I give up! Is this really it? Is this really as good as it gets? What am I talking about? My story: 2 years ago I discovered MS Flight Simulator X. I installed it on my very average HP Pavilion Desktop PC, equipped with an AMD 2.3 Ghz Quad CPU, a 9500 GT GPU, 4 Gb 800 Mhz DDR2 Ram. WOW! What an amazing experience, but wait...? Why isn´t it fluid, smooth, free from random crashes, hickups, stutters etc.? The whole scenario as every simmer probably knows way too well... Next step: Tweaking, finding assistance on the net, found Nick Needham´s excellent advise on setting up the OS and FSX. Result: Good performance from an average system... For 2 years I was simming, adjusting and tweaking my HP, while waiting for the right time for an upgrade. That upgrade happened 3 weeks ago, and the result is in my signature. Am I now content, satisfied, blown away by a fresh, new Sim experience? Sorry, no, no way at all! Even though I have installed the OS and FSX exactly by the "Nick Needham Book" - and tried the Bojote tweaks and tool, and removed some again, the Sim experience is not what I expected from a 4.8 Ghz CPU. (Re. Bojote: Is everybody aware that he doesn´t use AI,Traffic and Boats, and the monitor is set at a low resolution - 1650/1020 - If I remember correctly... How can he give advise to simmers who use higher settings, and have resolutions way higher?) Still there are stutters, hesitations, hickups, waits, and sudden flashes here and there, and the inevitable CTD, or "MS Flight Sim has stopped working" etc. etc. I´ve even tried turning the settings down to average, no AI, no cars etc., but it´s the same... Please don´t give me any advise about this or that tweak or solution, I´ve been there, done that, it´s not the problem, the problem is this: Ms Flight Simulator X is an unfinished product! You and I will never be able to have this amazingly fluid and smoooth experience, like X-Plane has. Not that I like X-Plane, not at all, only the difference in smoothness... A CPU with 5.0 - 5.6 - 6.0 GHz or more, won´t be enough, the core of the product is wrong, we expect to see something that the Sim will never be able to display!

You and I will never be able to have this amazingly fluid and smoooth experience, like X-Plane has.

I do and have had for going on 3 years this month and I have a worse computer than what you have. :( Something must be amiss with your setup, be it drivers, something with your OS, security/virus scanner, etc. Anyone one of those things or any a combination of them when not setup correctly can cause you problems. Could be even something with your overclock.Since I am running a three year old rig in addition to all the addons in my sig, if it weren't for a good solid foundation, I would probably be in the same camp as you are, or frankly probably worse off since you have better equipment than I do. I've never even had FSX crash except for a time when it due to a problem with my onboard sound card. I routinly do 5 to 12 hour long hauls in the PMDG 747 and even with only 2GB of RAM never had an OOM or CDT on mine.Since you have already tried Nick and *******'s guides I can't really offer any suggestions other than seeking professional help, plus the fact that you mentioned that you dont want any advice. Good performance can be had, especially with the great setup you have. If I can get it, surely you can too. If however, you end up giving up on it and want to off the rig and are here in the US, I might be interested in it if you want to sell. I could have FSX smokin on that setup you have.Good luck in getting it sorted.

Please don´t give me any advise about this or that tweak or solution, I´ve been there, done that, it´s not the problem, the problem is this: Ms Flight Simulator X is an unfinished product!

You could always go back to FS9!!

I'm with cmpbellsjc there, since running that i7 with a fairly modern rest of the system, FSX runs like a charm. Bought that thing in 2009 or so and flew FSX well before, on a simple Core2Duo.When reading about constant CTDs and stuff, I can't avoid the thinking that something on your very system might cause the trouble for you.I can understand some guys complaining about bad fps with FSX, but on a decent system like your mentioned one (which surely outclasses mine), I once again point to the settings and installation of the thing.Don't get me wrong, I had CTDs in the past, but I, so far, always found the cause, e. g. conflicting scenery products (addons of course). So the investigation normally leads to some knowledge there.But my main question to you would be, if this is so true.

Ms Flight Simulator X is an unfinished product! You and I will never be able to have this amazingly fluid and smoooth experience, like X-Plane has

Why do you spend years on flying FSX then? Just jump into the XP sim and enjoy the stuff. Can't help myself wondering why somebody praises product A but uses the B all the time. Doesn't make sense to me, I must admit.

That must be very frustrating, but how come a lot of folks run FSX without any problems? I'm one of them. I agree there must be something wrong in your setup.

I have not updated my signature yet but since updating the mb bios to allow a gtx 400 series, I did a clean install of everything including the o/c. I learn something new each time I do a clean install. This time I added another wd raptor, only os, fsx and addons, on this setup. If I want to surf the net or do any email or work, I go into the bios and change the boot priority to another os. Well my results are just outstanding. Amd 965 be clocked to 3.9, temps underload are 58, along with a gtx 460 1 gig, high settings, except dense auto gen, all traffic 35% this is amazing. FR are pretty steady mid 30's, somtimes drop to high 20's in the same areas of ksea ect. This is with ga flying. Have not tried any heavies yet. Now I have nothing else running with the sim setup. I use rw wx, dl static and unplug the net. There is nothing to cause interference. My point to the op is there has got to be something wrong with your setup or forgive me, your attitude towards it. Yes its time consuming to set it up right. I spent the last two weeks doing it. running prime, 3dmark, memtest, making adjustments tweaking yada yada, BTW, a virgin cfg gets me 25 fps on the ground at kors with all nicks os and fsx tuning, after the auto tweak applied it jumps to 35. If you decide to dump that rig let me know, I'll take it off your hands

Well I'm a bit frustrated too if I look at my specs in the signatures.I also have tweaked as suggested from Nick and ******* (both, the religious and the FSX-Guru :( ). With UT2 at 60% traffic, REX, UT Europe and GEX I get at Aerosoft Paris CDG about 10 fps and stutters and this with the default trike. I've tried already with and without vsync, jobscheduler, bufferpools, external limiter, internal limiter. Without bufferpools I get some fps gain but of cost of the stability and the stutter even present.I wonder how do you all set your fsx to run smooth and stutterfree wiht the addons I have and in every conditions.

the inevitable CTD, or "MS Flight Sim has stopped working" etc. etc.

4.8 Ghz is very high, did you test "minimum 3 hours" your processor and memory with OCCT ?

With UT2 at 60% traffic, REX, UT Europe and GEX I get at Aerosoft Paris CDG about 10 fps and stutters and this with the default trike.

With your config that really sucks :(, you cut me the envy of upgrading my i7 and 285GTX

I give up! Is this really it? Is this really as good as it gets? What am I talking about? My story: 2 years ago I discovered MS Flight Simulator X. I installed it on my very average HP Pavilion Desktop PC, equipped with an AMD 2.3 Ghz Quad CPU, a 9500 GT GPU, 4 Gb 800 Mhz DDR2 Ram. WOW! What an amazing experience, but wait...? Why isn´t it fluid, smooth, free from random crashes, hickups, stutters etc.? The whole scenario as every simmer probably knows way too well... Next step: Tweaking, finding assistance on the net, found Nick Needham´s excellent advise on setting up the OS and FSX. Result: Good performance from an average system... For 2 years I was simming, adjusting and tweaking my HP, while waiting for the right time for an upgrade. That upgrade happened 3 weeks ago, and the result is in my signature. Am I now content, satisfied, blown away by a fresh, new Sim experience? Sorry, no, no way at all! Even though I have installed the OS and FSX exactly by the "Nick Needham Book" - and tried the Bojote tweaks and tool, and removed some again, the Sim experience is not what I expected from a 4.8 Ghz CPU. (Re. Bojote: Is everybody aware that he doesn´t use AI,Traffic and Boats, and the monitor is set at a low resolution - 1650/1020 - If I remember correctly... How can he give advise to simmers who use higher settings, and have resolutions way higher?) Still there are stutters, hesitations, hickups, waits, and sudden flashes here and there, and the inevitable CTD, or "MS Flight Sim has stopped working" etc. etc. I´ve even tried turning the settings down to average, no AI, no cars etc., but it´s the same... Please don´t give me any advise about this or that tweak or solution, I´ve been there, done that, it´s not the problem, the problem is this: Ms Flight Simulator X is an unfinished product! You and I will never be able to have this amazingly fluid and smoooth experience, like X-Plane has. Not that I like X-Plane, not at all, only the difference in smoothness... A CPU with 5.0 - 5.6 - 6.0 GHz or more, won´t be enough, the core of the product is wrong, we expect to see something that the Sim will never be able to display!

I would wait 2 more years. 2 years of discovery is not enough. :(

Hello guys,I must say that I've had a very similar experience with my upgrade. I came from a Q9550@ 3,6 GHZ with a GTX260 and went to a i7 2600K @4,5GHz with two GTX460's and no matter what I try I cannot get a smooth experience. I'm starting to get quite frustrated with FSX.My problem is that I cannot say what the problem is, changing the scenery settings hardly has any impact and I'm not seeing a lot of usage on my CPU. In fact with the affinitymask at 14 my core 0 gets no more than 20% max usage. I hardly ever see more than 60% usage on my CPU with the average propably around 40%.And in terms of my GPU it doesn't matter if I turn the AA completely off or as high as 8xSQ, there is no real difference in fps or smoothness.I'm beginning to think fsx is just really badly coded, I can run as good as anything on my pc with great performance except FSX.Makes me wonder if the 1000 euro's invested in my system were really worth it.

Have you tried adding this line to the cfg?[bufferPools]PoolSize=3000

Sorry to be a wet blanket for you, Tor - I think there's a number of folks around that don't know how to manage and optimize a pc. My FSX has done nothing but get smoother and smoother since the Core2Duo E6600 days. I see 30 everywhere with 80% wound all the way - and that's at 3840 x 1024. A couple of days a week I look at my bios and the charts I've made of voltages, multipliers and frequencies.. if you've looked at my sig, there's a difference once a month as the BCLK goes up a notch.. a couple of days a week I look at the settings I have for the one or two of the eleven fsx.cfg files I have in my batch cfg system... Is Aniso better than TriLinear? do I need 20% cars here? Why do I have full AG for this flight? What does it look like if I wind it back a bit? Do I really need GA traffic in the Maddog at Seattle? I note Pete Dowson has a new FSUIPC out (4.7) - let's see if there's a difference.. How are REX clouds compared to XGraphics? Does 1024 instead 2048 of make any difference? What's that Bojote was talking about?? Let's look at Ken Salter's "Alacrity" and see if we can shut something else down... Must make a note on blurry menu fonts, etc., and so on. These are just a few of the dozens of the things and questions continually going through the minds of the successful guys. For me, it is the challenge of "getting smooth", of obtaining realism. The satisfation is coming off KORS in the BirdDog, with PeopleFlow, lots of traffic, birds, boats and cars, with crisp, clean testures - all at 30. My two regrets - for the life of me - I cannot get a consistent start with FSLimiter_0.2, and I cannot get a consistent start with the 1.7 version of EZCA. I hope v2.xx will fix all the issues, as it's a great little addon.

Some of you guys have some serious problems my I5 2500k and a cheap 9600gt I get about 19-22 fps or even more fps with the heavy captain sim 767 and ut2 at max auto gen is at medium at fsdream teams jfk. I normally get higher 20s and 30s depending on what place I'm at this new upgrade I did has really changed fsx for me

Maybe he expected completely smooth and stutter free experience.. even though I consider my FSX nice and smooth in reality I still get occasional stutter, FPS drops at Heathrow with UT2@70% and MTX@30%,... and I'm at 3.8GHz and GTX285. But your FPS must be better than mine during demanding situations if your clock is so high.

Here some shots resolution is low 1024x768 running a crappy crt hopefully after upgrading to a 24 or 27icn lcd I will hopefully get the nvidia 560Ti to handle that resolution.Almost forgot running nhancer anti-aliasing combined 8xS gamma correction on anisotropic filtering at 16x vertical sync on texture filtering high quaitly negatve lod bias on clamp.

i feel your pain and i congradulate you folks on having your set up with your slyders all the way up with your several hunders dollar video cards and super cpu,s.im not mocking no one here , im just saying i feel the guys pain , for me fsx has been a bear, i guess my problem is that i was expacting better computer to software ratio.with fs9 i could turn every thing up and add a ton a nd i mean a ton of software , networked or on the main com.even during that day i was paying 400+ for a video card and that made everything better.Not with fsx , vid cards meant nothing to this Sim , it wanted raw power few had at the time.so everybody upgraded to whatever they deemed nessacery.and guess what that even was not enough. at least for me it wasnt.i cannot use FSX just out of the box , i must use it if not all of the third party software (radar contact, ASX, level d 767 etc. )to run it.multi monitors and all the fixins.You know if you folks out there are running it the way you want it to run , i say hats off to you , and i really mean that honestly.but to me after five years and you now have chips going so fast and video cards , and still right out of thr box , vanilla using default planes the frame rate should be off the chain , and i mean like over a hundred and upwards .i have heard of some of you good folks getting that or so i heard .my new set up.W7 64 ultimatei7 2600k with a corsair watercooled H-60 , temps are the best i have ever had 28c to 59c max full load.patriot 16 gig 1600 PNY gtx 285 vid card ....there is no need to upgrade any further on vid cards until i master what i have , every card i have ever owned and still do cost me over 400+ dollars.if fact i put the gtx 9800 card in first to set up every thing on the sim , the results were with all slyders up including boom i got around 35 fps with a default 172 cessna. i then change to a more powerful card the pny gtx 285 and the fps were about the same , maybe 5 frames or less than the other card.Im using a gigabyte board new and fresh out the box, everything is new , even the tecnology is new, to me the sim should just about jump off the screen with so much power under the hood. i have been at this for twnty plus years Fsx has been the hardest to tame for me.Once again im speaking only for myself and perhaps one or two more:).i have tweeked , and then tweeked and then when i was done i did the super tweeks from all the top guns in tweeking and now im about to do what the now famed ******* tweeks , as we speak , once again FSX is making me jump thru the hoops just for a couple of frames or more .i love the sim though for it is so real when you have every thing up and runnig , i cannot go back to just one screen or just flying staight out of the box. i have been at this simming for about twenty years . i go way back when X - plane was just and x on the screen :).98. 2000, 2002, 2004, FSX . So for you folks outthere that are running it with great specs i hope to get those sams results soon after i tackle this next super tweek.So my friend i feel your pain , and once again i love this sim , it has become a love and hate relationship with this software.You know what i like to see is with the system i have now i want to see 50 + fps with all the extra software loaded , the whole nine yards.if i could get with fs9 45+ or more , and with my last system e8500 , running FSX i was only getting with all the fixins 16 to 24 fps depending on where you were.with what i got now i should see 50+ fps if not close to a hundred. im not impressed at all with these chips , even the thousand dollar one , you mean i have to go out and buy that to get my 50+ or more fully loaded. All i want is the right system to run FSX after five years or so with all slyders up and with all the fixins , if there is not a system outhere that can , does that mean that it was not written well, or if there is a machine that can blow it away with no trouble please let me know.if what i have is not enough , then what is.w7 ultimate 64i72600kcorsair H-60PNY 285 GTX 102416 gig corsair 1600 mem1.5 terra HD1200 antec PWsony Blu-ray playerHit dvd playerThank you Good Folks For Listening............Robert