*******, Thanks much for your prompt response! I won't get a chance to experiment for a few days but I certainly will keep you posted when I do experiment. Do you think that if we had a 580 (at least to test it), we might have a chance to get better results over the current 470 driving the three screens via the Matrox TH2Go? We didn't get a 580 because the video card driver is reportedly immature at this time. Also, I doubt if any more overclocking (from 4.0 upwards) would help that much - what do you think?Thanks for your amazing expertise!Dave

Dave, I believe the 580 can make a difference, yes. But, I don't one to make that 'official' ;)Check this out if you have access to the ORBX forums. VERY INTERESTING review by a regular forum member.http://orbxsystems.com/forums/index.php?topic=29927.0

*******, From that report, I think we will try to get a 580 - WHEW! FPS is great but smooth is even better! Still, I will experiment with the BUFFERPOOL settings as well.Thanks againDave

Felix, what's your hardware specs?

I think that Spirit Flyer's efforts are great and huge when reporting about hardware influences. I really like to read them every time. But one has to read those reports out of interest and not with the intention to get a clear picture about spending hundreds of Euros or not. I have to applaud to him, he states his point of view and even adds some self critical or advisory statements. This is one (very good) review or test, not THE.There are some scenarios where the GTX580 seems to lead the way and others where the difference is marginal, but again, one has to accept that even the rather old GTX275 gives you very playable framerates at those given situations.Performance gain is relative too and while it could be an impressive thing to read about 60 or more fps in maybe dense situations (I wouldn't call the PNW outskirts "heavy" there), those situations aren't your problem in FSX. The ones where you currently struggle to get fluent frames are the problem and if you have them with a current 470 or 480 card, number 580 won't bring you up to magic values but slightly increases them. Chance is very small that it can raise the bar significantly over e. g. a 480. It just wasn't upgraded that much on the hardware side and those 60fps scenarios might blurry your view on this.FSX still stays CPU limited in the cases where you don't get even close to 60fps and these are the ones which matter here and on any view on new card generations. Going from 51 to 60 frames might look nice but it's the same as going from nearly 15 to 17 and does this kick bu..? Would you spend some hundreds of your valuta for this increase? Did you struggle with those 51fps or with the nearly 15 lately?Well, as you see, there are some things to mention and I think that the buffer tweaks from Bojote and friends did more to counteract any low fps situation than any card generation did until now. At least, that's my point of view on this. It also is the cheaper way to fly. There's another one. The image quality fans will have noticed that relatively low AA settings were chosen (not out of bad intention, don't get me wrong on Spirit Flyer's efforts) and while 8xSQ doesn't shock any somehow current card, the fine transparency AA surely will. So if you are just looking for raw power statements, the 580 will always gain about 15% over the 480 but the main question is, "how does this raw power thing reflect into my (low fps) scenarios in FSX?" Together with the CPU limited basis, some nice AA settings and the not 50fps scenarios, it will be quite hard to argue for a new buy if you already have GTX280s and above. If you already own 4xx cards, well, think twice or even triple.There's no question about somehow extreme scenarios, where people run triple resolutions on their multimonitor setups and just need some more video RAM for example. Their current 470 just has 1.3 instead of 1.5 gigabytes, so the larger amount of VRAM alone will help here, not the raw chip powers.AA settings even emphasize this demand on VRAM but the normal one monitor 1920x1200 guy won't run into VRAM limitations but just CPU based ones most of the time if using cards with 1gb or more.If your bias is to go maximum at all costs, you surely won't be blamed to buy the next episode of Nvidia's or AMD's cards, while especially the Nvidia ones could mainly be applauded towards their new cooler and not a special power update on the calculation speed or even a better power consumption."Fermi" always was thermically depend to the extreme, so keep him cool (which the new cooler on the 580 does) and he will drain less power, get him a new power control unit and he will behave well on e. g. Furmark while you can disable this unit and see that he isn't in any way more power efficient than the 480 "Fermi" chip. 580 isn't even called GF110 but GF100B internally, so even Nvidia is aware of the "improvements" made, but their marketing doesn't applaud to it. "110" sounds more like an improvement. I personally think that the hardware run on those cards is a waste of money unless you are coming from a rather old generation basis and you are now looking for a current setup. Extreme usage (no, I'm not talking about extreme autogen or something, it won't help there but those tweaks do) might also be a factor but if you just run one screen with your somehow current card, the new and expensive baby won't fulfill any wonders unless you are looking for that 51 to 60fps increase.I repeat myself that I absolutely adore the mentioned reviewer (Spirit Flyer) and his clear statement on how to read and enjoy his findings. If anybody reads "what a bad review" here, he's wrong. The opposite is the case.Just ask yourself if the wow-factor is really worth it before you spend quite some money and then see very few improvements on the scenarios where you've expected and needed them.

I've done a fair bit of flying and fiddling after running this tool, and I am very impressed by the results. Although I've always considered myself a fairly adept tweaker, the complexity of tweaking FSX has left me generally frustrated with performance on my nearly 3-year-old system. However, after running this tool and locking the frames at 20 (via the limiter), my experience has been nothing but positive. Flight is smooth and stutter free over complex rural Obrx PNW sceneries with autogen set 1 notch from the highest. Taking off and landing at payware Concrete is as smooth as butter.Of course, as might be expected with an older system, I haven't got a lot of headroom. Adding in complex weather will bring the frames down, I pretty much have to stay away from metro areas, and I do get some blurries in a fast aircraft. But, this will definitely hold me and get me back to flying FSX while I wait out an upgrade.One note ... I have relied on the autogen trees/houses tweaks for a while now, but it seems that this tweak (trees in particular) was actually bringing down my performance. I was experience some stutters, and on a lark I removed the TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1000 from my cfg file. Lo and behold, everything smoothed out and now I've got a ton of trees lining those Orbx hillsides, with no apparent loss of performance.Anyway, just wanted to pop back in and say thank you. Your work on this is much appreciated.

I've done a fair bit of flying and fiddling after running this tool, and I am very impressed by the results. Although I've always considered myself a fairly adept tweaker, the complexity of tweaking FSX has left me generally frustrated with performance on my nearly 3-year-old system. However, after running this tool and locking the frames at 20 (via the limiter), my experience has been nothing but positive. Flight is smooth and stutter free over complex rural Obrx PNW sceneries with autogen set 1 notch from the highest. Taking off and landing at payware Concrete is as smooth as butter.Of course, as might be expected with an older system, I haven't got a lot of headroom. Adding in complex weather will bring the frames down, I pretty much have to stay away from metro areas, and I do get some blurries in a fast aircraft. But, this will definitely hold me and get me back to flying FSX while I wait out an upgrade.One note ... I have relied on the autogen trees/houses tweaks for a while now, but it seems that this tweak (trees in particular) was actually bringing down my performance. I was experience some stutters, and on a lark I removed the TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1000 from my cfg file. Lo and behold, everything smoothed out and now I've got a ton of trees lining those Orbx hillsides, with no apparent loss of performance.Anyway, just wanted to pop back in and say thank you. Your work on this is much appreciated.

Interesting post, Jimmy, please list your h/w specs, AA, AF, ingame resolution and OS.Thanks,Dirk.

I removed the TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1000 from my cfg file. Lo and behold, everything smoothed out and now

The reason I use:TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=6000TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=6000is because CPU load is decreased 4-5% when the above lines are present. So, it seems (like you said) that by simply 'limiting' autogen, FSX is doing 'more' work.The above lines don't 'limit' anything inside FSX. they are effectively the 'max' values you can have for those lines. Try with and without and see if it makes a diff. Like I said, the 'gain' is only 3% to 5% so, is barely noticeable. If you have a baseline test (using a replay) and a way to measure CPU usage you'll see what I mean.

Interesting post, Jimmy, please list your h/w specs, AA, AF, ingame resolution and OS.Thanks,Dirk.

Specs are:Q6600 @ 3.0Nividia 8800 GTS5128GBDisplay at 1680x1050, 4xAA, 8xAFWindows 7 64bitSo, pretty moderate setting and specs. My video card doesn't really have the wherewithal to push high AA.

The reason I use:TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=6000TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=6000is because CPU load is decreased 4-5% when the above lines are present. So, it seems (like you said) that by simply 'limiting' autogen, FSX is doing 'more' work.The above lines don't 'limit' anything inside FSX. they are effectively the 'max' values you can have for those lines. Try with and without and see if it makes a diff. Like I said, the 'gain' is only 3% to 5% so, is barely noticeable. If you have a baseline test (using a replay) and a way to measure CPU usage you'll see what I mean.

That's interesting. Thanks. I'll try putting the trees line back in there at 6000, though--like you said--I may not notice the mild improvement.

I downloaded the FPS limiter from your link. I am not sure how to use it. The readme file is mostly in German and I am a dumkuff. I don't read or understand German. an you tell me what and how to do after I unzip it?Thanks, Gnacino

Use Google Translate!http://translate.google.co.th/?hl=en&tab=wT#de|en|

Felix, not much i can do to help. You are running dual core, not quads, so there is nothing you can do to split the load. If you want to prevent stutters when autogen is loading you need a quad CPU or better

JesusFirstly thank you for all you help in the past years... its truly amazing.. I still remember the day you found the VSYNC Fix for ATI Users on XP.. amazing...I have recently upgraded and am now running an i5 750 which is OC to 4.0Ghz on Air. 8GB DDR3 G Skill Memory and a new Nvidia GTX 570. I am running a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go DV at 3840 x 1024.My 2 questions are that I have not gone down the BP/Userpools tip as the resolution that my video card has to produce is so high. Now that I have this new Nvidia card are there any specific tips you can give to owners of the Matrox THG. Your amazing automated tuning tool could maybe take this into consideration? We might with these new faster cards be able to benefit from some of your discoveries. Also I used your new Shader File as I was using the ati card... can I keep that having moved back to Nvidia or should I revert to the original..Many Thanks for all your support!Hamish

JesusFirstly thank you for all you help in the past years... its truly amazing.. I still remember the day you found the VSYNC Fix for ATI Users on XP.. amazing...

Months ;) not years... it was back in April.The online tool will apply an hybrid approach to your config, which regardless of resolution will offer a nice boost, give it a try.As for the Shader Mod, well.. I use it, because it gives me better looking water, but it does NOT offer any performance increase on nvidia cards. Also, the water enhancement is only noticeable when using the HIGH water settings, this is a matter of preference.

Thank you for the quick reply.I now have a slight problem. Just installed my Nvidia 570GTX. I used Driver Sweeper to remove all of my ati drivers and downloaded the latest version form the Nvidia Website which is 263.09In game if I am in a high density scenery I get graphical glitches which look like spikes and the whole screen turns different colours, however if I am in a less dense scenery all is fine... How starnge.. could it be a driver issue? I am slightly worried about my PSU. I have a Corsair 650W and am running a OC Chip + 4 Hard drives..I wonder if it is worth me trying an older driver? Have tried other games and they seem fine, just particular to FSX. I tried your tweaked cfg and an original default version... both were the same....H.

Use Google Translate!http://translate.goo...en&tab=wT#de|en|I translated grom German to English, thanks for the link, but I still don't understand what is being said. It doesn't look like its that complicated. Can someone just tell me in plain Eglish what to do?Thanks,Gnacino