FSX AI Traffic and Core I7

[nam1394 10]

I have, recently, upgraded to Core I7 hoping it will help with the low FPS because of traffic. Boy I was wrong. My Previous PC:Core 2 Due 2.93RAM 8gbNvidia Geforce 9500gt 1gbWindows XP 64It run FS9 with all sliders to the right and many add on sceneries very smoothly unless I use combined AA.FSX was a different story. It ran OK with all sliders to the right except for traffic.New PC:Core I7 2.93Ram 4gbNvidia Geforce 9500gt 1GBWindows XP 64FSX is much smoother(35FPS at big airports) until I turn on the traffic. Higher than 30% traffic will cause the fps to dip to 11-14. I tried Ultimate Traffic 2, Traffic X, and freeware traffic and it is the same. Can anybody tell me what I can do to improve FPS or do I just go back FS9 to get a smoother flight?Thanks in advance.

[ryanbatc 12,853]

Your video card is a HUGE bottleneck.9500 is a garbage card sorry to say. Get AT LEAST a GTX260 or GTX460/470

[Drumcode 1,893]

This should be posted in the hardware section. Running i7 alone will not solve your problem, you need to overclock this CPU and make sure your memory timing is properly matched to the overclock.

[tf51d 284]

I have, recently, upgraded to Core I7 hoping it will help with the low FPS because of traffic. Boy I was wrong. My Previous PC:Core 2 Due 2.93RAM 8gbNvidia Geforce 9500gt 1gbWindows XP 64It run FS9 with all sliders to the right and many add on sceneries very smoothly unless I use combined AA.FSX was a different story. It ran OK with all sliders to the right except for traffic.New PC:Core I7 2.93Ram 4gbNvidia Geforce 9500gt 1GBWindows XP 64FSX is much smoother(35FPS at big airports) until I turn on the traffic. Higher than 30% traffic will cause the fps to dip to 11-14. I tried Ultimate Traffic 2, Traffic X, and freeware traffic and it is the same. Can anybody tell me what I can do to improve FPS or do I just go back FS9 to get a smoother flight?Thanks in advance.

Think of it you went from a 2.93Ghz processor, to another 2.93 processor. While the I7 is more efficient, it alone is not going to improve performance that much. It should smooth things out though. Where the I7 comes into it's own though, is when you overclock it. You should be able to achieve high 3Ghz and possibly 4Ghz, depending on how good your cooling fans are. Also the 9500GT card may also be holding you down. The one dimension of the VC that can significantly effect performance is the video memory bandwidth. This card only has 25.6GB/s which can easily bog down even an I7. You need a card that has at least 70GB/s bandwidth, like the 9800GTX more if you can afford.

[nam1394 10]

Before upgrading, all I read in the forums that FSX was processor hungry, that's way I didn't buy a new card. Anyway, how about Nvidia 220 or 230? Are they any good?Thanks for the replies, by the way.

[altstiff 71]

First step is getting a new video card. At minimum I wqould get a GTS250. If you have extra money get the GTX460. It's a budget card that will knock your socks off and beats the 285 in many benchmarks.FSX is very CPU intensive but if you have an older video card your going to bottle neck due to the fact the older video card does not have the data bandwidth to keep up.As stated above, your going to have to O/C that CPU too. Quick question, why didn't you go with triple channel ram?

[paula 0]

First step is getting a new video card. At minimum I wqould get a GTS250. If you have extra money get the GTX460. It's a budget card that will knock your socks off and beats the 285 in many benchmarks.FSX is very CPU intensive but if you have an older video card your going to bottle neck due to the fact the older video card does not have the data bandwidth to keep up.As stated above, your going to have to O/C that CPU too. Quick question, why didn't you go with triple channel ram?

Overclocking is very easy to doi did it to 4.17 with i7 920 and runs fine I have bought a gtx 285 1 ghz memo in 1-1-2010last week i bought anotherone to fullfill my extra wishes.If you wish you can buy this gtx285 for not too muchdoeke

[yankeegolf3 51]

hi,I am waiting for the intel sandy bridge at 4.9ghz due to be released in early 2011 :(

[nam1394 10]

how is ATI 5850?

[Paul J 349]

how is ATI 5850?

Should be ok - I run the 5870 and it's a-l-m-o-s-t as good as the nVidia480 - the 5850 will be somewhat less powerfull, but better than what you have right now. It sucks. With ATI you will have to add Bojote's vSync mod to the fsx.cfg to get rid of the tearing - BUT - the nVidia 4xx series cards will give you less hassles and better performance with clouds.And - yes - if you want smooth with details, no stuttering, no dipping to 10 or 15 - then you will need to oc to at least 4gig. 4.2 is no sweat with an i7.

[Guest simmer9304]

If you're worried about overclocking think of it this way... I run a Core 2 Duo at 4ghz and the highest temperature I've ever seen was 65 under Prime95 for 24 hours. Now take that i7 and run it as hard as it'll go! :(

[NGXfanatic 85]

I have an I7 930 (2.80 stock clock) that I overclocked to 4.2 ghz stable, with a good cpu cooler. I remember I had an older video card when I completed this new I7 build (Nvidia GTX 260 896gb) and thinking a new vid card wouldn't make a big difference since FSX is CPU bound, but going to a 1.5 gb GTX 480 did improve fluidity and load times signifcantly. No need to go for a 480 necessarily, but at least a gtx 260 will allow you to get more out of the I7. I have a mix of UT2 and WOAI (general aviation bizjets, military, cargo, and obscure airlines) at 100%, and with active sky advanced real weather, payware heavies and full featured addon airports, I most often have high teens FPS, no lower than 10 fps ever. A huge improvement from my previous system which was a dual core e8600 o/c'd to 4.4ghz. IF you run AI at more than 50%, I would suggest you look into mipmapping your AI daytime textures, and reducing their filesizes by downgrading to DXT1. You will get improvements in visual clarity (no more shimmering), and will realize a big increase in FPS with massive amounts of AI.

[Guest TomOOO]

Think of it you went from a 2.93Ghz processor, to another 2.93 processor. While the I7 is more efficient, it alone is not going to improve performance that much. It should smooth things out though. Where the I7 comes into it's own though, is when you overclock it. You should be able to achieve high 3Ghz and possibly 4Ghz, depending on how good your cooling fans are. Also the 9500GT card may also be holding you down. The one dimension of the VC that can significantly effect performance is the video memory bandwidth. This card only has 25.6GB/s which can easily bog down even an I7. You need a card that has at least 70GB/s bandwidth, like the 9800GTX more if you can afford.

Sorry - this is a "hardware" answerYou cannot compare the clock speed of different family of processors. You went from a D-family to an i7 family process of similar clockspeeds, but the i7 will be significantly faster. 1) There is currently a thermal limit (and inductance limit) ofaround 3Hz for CPU - though some chips are sold higher than this.It is possible to overclock higher than this but you can get data errorsand heat problems above this speed. You must use after-market coolingor specially built systems, even then you might start to get parity errorson data (which means it does the work again), or instructions (in whichcase you get a random crash).2) Therefore manufactures get chips to do more work per clock cycleso comparing a 2G D series chip with a 2G i7 is pointless. You cancompare clock speeds of chips with the same architecture as chipsare binned and sold depending on their heat/error tolerance ata particulr clock speed - they are the same batch of chips.3) The work a CPU can do is also dependent on the on-board cache (howfast if get local memory/instructions) and the band width to databuses. In effect, a slower chip is sitting around waiting more timethen a faster chip that is better designed.So - yes the i7 is much faster than your old D series chip. The level at which you can run FSX is a compromise as it wasdeveloped with a long lifetime - developed so that at max settingsit looks very good - but even now there is still no computer thatwill run it with EVERY setting on max and give enough fps overLondon Heathrow to land a helicopter .Traffic is a problem - every plane adds another flight model to work with, and increases collison/avoidence detection. When I fly I chose between max water setting or traffic : I Cannot do both, and my lowely i7720QM cannot do much traffic. Enough to practice with.

[nam1394 10]

Thanks guys for the replies. I think I am going with 5850 as I checked the memory bandwidth and it is 128 gb/s and my current card's is 25 gb/s.Cheers