Hi,I have FSX on an older 7200 rpm WD SATA drive and may upgrade depending on bang for the buck. I was curious if having a slow hard drive can affect FPS and smoothness. I currently running a QX9650 mildly oc'd to 3.6 and my Graphics Card is a GTX285 1gig.This is not hi-end anymore as I am sure you will agree. I am using DDR-2 memory and again middle of road at this time. My HD is the oldest piece in the box. I was wondering if I went to an SSD like one of the new PCI-E offerings, would this help with smoothness or would it just do the inital load quicker? I am not sure if the rest of the system is waiting while the HD chugs along and provides some data. I have been around long enough to know that CPU is king, but since this HD is very old I was curious if this could be a bottleneck. Any input or thoughts on this would be much appreciated. I really dont want to invest if there will be no improvement in smoothness in the sim. If it only offers shortened load times then it really is not worth it to me.RegardsBob

AFAIK, slow HDDs for the most part will give you the blurries, i.e. not be able to load the scenery tiles at the required LOD fast enough.New SSD's are getting faster evry day as manufacturers increase the degree of parallell access of the flash memory chips, reaching 0.5 GBy/Sec. Some even interface via PCIe as SATA-3 is too slow (although SATA-6 would be OK).So newer SSDs can offer both a reduction in FSX start-up time and an overall increase in performance WRT your 7.2 KRPM drive, but be prepared to spend.Cheers,- jahman.

And of course,If you run FSX with high display settings with too slow CPU and/or GPU, you'll still get blurries even if you use SDD disks. Getting rid of blurries is the art of setting up a balanced system, hardware, software (OS, hardware drivers and FSX display settings (fsx config file)).Good advice over here: http://www.simforums.com/Forums/setting-up-fsx-and-how-to-tune-it_topic29041.html@Bob: What display settings do you use in FSX? What fsx config tweaks do you use?

Hi,I have a fairly smooth running system and am happy really. I get a few micro stutters but not a big thing. As far as tweaks... don't get me going because the only ones for me that make a difference is AffinityMask=14. I can run 400 for TML or 40 and it makes no difference whatsoever. I can run boyotes tweaks and it doesnt matter. I am running Win 7 64, max autogen/detail, low 2 for water, high clouds 60mi, anisiostropic etc. Basically everything but water is maxed and using complex A/C.. I am not complaining really except for the microstutters which I can get rid of by using the tweak where the default is .33, and put it to .20 with a little blurriness. Cant remember now the cfg entry but it has to do with how much time rendering vs. how much time loading. I guess my only question was is my system waitingon the hard drive and twittling it's thumbs? What I really would like to be able to do is run the ORBX stuff but everything comes to a crawl at the autogen/detail I would need to be happy. I am spoiled you see. I have UTX/GEX running wide open detail., so, when I go to ORBX I can only run Normal autogen and very dense detail. After using GEX autogen maxed, it just looks a little boring, and then the depression sets in :Cry: This is how I keep myself happy. I go to ORBX, set things up where it runs smooth, but remember, the autogen has to be turned down way low, so I get unhappy. When I go back to GEX, I am happy again. Its a cycle you see :Thinking: I know, I sound like a nut case huh? One day when the angels sing and bless us with a processor that will run whatever you throw at it, we all will be in heaven. So, for now I will just go through my happy-unhappy process and all is well Bob

And of course,If you run FSX with high display settings with too slow CPU and/or GPU, you'll still get blurries even if you use SDD disks. Getting rid of blurries is the art of setting up a balanced system, hardware, software (OS, hardware drivers and FSX display settings (fsx config file)).Good advice over here: http://www.simforums...topic29041.html@Bob: What display settings do you use in FSX? What fsx config tweaks do you use?

Hi,I have FSX on an older 7200 rpm WD SATA drive and may upgrade depending on bang for the buck. I was curious if having a slow hard drive can affect FPS and smoothness. I currently running a QX9650 mildly oc'd to 3.6 and my Graphics Card is a GTX285 1gig.This is not hi-end anymore as I am sure you will agree. I am using DDR-2 memory and again middle of road at this time. My HD is the oldest piece in the box. I was wondering if I went to an SSD like one of the new PCI-E offerings, would this help with smoothness or would it just do the inital load quicker? I am not sure if the rest of the system is waiting while the HD chugs along and provides some data. I have been around long enough to know that CPU is king, but since this HD is very old I was curious if this could be a bottleneck. Any input or thoughts on this would be much appreciated. I really dont want to invest if there will be no improvement in smoothness in the sim. If it only offers shortened load times then it really is not worth it to me.RegardsBob

Bob,I have a useful comparison for you as I had a similar setup, initially: QX9650 at 3.9Ghz, DDR2 memory, GTX280, and had two drives I installed FSX on at different times: A Seagate Cheetah 15,000rpm SCSI drive, and later a 7200rpm SATA II drive from Seagate. There was no significant difference between the 15K and the 7.2K drive with regard to ANYTHING noticeable to this user.When things got much much better was when I purchased decent DDR3 ram, got the timings set well, and applied Bojote's primary configurations. I use the 7200K drive now jsut to avoid the add'l boot time that comes w/ SCSI, and have really good performance: IQ, FPS & smoothness. Even able to run Bloom on in complex scenery w/ add ons.Unfortunately my QX9650 died after 3.3y. I put in a Q9650 CPU last week, and went to higher DRAM freq w/ looser timings, and have great performance. I'm running the new CPU at 3.76Ghz, DRAM at 1661Mhz. I think a 'balanced' system is meaningful, esp in terms of smoothness. Noel

Hi Noel,I really did not think that the hd was a large bottleneck, I just hoped there might be a little more smoothness by streaming the data a little faster. I think it is a waiting game for me as the processors get cheaper as time goes on. I have had this for 3 years now and soon I will upgrade. Looks like the 2600k cpu's are doing well. The DDR3 I know will make a difference too. I could not get this MB effeciently oc'd as I am running a 3:2 ratio and not really a high bus speed, just could only do a multiplier. Not really effecient but liveable. Thanks Noel for your input. RegardsBob

Bob,I have a useful comparison for you as I had a similar setup, initially: QX9650 at 3.9Ghz, DDR2 memory, GTX280, and had two drives I installed FSX on at different times: A Seagate Cheetah 15,000rpm SCSI drive, and later a 7200rpm SATA II drive from Seagate. There was no significant difference between the 15K and the 7.2K drive with regard to ANYTHING noticeable to this user.When things got much much better was when I purchased decent DDR3 ram, got the timings set well, and applied Bojote's primary configurations. I use the 7200K drive now jsut to avoid the add'l boot time that comes w/ SCSI, and have really good performance: IQ, FPS & smoothness. Even able to run Bloom on in complex scenery w/ add ons.Unfortunately my QX9650 died after 3.3y. I put in a Q9650 CPU last week, and went to higher DRAM freq w/ looser timings, and have great performance. I'm running the new CPU at 3.76Ghz, DRAM at 1661Mhz. I think a 'balanced' system is meaningful, esp in terms of smoothness. Noel

Hi,I have a fairly smooth running system and am happy really. I get a few micro stutters but not a big thing. As far as tweaks... don't get me going because the only ones for me that make a difference is AffinityMask=14. I can run 400 for TML or 40 and it makes no difference whatsoever. I can run boyotes tweaks and it doesnt matter. I am running Win 7 64, max autogen/detail, low 2 for water, high clouds 60mi, anisiostropic etc. Basically everything but water is maxed and using complex A/C.. I am not complaining really except for the microstutters which I can get rid of by using the tweak where the default is .33, and put it to .20 with a little blurriness. Cant remember now the cfg entry but it has to do with how much time rendering vs. how much time loading. I guess my only question was is my system waitingon the hard drive and twittling it's thumbs? What I really would like to be able to do is run the ORBX stuff but everything comes to a crawl at the autogen/detail I would need to be happy. I am spoiled you see. I have UTX/GEX running wide open detail., so, when I go to ORBX I can only run Normal autogen and very dense detail. After using GEX autogen maxed, it just looks a little boring, and then the depression sets in :Cry: This is how I keep myself happy. I go to ORBX, set things up where it runs smooth, but remember, the autogen has to be turned down way low, so I get unhappy. When I go back to GEX, I am happy again. Its a cycle you see :Thinking: I know, I sound like a nut case huh? One day when the angels sing and bless us with a processor that will run whatever you throw at it, we all will be in heaven. So, for now I will just go through my happy-unhappy process and all is well Bob

Autogen is a performance killer. Unless you have a very fast system (read: Sandy Bridge 4.5GHz or higher) you should be running reduced autogen settings. My C2Q 9550 @ 4GHz allows me to run virtually all settings at maximum with the add-ons in my sig and get 20-30 FPS @ FTX Seattle. The sacrifices I have had to make are: ground traffic, a/c lighting, shadows, and autogen set to normal + reduced trees/buildings per cell in config file.

Hi Noel,I really did not think that the hd was a large bottleneck, I just hoped there might be a little more smoothness by streaming the data a little faster. I think it is a waiting game for me as the processors get cheaper as time goes on. I have had this for 3 years now and soon I will upgrade. Looks like the 2600k cpu's are doing well. The DDR3 I know will make a difference too. I could not get this MB effeciently oc'd as I am running a 3:2 ratio and not really a high bus speed, just could only do a multiplier. Not really effecient but liveable. Thanks Noel for your input. RegardsBob

Bob, sorry but I misled you a little (and myself too!). I did follow the recommendations and installed a WDC velocipraptor some time ago. I didn't notice any significant diff over the other SATA II Seagate 7.2K drive, but left it installed anyway.I'm very close to where you are too. Had my QX not died, I had planned on keeping it for at least a few more years, which I am now again committed to since I bought a replacement Q9650. I can accurately say I'm not unhappy in any way w/ perf on this platform, and I run ORBX scenery frequently w/ no problems, plus various complex aircraft. I do dial down autogen to DENSE, but everything else, and I mean everything else, is hard right. The DDR2 memory is troublesome to deal w/ which is why I finally bought the bullet and upgraded to this X48 mainboard, and memory. I know the guys w/ 2600K CPUs are doing great, and if I needed to upgrade I'd go there for sure, but as I say all's still well here, and I think will be. I will probably get comfy again w/ a more aggressive overclock, but for the time being this is OK fine.