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PMDG NGX FPS Comparison Shots at JFK with Core2Duo

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A lot of people with less than new or ideal hardware are wondering what type of FPS you can get with the NGX, so thought I would put together some shots with the FPS counter showing to give an idea.I left the HUD down just for the fact that it might cost 1 or 2 FPS more. Most of the way around the airport in VC or external view I was able to maintain 25 FPS or better regardless of weather conditions which is pretty good for that area with a plane that draws on a lot of resources and the fact that I dont have many. Also, these pics are solely for the purpose to get an idea of FPS and not as a display of piloting ability, meaning the approaches weren't perfect, speed and flaps might have been off or I may or may not have been configured correctly, things of that nature. I was just flying around to get some pics with FPS.External 36 FPS13R approach 33 FPSExternal 41 FPSExternal 34 FPSLooking towards downtown NYC 29 FPS13R approach with storm 29 FPS13L approach with storm 27Landing 13L external 28 FPSParked at terminal 29 FPSHopefully these will give you an idea if your on the fence and have an older rig, but your most likely going to need to be overclocked to at least 3.8 ghz to get near this on an older rig. I am pretty excited since it means I will get huge improvement over what I have now when I update to a 64bit system, more/faster RAM, and a new gen CPU.


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Sean, Interesting results. I am getting about 20 - 25 in not too heavy populated areas. So you mind comparing FSX.CFGs, granted I have not tried JFK as yet, but I get some slight jerking around SXM and BUF. The are not show stoppers but they can dampen the experience!!!! Thanks Simeon


KROSWYND    a.k.a KILO_WHISKEY
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Nice. Nebojsa
Thanks.
Sean, Interesting results. I am getting about 20 - 25 in not too heavy populated areas. So you mind comparing FSX.CFGs, granted I have not tried JFK as yet, but I get some slight jerking around SXM and BUF. The are not show stoppers but they can dampen the experience!!!! Thanks Simeon
Simeon,I can post my fsx.cfg but it's stock with the exception of two things.[bUFFERPOOLS]RejectThreshold=131072[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1Those are the only two "tweaks" I have in my cfg. Aside from that I use REX 1024 clouds in DXT format and I changed the REX water animation textures from 32bit to DXT5.Also in regards to the NGX I am using 1024 exterior textures which I resized from the stock 4096's and I resized my 4 large VC textures to 1024. I dont really notice any visual difference in quality but texture loading is a lot better due to my only having 2GB of RAM.If you want I can still post my cfg but it probably wont look any different than yours since I haven't fiddled with it besides the two things i mentioned.

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Thanks for posting those shots Sean! What do you have your autogen and scenery density set at with those shots if you dont mind me asking? - Jim


Jim Wenham

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Actually Sean, that may be interesting to see your cfg. I have applied a few tweaks from NickN, I am not using the BUFFERPOOLS since Nick advised that it would not make much of a difference (then again I have never applied it). However I would like to know how you downsized the textures. What conversion program did you use and the process to be implemented (if it is not too much trouble). Thanks, I am willing to try most things at least once


KROSWYND    a.k.a KILO_WHISKEY
Majestic Software Development/Support
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Sys 1:  AMD 7950X3D, NOCTUA D15S, Gigabyte Elite B650, MSI 4090, 64Gb Ram, Corsair 850 Power Supply, 2x2TB M.2 Samsung 980s, 1x4TB WDD M.2, 6xNoctua 120mm case fans, LG C2 55" OLED running at 120Hz for the monitor, Win11. Sys 2:  i7 8700k, MSI GAMING MBoard, 32Gigs RAM, MSI 4070Ti & EVGA 1080Ti. Hardware:  Brunner CLS-E-NG Yoke, Fulcrum One yoke, TM TPR Rudder Pedals, Yoko TQ6+ NEO, StreamDeck, Tobii Eye Tracker, Virpil VPC MongoosT-50CM3 Base with a TM grip
SIMULATORS: MSFS2020/XP12/P3D v5.4 & v6:  YouTube Videos

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Thanks for posting those shots Sean! What do you have your autogen and scenery density set at with those shots if you dont mind me asking? - Jim
Jim, I had my scenery complexity at Dense and autogen at Dense, although flying around in MegaScenery X or MegaSceneryEarth areas doesn't really do much as far as autogen is concerned since those title dont include much autogen to begin with.
Actually Sean, that may be interesting to see your cfg. I have applied a few tweaks from NickN, I am not using the BUFFERPOOLS since Nick advised that it would not make much of a difference (then again I have never applied it). However I would like to know how you downsized the textures. What conversion program did you use and the process to be implemented (if it is not too much trouble). Thanks, I am willing to try most things at least once
Simeon, Ok, when I get a chance I will post my cfg for you too look at as well as the instructions for resizing the textures. In a thread on their forum I posted the info and PMDG said that they will probably go ahead and release an alternate set of resized textures for those who dont want to do it themselves. Let me find the instructions I posted so I dont have to type it again and I will post it for you. I did it using the freeware GIMP and DXTBmp although you could probably do the same in Photoshop or Coral.

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Thanks Sean I really appreciate that


KROSWYND    a.k.a KILO_WHISKEY
Majestic Software Development/Support
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Sys 1:  AMD 7950X3D, NOCTUA D15S, Gigabyte Elite B650, MSI 4090, 64Gb Ram, Corsair 850 Power Supply, 2x2TB M.2 Samsung 980s, 1x4TB WDD M.2, 6xNoctua 120mm case fans, LG C2 55" OLED running at 120Hz for the monitor, Win11. Sys 2:  i7 8700k, MSI GAMING MBoard, 32Gigs RAM, MSI 4070Ti & EVGA 1080Ti. Hardware:  Brunner CLS-E-NG Yoke, Fulcrum One yoke, TM TPR Rudder Pedals, Yoko TQ6+ NEO, StreamDeck, Tobii Eye Tracker, Virpil VPC MongoosT-50CM3 Base with a TM grip
SIMULATORS: MSFS2020/XP12/P3D v5.4 & v6:  YouTube Videos

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Sean, what do you have your cloud draw distance set to? On my rig I am doing great in the NGX on the ground, but really slow down in clouds. Thanks

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Thanks. Simeon, I can post my fsx.cfg but it's stock with the exception of two things. [bUFFERPOOLS]RejectThreshold=131072 [GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1 Those are the only two "tweaks" I have in my cfg. Aside from that I use REX 1024 clouds in DXT format and I changed the REX water animation textures from 32bit to DXT5. Also in regards to the NGX I am using 1024 exterior textures which I resized from the stock 4096's and I resized my 4 large VC textures to 1024. I dont really notice any visual difference in quality but texture loading is a lot better due to my only having 2GB of RAM. If you want I can still post my cfg but it probably wont look any different than yours since I haven't fiddled with it besides the two things i mentioned.
I have similar specs you have, except I can't Overclock, it's a Dell E6850 3.0Ghz, but I have 4Gb memory and a 9800 GTX which only has 512MB Video memory. I only get about 13 FPS most places with this bird, and down to 8. Where around JFK that drops to 8 to 10 initially and can go as low as 5 FPS. A normal addon around JFK gives me around 14FPS. Everywhere else I have little issues with FPS with other addons. The interesting thing is with the NGX, I can eliminate Autogen, and gain nothing in Frames. Looking at the task manager I see with the NGX FSX uses up 1.1GB memory. I find it amazing that you only have 2GB physical memory and you're getting performance like that. Now not being overclocked, I wouldn't expect 29 in the VC, but I would think I should get at least 15-20FPS, like I get with other addon aircraft. The only other big difference is the video card. Your GTS 250 spec wise is similar to the 9800GTX I have. A little faster GPU, but both have 70GB/s Video memory bandwidth, which according to Phil Taylor, has the largest influence on FSX. You though have 1GB on board memory to my 512MB, I think my system may suffering from video memory starvation with this bird. So I think I'm going to try replacing it, probably with a GTX 460 1GB card. Hopefully I can get a little improvement.

Thanks

Tom

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Sean, what do you have your cloud draw distance set to? On my rig I am doing great in the NGX on the ground, but really slow down in clouds. Thanks
I usually keep it set at 100 miles and run the REX 1024DXT clouds, altough sometimes I will max it out but usually I dont find that the extra draw distance looks different enought to warrent the extra performance hit. Fortunately for me, clouds never make much difference on my rig even in really bad storm conditions. The bigger killer for me is un-optimised large airport scenery like the stuff from ORBX and some of the airports from Aerosoft.

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I have similar specs you have, except I can't Overclock, it's a Dell E6850 3.0Ghz, but I have 4Gb memory and a 9800 GTX which only has 512MB Video memory. I only get about 13 FPS most places with this bird, and down to 8. Where around JFK that drops to 8 to 10 initially and can go as low as 5 FPS. A normal addon around JFK gives me around 14FPS. Everywhere else I have little issues with FPS with other addons. The interesting thing is with the NGX, I can eliminate Autogen, and gain nothing in Frames. Looking at the task manager I see with the NGX FSX uses up 1.1GB memory. I find it amazing that you only have 2GB physical memory and you're getting performance like that. Now not being overclocked, I wouldn't expect 29 in the VC, but I would think I should get at least 15-20FPS, like I get with other addon aircraft. The only other big difference is the video card. Your GTS 250 spec wise is similar to the 9800GTX I have. A little faster GPU, but both have 70GB/s Video memory bandwidth, which according to Phil Taylor, has the largest influence on FSX. You though have 1GB on board memory to my 512MB, I think my system may suffering from video memory starvation with this bird. So I think I'm going to try replacing it, probably with a GTX 460 1GB card. Hopefully I can get a little improvement.
Yep, that's the bad part about having a Dell or any other factory built rigs is that your usually stuck with a locked BIOS and cant overclock. My E8400 is stock at 3.0ghz but when I overclocked it a few years ago to 3.85 it made a huge difference in FPS.I find it amazing that I get the performance I do frankly, especially when I see the post of people who have much newer, better and faster rigs than me and sometimes are seeming to get a lot worse performance or similar performance. That's honestly the reason that I haven't been in a hurry to rush out and build another new system since I have my current setup running so well. Frankly the only thing I can chalk it up to is that the fellow at FS-GS did a really got job getting the OS, FSX, drivers and everthing else related to it, set up and optimised to the max so I could get the most out of my system. On top of that I have spent a lot of time doing my own optimizations like reworking textures for my addon a/c, sceneries, AI, and things of that nature to better compressions, adding mips to the appropriate stuff and so on and so fourth.I will say this though, if I get performance like this on my antique C2D with 2GB of RAM, I can only imagine the day that I move to one of those 2600K's with 8GB RAM and a better video card. I'll probably be getting 50 FPS everywhere, lol. When I do build the new setup after I reinstall everything I will begin the process of swapping out all the texture work and stuff from the old rig to the new one so I dont have to do it all over again. Once was enough!

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However I would like to know how you downsized the textures. What conversion program did you use and the process to be implemented (if it is not too much trouble).
Simeon,Here's how I did the VC textures. The same method also applies to the external textures if you want to do them as well. I used the freeware GIMP and DXTBmp.Go into the PMDG 737-800NGX folder and find the texture.vc folder. Inside that folder find the 4 textures I listed below and of course make a backup first in case you make a mistake. You will resize them down to the sizes listed next to the file name.PMDG_NGX_Main_Panel.dds to 2048 X 512PMDG_NGX_VC_03.dds to 1024 X 1024PMDG_NGX_VC_OVHD01.dds to 1024 X 1024PMDG_NGX_VC_Radios.dds to 1024 X 10241. Open DXTBmp and load the first texture you want to convert.2. The using the function 'send to editor' send the 'image' to GIMP of photoshop, dont close DXTBmp though because you will need to extract the alpha channel later.3. Once it loads it your editor, resize it to 1024 X 1024, although due to the shape of the PMDG_NGX_Main_Panel.dds you will have to do that one in 2048 X 512.4. Once its resized save it to your desktop with the name it uses, dont worry about the texture name for now and close or clear it out of GIMP or Photoshop.5. Next go back into GIMP since it should still be open and use the function "send alpha to editor"6. Once the alpha is in GIMP or PS resize it to 1024 and save it to the desktop.7. Now you'll have 2 textures on the desktop, take the one called norm which should be the 'image' of the texture and drop it back into DXTBmp8. Then going into the DXTBmp menu on the top for alpha select the 'import alpah channel' and load the one on the desktop.9. Finally, save it as either DXT1 or DXT5 with the same file name as the original. You will need to make a note when you first opened the original texture in GIMP what compression it was saved it. If I remember the VC textures were all DXT1 and make sure you untick the box 'add mips' since you dont need mipmaps for VC textures.That's it. Do the same thing for all four textures. The same method can be used for the external textures as well if you so choose to do them. I also did the textre.common folder since it holds the speculars for the external textures and some other stuff.Let me know if you need more help.

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Yep, that's the bad part about having a Dell or any other factory built rigs is that your usually stuck with a locked BIOS and cant overclock. My E8400 is stock at 3.0ghz but when I overclocked it a few years ago to 3.85 it made a huge difference in FPS. I find it amazing that I get the performance I do frankly, especially when I see the post of people who have much newer, better and faster rigs than me and sometimes are seeming to get a lot worse performance or similar performance. That's honestly the reason that I haven't been in a hurry to rush out and build another new system since I have my current setup running so well. Frankly the only thing I can chalk it up to is that the fellow at FS-GS did a really got job getting the OS, FSX, drivers and everthing else related to it, set up and optimised to the max so I could get the most out of my system. On top of that I have spent a lot of time doing my own optimizations like reworking textures for my addon a/c, sceneries, AI, and things of that nature to better compressions, adding mips to the appropriate stuff and so on and so fourth. I will say this though, if I get performance like this on my antique C2D with 2GB of RAM, I can only imagine the day that I move to one of those 2600K's with 8GB RAM and a better video card. I'll probably be getting 50 FPS everywhere, lol. When I do build the new setup after I reinstall everything I will begin the process of swapping out all the texture work and stuff from the old rig to the new one so I dont have to do it all over again. Once was enough!
Man I don't know how you did it, I just swapped out my 9800GTX for a 1 GB GTX 460, and loaded up FSX (Using a USERVA switch of 2304 which is what you are supposed to use with a 1GB card, I got a OOM right after loading the NGX. Looking at the task manager FSX was using a whooping 1.7GB memory. I've never seen it that high, even at JFK. I set it back to what I used before (2816) but I think that may also give me problems. What do you have yours set too if I may ask? Also what level and type of traffic do you use? I usually use UT2 at 100% airline. Frame rate wise I only see a couple of fPS difference , although it seems more stable than it did with the 9800GTX. Even if I turn Autogen and traffic down I don't seem to gain much.

Thanks

Tom

My Youtube Videos!

http://www.youtube.com/user/tf51d

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