Great stuff, thanks so much for taking the time to do those tests Ken So there's merely an extra 200 - 250MB of VAS usage at 5996x1080 and SLI. Very close to what I see hereCan you please do one more quick test of VRAM usage (with MSI afterburner for example) at 5996x1080 and at 1920x1080? no need to remove the cards, just a quick VRAM usage comparison with SLI on and off if you will

Sure, give me a few minutes & I'll have it up EDIT: Here ya go. Same setup as before, 800WL @ KSEA #1 http://sehlah.com/fsx/msi2.jpg2x 1.5GB GTX580 SLI - surround, 5996x1080 (Windowed VC w/TiR)1x GT520 -1920x1080 touchscreen (idle) #2 http://sehlah.com/fsx/msi1.jpg1x 1.5GB GTX580Single Display - 1920x1080 - Windowed VC w/TiR

Sure, give me a few minutes & I'll have it up EDIT: Here ya go. Same setup as before, 800WL @ KSEA #1 http://sehlah.com/fsx/msi2.jpg2x 1.5GB GTX580 SLI - surround, 5996x1080 (Windowed VC w/TiR)1x GT520 -1920x1080 touchscreen (idle) #2 http://sehlah.com/fsx/msi1.jpg1x 1.5GB GTX580Single Display - 1920x1080 - Windowed VC w/TiR

Thanks again Kenneth So 5996x1080: 3299MB VAS - 1059MB VRAM1920x1080: 3037MB VAS - 778MB VRAM Some 262MB extra VRAM usage -> 281MB extra VAS. Not that much for 3x resolution! Do you have ORBX PNW? and what Inspector settings are you using? Sorry to be such a pest :(

Kenneth from your last post with the gtx580 and sli gtx580 what do we learn, not sure because I was thinking of getting another gtx580 to sli or would I be better off with one gtx580 3mb, I have a 1.5 now, thank you.

Kenneth from your last post with the gtx580 and sli gtx580 what do we learn, not sure because I was thinking of getting another gtx580 to sli or would I be better off with one gtx580 3mb, I have a 1.5 now, thank you.

It suggests to me that a 1.5gb 580 is plenty. If you want sli for a 3-monitor surround then I'd definitely stick with 1.5gb cards. if you're not doing sli for the surround then stay away from it for fsx. Sli won't help performance and may actually hurt it because of the added CPU load associated with sli.Dazz:Commercial & ga traffic are 0%, all other traffic (all other sliders for that matter) are 100%. It's orbx pnw scenery. As you can see on one of the msi screenshots I have Rex installed but haven't set up the textures yet. (having trouble getting the OD expansion to install...). As I was watching procexp trying to capture an average sample (some of the numbers are jumpy, CPU would bounce between 28 & 97%) I had 15-30 fps @ unlimited without an external limiter. (antilag started giving me d3d9.dll crashes)AA settings are 8xs from ryans pinned inspector guide. I THINK!! Pretty sure I've already done that, I'd have to check & make sure

It suggests to me that a 1.5gb 580 is plenty. If you want sli for a 3-monitor surround then I'd definitely stick with 1.5gb cards. Dazz:Commercial & ga traffic are 0%, all other traffic (all other sliders for that matter) are 100%. It's orbx pnw scenery. As you can see on one of the msi screenshots I have Rex installed but haven't set up the textures yet. (having trouble getting the OD expansion to install...). As I was watching procexp trying to capture an average sample (some of the numbers are jumpy, CPU would bounce between 28 & 97%) I had 15-30 fps @ unlimited without an external limiter. (antilag started giving me d3d9.dll crashes)

That's virtually the same performance (25 - 30FPS w/ 75% Mytraffic, but at 4.8GHz), VAS (2.8GB) and VRAM usage (850MB) I get in ORBX PNW at 8xS + 4xSGSSWhat AA are you running in Inspector / Nvidia Control Panel? I'm guessing 8xS / 8xSQ too?

Hi Ken thanks for the help, I have a 27" lcd and pretty happy with that never like the results of running multi monitors, puts to much strain on the gpu,. I have a 24" lcd next to my 27" doing nothing lol but do have a 10" usb touchscreen, not crazy about the usb part of it I think its a bottle neck so not using that much, anyway thanks Pal.

That's virtually the same performance (25 - 30FPS w/ 75% Mytraffic, but at 4.8GHz), VAS (2.8GB) and VRAM usage (850MB) I get in ORBX PNW at 8xS + 4xSGSSWhat AA are you running in Inspector / Nvidia Control Panel? I'm guessing 8xS / 8xSQ too?

I edited my last post with that info while you were posting. One of the things I've noticed with surround is that graphics settings don't make a whole lot of difference. I MIGHT see a 3 frame improvement turning everything from 100% to 0%

Ive had to ask myself, Why make all these tweaks and changes to make one addon perform when all others work very well on my ststem? This doesn't seem logical.

Randy, look - nearly every post I've seen you make here has this sort of negative tone to it. I'm sorry you're not happy with the product, but seriously, these complaints of yours about anything and everything are getting quite old here and I'm not going to let it stand anymore. We are pushing a 6 year old sim further, trying to do things that have never been done before in it or that are not supposed to be possible in it. I really really do wish MS had continued the tradition and just made FS2010 or whatever, but they didn't - we're stuck with FSX and we're doing what we can to still advance the hobby given the limitations FSX has. The FSX tweaks that are listed in the manual are the ones I personally use on my own machine day-in and day-out. I run a heck of a lot of other addons besides our own (I buy nearly every major thing that comes out) and I'd never tell anyone to do something that was going to break other addons or something just to use PMDG ones. Absolutely nothing I've recommended does that, it just improves performance for everything, not just us.

"I'm sorry you're not happy with the product," thats insane whats not to like if you dont have a rig that can not run high end addons such as the NGX tweaks are a necessary evil due to the poor coding we have to deal with, on the bright side it does make you pretty computer savvy if it wasn't for ms flightsim being a mess I probablly wouldn't know half the stuff I know about computers as I do now, just a thought, well said Ryan thank god for guitar tabs lol

I edited my last post with that info while you were posting. One of the things I've noticed with surround is that graphics settings don't make a whole lot of difference. I MIGHT see a 3 frame improvement turning everything from 100% to 0%

Roger that. Thanks.Yeah, a 580 should be more than capable of running 8xS, although things could be different at those resolutions (apparently not, based on your feedback, and there's two of those GTX580 anyway)Going by that screenshot you posted, your GPU usage is not too high at all, so it doesn't look like you're GPU limited. Maybe at higher AA levels like adding 4x Sparse Grid Super Sampling Transparency AA and in bad weather with lots of cloudsHave you ever seen both your cards run consistently above 70 - 80%?

Roger that. Thanks.Yeah, a 580 should be more than capable of running 8xS, although things could be different at those resolutions (apparently not, based on your feedback, and there's two of those GTX580 anyway)Going by that screenshot you posted, your GPU usage is not too high at all, so it doesn't look like you're GPU limited. Maybe at higher AA levels like adding 4x Sparse Grid Super Sampling Transparency AA and in bad weather with lots of cloudsHave you ever seen both your cards run consistently above 70 - 80%?

Can't really answer that. I've had the two 580's in sli for a while but I only recently went to a surround setup with a 4th accessory monitor. Maybe a week after I set that up the sata controller on my motherboard fried. Prerecall p67 pro, I literally heard a fizzle & smelled smoke.Since then I've done a clean windows install with the new z68deluxe board, starting with fresh drivers, picking & choosing the updates that wil7 wants to install, set up fsx according to nickn's guide (I skipped the disabling services part), installing my addons, tweaking a bit here & there and making casual flights with the ngx. None of my hardware is connected because I don't haves desk big enough to hold 4 monitors (gonna build one). I've done takeoffs, cruising, fiddling with the ap & some manual landings, but not a complete, start to finish flight.Edit: for what it's worth, I swear by CCleaner & O&O Defrag. Can't prove it, but I'm convinced it makes a difference to run them after any major (over 1gb) install/uninstall

So it can use 3gb of ram. The problem that's meant to avoid is too much of the program's 4gb limit being taken up by video ram. Edit: I like this approach as it has the potential to allow simmers to build their machines for performance outside of fsx & still place limits to make it an ideal environment for fsx.

just fyi, that's not really how vram works. system and vram are separate pools! the address space is unrelated in this case! :) with modern gpu's the app doesn't address vram in the same way as it does it's own ram. it does it through uploading to the card via various direct3d api calls, mostly to throw the textures/polys onto the vram or giving commands to transform them.. once this is done, they stay there, which is why videocards are fast, because they can access that vram without going through the system busses. vram is usually used for 3 things1. frame buffer - the actual images that are being displayed currently and drawn for next frame(s), more vram is helpful if you use high resolution or multiple monitors, but only because that leaves more for textures and polys once the basics of actually holding the image are taken care of...2. textures - loaded from disc into system ram, then uploaded to the vram. at this point the system can dump those bytes since the video card has them.3. polygons - the 'scene' of what to draw and where. in the ideal case this also requires little system ram since the app is simply telling it how to transform those polys for the scene. basically the bulk of moving around and displaying polys or textures happens mostly independently of the cpu or system memory. the address limitations are also completely independent in this case. thats why video cards are awesome. now as some have suggested, with FSX anything past 1.5g isn't guaranteed to help that much, at least fsx doesn't usually seem to allocate much more than 1gig of vram except in extreme monitor configurations. there are cases where it could tho especialyl if you have a lot of mods with 4096x4096 textures.....and also other games and sims do use as much as they can...so going bigger is helpful for future proofing anyway. it will not affect how much ram your 32-bit apps can address at all, they still get their 4gb. also there are other cases like physx and other cuda stuff using the vram but this doesn't really apply to fsx either. cheers!-andy crosby

So Andy you are saying a 3gig card could be a nice improvement ? thanks.

just fyi, that's not really how vram works. system and vram are separate pools! the address space is unrelated in this case! :) with modern gpu's the app doesn't address vram in the same way as it does it's own ram. it does it through uploading to the card via various direct3d api calls, mostly to throw the textures/polys onto the vram or giving commands to transform them.. once this is done, they stay there, which is why videocards are fast, because they can access that vram without going through the system busses. vram is usually used for 3 things1. frame buffer - the actual images that are being displayed currently and drawn for next frame(s), more vram is helpful if you use high resolution or multiple monitors, but only because that leaves more for textures and polys once the basics of actually holding the image are taken care of...2. textures - loaded from disc into system ram, then uploaded to the vram. at this point the system can dump those bytes since the video card has them.3. polygons - the 'scene' of what to draw and where. in the ideal case this also requires little system ram since the app is simply telling it how to transform those polys for the scene. basically the bulk of moving around and displaying polys or textures happens mostly independently of the cpu or system memory. the address limitations are also completely independent in this case. thats why video cards are awesome. now as some have suggested, with FSX anything past 1.5g isn't guaranteed to help that much, at least fsx doesn't usually seem to allocate much more than 1gig of vram except in extreme monitor configurations. there are cases where it could tho especialyl if you have a lot of mods with 4096x4096 textures.....and also other games and sims do use as much as they can...so going bigger is helpful for future proofing anyway. it will not affect how much ram your 32-bit apps can address at all, they still get their 4gb. also there are other cases like physx and other cuda stuff using the vram but this doesn't really apply to fsx either. cheers!-andy crosby

Are you saying VRAM is not a part of the 4gb vas limit? I have to disagree with that. Maybe in the 64-bit world, but we're talking about dinky little fsx, some parts of which date back 10 years or more.

So Andy you are saying a 3gig card could be a nice improvement ? thanks.

not exaclty. more like i'm saying 1.5gb shouldn't be any better than 3gb as suggested, because you aren't really 'losing' that extra 1.5 form your app's ram pool. if you have a ton of big-&@($* monitors it could likely be an improvement. and in more modern games yeah it can help. in ken's numbers above tho you can see that really fsx doesn't seem to use much more than 1gig of videocard ram but it goes crazy with the 6000x1000 setup, which makes sense. the truly interesting test would be to see with identical gpus but different vram amounts cheers-andy crosby