FSX-MS Undocking a panel causes FPS to drop by half?

[NoahBryant 26]

For years I have been using three monitors for FSX. My main monitor is a 22in and it's flanked by two 19in monitors. I run FSX windowed and uses the second and third monitors for charts and for all the 2D panels (overhead, throttle etc).I just noticed a problem where if I undock a panel, my FPS instantly drops by half. Undock another and it drops by half again until I'm at about 4 FPS. I have NEVER had any perceivable performance hit from undocking panels.I'm not exactly sure when the problem started because I have been flying the J41 and 707 a lot lately and I dont use the pop up panels with those planes. This problem occurs exactly the same with all planes and all geographical situations. I havent been able to find any others who have had this problem and I'm curious if any of you guys have any ideas?I have only installed one thing recently (the new KSFO scenery) and I have since uninstalled it to be sure that wasn't the culprit.Specs: HD5870 Eyefinity i7 2.93ghz 5GB Ram Win7 Home 64

[Crewecut 1]

Try deleting fsx.cfg and let fsx rebuild it. Bjorn

[Chocorua 112]

I've experienced the very same thing in FSX using either one or two video cards, which perplexes the heck out of me. It just tanks the frame rates if a window is undocked and dragged to the other monitor. I have given up that idea and simply use monitor 2 for ASV or Flightsim Commander. I read all kinds of forum posts regarding multi-monitor usage and wonder what, if anything, I am missing. Perhaps someone will chime in and explain this, meanwhile the same situation in FS9 works great. Cheers, GregPhenom II 955@3.6Asus M4A89GTD Pro4GB Mushkin DDR3GTX 460 1GBWin 7-64bitFSX Acceleration

[NoahBryant 26]

You using a frame rate limiter program?

No

[ohsirus 241]

I ended up just reinstalling my FSX to fix. Then added all the tweaks. I undock 5 panels and was dipping to 9s in the FPS, now back at 30.

[Artem Crum 5]

DEL(sorry, duplicate advice with removing FPS limiter.. worked in my case)

Edited March 13, 2011 by crum

[PIC007 82]

Are any of the windows touching the taskbar? On some machines this killed the FPS.

[Tabs 2,790]

Are any of the windows touching the taskbar? On some machines this killed the FPS.

It's more specifically something overlaying a window - in Vista, that little orb at the left side of the Taskbar (the Start Menu icon) would overlay a maximized window and cause the FPS to drop. They fixed it in Win7 by making that orb not stick up above the taskbar like that.

[NoahBryant 26]

All good ideas guys - Deleting the config file screwed up all my textures and dropped FPS.The start menu isn't even on the same monitor so that didnt work either. I will obviously do a reinstall of FSX as a last resort, but I'm getting tired of that.

[PIC007 82]

All good ideas guys - Deleting the config file screwed up all my textures and dropped FPS.The start menu isn't even on the same monitor so that didnt work either. I will obviously do a reinstall of FSX as a last resort, but I'm getting tired of that.

Deleting the cfg resets all FS settings to defaults, so you need to go back through the setup and reset your sliders. But if it didnt help, just put the old one back in.If the 'start' menu is touching ANY FS window on any monitor, it could affect FPS.Have you tried using 'full screen' instead of windows and checking the results?

[NoahBryant 26]

Full screen doesn't work at all (this is also a new problem it seems). When I go to full screen all monitors just go black and flash every few seconds. What I am doing is putting FSX on my center monitor in windowed mode. I maximize it and open a pop up panel. After I undock that panel, the FPS instant drops by exactly half. I tried doing it with FSX not maximized where it's only taking up a small part of the screen but there's no change. The start menu is on the left monitor on the left side so about 1000px away from FSX.

[PIC007 82]

Full screen doesn't work at all (this is also a new problem it seems). When I go to full screen all monitors just go black and flash every few seconds. What I am doing is putting FSX on my center monitor in windowed mode. I maximize it and open a pop up panel. After I undock that panel, the FPS instant drops by exactly half. I tried doing it with FSX not maximized where it's only taking up a small part of the screen but there's no change. The start menu is on the left monitor on the left side so about 1000px away from FSX.

Im beginning to think you are having bigger problems than FSX if full screen isnt working either. Possible video card or RAM. Have you tried just a single monitor? Instead of maximizing it, resize it so it fits the screen and see what happens.

[NoahBryant 26]

The vid card is brand new (xmas), so I hope it isn't dead. I also tried resizing manually and that didnt work either. I dont know how to go about troubleshooting the card though. I'm not a hardware expert at all. So far I haven't had issues with any other games though. I also tried:I plugged all 3 monitors into the HD5870 (no difference)I plugged the two secondary monitors into the HD4850 and the primary monitor into the HD5870 (no difference)I didabled the HD4850 (no difference)I will try having just the main monitor to see what happens.

[Andydigital 93]

If you use an external frame rate limiter you have to double the assigned frame rate when enabling another monitor, so if you normally set 30FPS for a single monitor you must set 60FPS for 2 monitors, the frame rate for each display will still actually be limited to 30 not 60.

[NoahBryant 26]

Very strange and believe it may be a bug in Direct X because it would not drop framerates in DierctX 10 preview. Not for all though!

I just tried this for grins. I set it to DX10 mode and the problem went away. It's not a solution though because as soon as I move the undocked panel to another monitor the panel becomes just a blue/white FS logo, plus with all my add-ons DX10 Preview messes so much up. Interesting nonetheless.