, each slider between 50-60%I hope the abouve gave you an insight.To test load the default 737 in KJFK,look at frames on the ground, at 500ft after takeoff, on down wind, at 500ft on approche.If you get at least 20fps on averge with framerates set to unlimited you will have no problems with complex addons.Just remember that complex addons in complex scenery hit fps hard. Also remember differnt aircraft hit performane differently. I recomend the pmdg md-11 over 747 as it has better performance. The J4100 will hit performance hard too, but has a good config manager where you can set it too what you want.I think that's everything,good lick with fsx, it takes a bit of time but I assure you once you've got it running satisfactorily you will enjoy it immensly.

Tim,Thanks a bunch for your advice. I did experiment a bit with the default 737. AC Shadows turned on itself I think was my main issue. I turned that off and was able to run unlimited. The fps does drop at KJFK for sure. It dipped here and there for a second to 17, but for the most part between 20-30 FPS. The one issue that still drives me nuts is tearing. I have VS turned on with triple buffering on in my drivers but FSX insists tearing when looking at the tiles of scenery and panning. It seems to hit my performance. I feel like if I can get rid of that, my smoothness of the sim will increase. I just have a hunch, don't ask me why. I don't have AA on in the sim as it hits me hard. I do use antiosropic fitering in the sim. / water 2xlow /autogen dense /scenery dense /AI 40% both GA & Airline / level of detail radius Large/Mesh comp 75 /Mesh reso 38m /texture res 1m any other advice to smooth things out a bit more. I do notice a few blurries that clear up after a second in the scenery. All in all I'm still on the fence about moving forward and getting add ons. I am interested in Ground Environment as I heard it helps FPS more than the default textures. I still wonder if that is true or not?? There are users here with I7 9XX extremes that woop the heck out my rig. I feel like if I don't have that, there isn't a complex add on that will run smooth. Again I'm only saying that due to the Nemeth EC135 that ran horrible, but this was before I got to the point I'm at now. Am I over thinking this and should just take the plunge into the FSX world? I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me.Warm regards, Jeff

I have no hesitation to help you. Well what else do I do on a cold rainy weekend in Melbourne, I would spend time working on our ayers rock scenery, (check out the link in my sig, it's coming together well) but I'm waiting for some data so not much has been added this weekend, so I've spent the time on avsim :)! Anyway back on topic, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by tearing, if you could explain what that actually is I'm sure I could work out a solution. It seems you are having no problems with fps, so I would recomend buying a PMDG and seeing how it goes, take the plunge, I recomend the J4100 as there's less money to loose if it dosent run well, which I am confident it will though you may have to turn down autogen.I hope I helped further and good luck with FSX! :)

You need to enable vsync to remove tearing, but be warned, the framerate will be forced to run at the refresh rate of your monitor. If the sim is not able to run at that framerate it will run at half that rate, so if you got a 60hz monitor and you use vsync the framerate would be either 60fps, 30fps, 15fps etc

You need to enable vsync to remove tearing, but be warned, the framerate will be forced to run at the refresh rate of your monitor. If the sim is not able to run at that framerate it will run at half that rate, so if you got a 60hz monitor and you use vsync the framerate would be either 60fps, 30fps, 15fps etc

Thanks for your reply Wims, I do have vertical sync turned on. That's what is making me scratch my head. @Tim, the tearing I am talking about looks like, well imagine while looking out the window at the scenery while flying and it looks like a transparent jaggy line cutting across the screen like a piece of paper being torn, but the tear line itself is more transparent. It runs horizontial only. On either side of the tear line, the picture is miss aligned as the tear runs through it. If I pan left to right, up or down I see it as well but not as noticable as on the scenery tiles. I might get the 4100 only because if I got the New Carenado Caravan, that would not be the best judge from a complex standpoint, not to mention those fellows really know how to optimize the products to get the best performance. I also just got Flytampa's new KBUF scenery for FS9, however the serial#'s work for both versions, so I might give that a shot too and install it in FSX. One thing I forgot to mention, My FS9 does not run all that great as I expected on this rig. That is another reason I am concerned about FSX. If FS9 can't run smooth as butter, how in the world would FSX?? but I could be wrong as I am able to run FSX better than I've seen in a long time. I was going to give up. I'll let you know how it goes. It's a shame PMDG doesn't have the 30 day no hassle return like Flight1. That would be awesome. Thanks again Tim. I will post any other questions here as I'm sure there will be more today. Thanks again. :)Warm regards, Jeff

I do have vertical sync turned on. That's what is making me scratch my head. a transparent jaggy line cutting across the screen like a piece of paper being torn, but the tear line itself is more transparent. It runs horizontial only. Warm regards, Jeff

Hi Jeff; You are running an ATI card, and you are experienced the vertical sync tearing the screen .... you need to add these two lines into the [GRAPHICS] section of your FSX.cfg. ForceFullScreenVSync=1 // Mod courtesy of bojoteForceWindowedVSync=1 // Add this line if you fly in windowed mode.To fix the cloud fps add this line into the same section:HIGHMEMFIX=1

Set cars to 14% this still populates roads with trafic to a satisfying level, but won't give you the massive performance hit of the higher settings.Boats, each slider about 50% seems to work well.Airport vechiles, mediumai aircraft, each slider between 50-60%

For cars I actually turn mine down to 4% since I think this is right at the point where cars are actually shown and if you're flying rural it gives a great illusion of the sole car driving down an empty road. You may want airport vehicles to be low but thats my personal preference.

I am interested in Ground Environment as I heard it helps FPS more than the default textures. I still wonder if that is true or not?? There are users here with I7 9XX extremes that woop the heck out my rig. I feel like if I don't have that, there isn't a complex add on that will run smooth. Again I'm only saying that due to the Nemeth EC135 that ran horrible, but this was before I got to the point I'm at now. Am I over thinking this and should just take the plunge into the FSX world? I really appreciate the time you have taken to help me.

Hi Jeff I just upgrade from a Dell E7500 system and that ran it pretty well the key for FSX is overclock your CPU if possible. I just spent a bit of money building my own system with an E8400 if you're looking for a quick frame rate boost and you don't want to replace everything an E8x00 series or a Q9x50 series would do great. The e8400 can supposedly overclock to 4ghz on air (mine is limited by budget RAM I bought by mistake) and if I recall an e7500 can overclock to near 4ghz also. So if you just want to overclock all you have to do is look into a nice motherboard, make sure it's the right size for your case I made that mistake and felt like a fool.Ground Environment probably won't be too much of an FPS difference it's replacing default textures with ones of the same size so an increase or decrease would probably be negligible at best.

Hi there simmer9304,I would love to to overclock, however this is a sealed, all in one type of rig with the Imac the way they are made. Everything is built into the Monitor. It runs way to warm now and does not have room for any type of additional cooling. I use bootcamp and run windows on its own partition. Then on the OSX OS on the Mac side, I use this same rig for video editing. I just wish I had the extra $$ right now to just build another rig in its own tower. But if FSX will run smooth on this rig for what it is, with complex addons & scenery, I am one HAPPY person!!! I love the suggestions and feedback. I haven't been online at Avsim that much until recently again, and the community here is just great. Thanks everyone. :)Warm regards, Jeff