I Don't Know What Else to Do - Please Help!

[Flaps30 3]

Hi guys,I don't know where else to turn. When FSX was first released, I waited patiently for three years to "let the hardware catch up."I then bought a Gateway i7-920 2.67ghz. system which I was told should do fine for FSX. My past FS version experiences were more tweaking and adjusting sessions than flying sessions, so I wanted to get it right so that I could enjoy FSX the way it was supposed to be without turning settings down. As in the past, the new system ran just OK, and I had to turn most sliders down, and forget any addon aircraft like the Level D 767 which I bought for the new version. Framerates were a disaster, especially after I added Ultimate Traffic II. I had to turn airline traffic way down to 20% or so. I started to search the web for help and answers and it appeared the best suggestions I received were to build my own system which I new nothing about let alone what components to get. Anyway, I decided to go for it and after a lot of help from the web and asking many questions, I completed my first build. Overclocking became the next problem, and after many months and working with a great guy in the Asus Forum, we finally got a stable overclock of 4.0 ghz. He also guided me through an overclock of my GPU. Once I new the new build was running well, I finally installed FSX and eventually, the addons Ultimate Terrain X, Ground Environment X, Ultimate Traffic II, FSDiscover!, and Carenado's Cessna 182 Skylane. I also took the time to use NickN's guide, and followed what I could understand, including recommended slider and checkbox settings in FSX.At first, it looked like I finally had it made. Around general scenery areas such as my home area in Northeastern PA, framerates kept shooting all over the place from the seventies down to the twenties. When I finally tried to lock the frames at 30 it ran beautifully at a steady 30 fps. I thought I finally was home free with a smooth and realistic install of FSX. The Carrenadeo C182 flew well and I was anticipating some new addons like Orbyx Pacific Northwest and the PMDG 737 NGX. Then I decided to explore other areas in the Carrenado Cessna such as Chicago and San Francisco, which was a problem for me on my last system especially around KSFO. Framerates dropped to low 20s and teens around San Fran, but it was still flyable. Then I went to Chicago which on past versions of FSX was always pretty smooth for me around Meigs. I took off from Chicago Executive and the framerates dropped like a rock as I approached the city. Looking to the left toward the lake might show upper teens and then as soon as I looked toward O'Hare I was bordering around 10 or 12. As I got over O'Hare I was at 6 or 7 and a choppy near - slide show began! I remembered hearing that AI traffic was a fps killer so I knocked the slider down from 60% to 20% and there was no change. I finally shut it down completely and still no change. I was so upset and frustrated I shut the sim down. How could I hope to finally really enjoy FSX with addons like the 737 NGX with performance like this?I've heard and read about all the great setups simmers have and how great their performance is. Before I could say it was because their systems were better than mine. But now I have the same specs as them and I still can't get it right. If anyone can help me, here are the details of my system and install that hopefully can help solve this once and for all.ASUS P6T mb, i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66 ghz. processor overclocked to 4.0 ghz., Corsair 3 X 4 (12 gb) DDR3, Dominator ram, NVIDIA EVGA Geforce GTX - 275, 1792 mb gpu, overclocked to mem clock 1200, shader clock 1574, core clock 710, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive, Noctua NH-D14 cooler, Silent Pro Gold 800W ps, Widows 7 - 64 bit, Service Pack 1, with all updates. My FSX settings are:Graphics: Target Frame Rate - 30, Res 1440X900X32, Filtering - Trilinear, Anti Ali. off, Global Texture - very high,Lens Flare - checked, Adv. Anim.- checked, Info. Text - continuous.Aircraft: Glbl. Sett. - Medium High, Def. Cockpit view - Virtual Cockpit, High Res. 3-D Virtual Cockpit - checked, 2-D Panel Transparency - 0%, Aircraft casts shadows on ground - checked, A/C landing lights illum. ground - checked, Scenery: Glbl. Settings - Custom, Level of Detail Radius - Large, Mesh Complex. - 100, Mesh Res. - 10m, Text Res. - 7m, Water Effects - Low - 2X, Land Detail Textures - checked, Scenery Complex. - Very Dense, Autogen. Density - Dense, Ground Scenery Shadows - Unchecked, Special Effects Detail - High, Weather: Glbl. Settings - High, Cloud Draw Distance - 60 mi., (0 slider), Thermal Vis. - Natural, Detailed Clouds - Checked, Cloud Cover Density - High, Rate weather changes over time - medium.Traffic: Glbl. Settings - Custom, Airline traffic Density - 61%, GA Traffic Density - 66, Airport Vehicle Density - Medium, Road Vehicles - 34%, Ships/Ferries - 32%, Leisure Boats - 32%. In addition, I have NVIDIA Inspector with the MS FSX configuration selected. Unfortunately, I am not that "tech" experienced and I had to be walked through with my build and overclocking although I can navigate pretty well around Windows and FSX. I sure will aprreciate any help anyone can give me. Regards, Tom

[KnightFlyer 43]

I must say that your traffic settings are extremely high. Especially the road vehicles/ships/ferries/and boats. I usually run these at around 7-10% with not too much of a difference in visuals, but a whole lot of difference in performance.Do you only experience these slowdowns around O'Hare? It could just be that particular scenery.You also may wanna try this:http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.htmlThe tweaks above really changed my FSX experience for me. I was running settings much like yours on an older quad core intel and got a stable 30 fps in most cases.In my past experiences with FS98-FSX, there isn't any true tweaking you can do to your system that can make a night and day difference. Usually the culprit to performance issues are just problems on the system that have been unnoticed till now. That and sometimes high CPU usage programs/services that are being run at the same time as FSX. You may wanna start there as well.

[Guest firehawk44]

"Traffic: Glbl. Settings - Custom, Airline traffic Density - 61%, GA Traffic Density - 66, Airport Vehicle Density - Medium, Road Vehicles - 34%, Ships/Ferries - 32%, Leisure Boats - 32%."Known resource killers Tom. Turn GA Density down to 10%; Airport Vehicle Density - Low; Road Vehicles - 10%; Ships/Ferries - no higher than 5%, preferably 0; Leisure Boats - 0%.Best regards,Jim

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

Even better - Road Vehicles: 0

[Guest jahman]

...When FSX was first released, I waited patiently for three years to "let the hardware catch up."

And five years after FSX was first released, we're still waiting for the hardware to catch-up... For best resutls, if at all possible I would suggest an upgrade to at least an i5-2500K and an nVidia GTX 560 video card.Note: The venetubo tweaks are for ATI/AMD cards!Cheers,- jahman.

[Virtualwombat 4]

 

Note: The venetubo tweaks are for ATI/AMD cards!

No, that's not correct. I'd certainly recommend using Bojote's FSX.cfg tool for all systems.I'd also use the autogen tweak and if you are running FTX scenery, try their day/night free utility. Turn all your traffic off except 16% road traffic, 16% GA and 16% airlines.I have similar system (bit less overclock, bit better GPU) and I can't fly complex aircraft in major cities in bad weather unless I crank some sliders back.Cheers,Noel.

[Guest jahman]

The gist of venetubo's tweak is replacing FSX's shader model 2 with shader model 3 so ATI/AMD video cards, with poor shader 2 implementations (because shader 2 is obsolete), won't choke when rendering clouds. nVidia cards, OTOH, sport a better implementation of shader 2 so they don't really benefit from venetubo's shader 3 tweak.Cheers,- jahman.

[Flaps30 3]

Thanks for the help, guys. Your traffic suggestions helped a lot. Also, one problem I discovered is that in addition to the traffic sliders in FSX, Ultimate Traffic 2 has its own set of sliders - one for weekly traffic and the other for daily. My FSX sliders were set to 60% in addition to UT2s which were at 100%! I put the FSX sliders down to 0 and the UT2 ones down to 20%. Not very reralistic around the airports but framerates seem to be back around 30 in outlying areas of Chicago and low to mid 20s near O'Hare. I guess both sets of sliders were doubling the traffic and working against each other?Jahman, is the i5-2500K a cpu? I thought the i7s were better than the i5s since i7 was a higher number. Is the GTX 560 much better than my GTX 275 1792 mb? Also, what does the Bojote's tool and the Autogen tweak do, and where do I find the autogen tool? Thanks again for all your help. Tom

[N1G 88]

I too fought FSX with a QX9650 and a GTX285 with plenty of memory and a couple of decent hard drives. It was not until I got the i7 2600k with a respectable OC @4.7, a GTX570 along with some fast DDR3 memory and faster Hard Drives, that I was able to turn a few things up. Actually I was able to turn up the sliders considerably. I now enjoy a comfortable smooth ride with plenty of eye candy, a complex AC and a few more goodies to top it off. But.... I can still put this computer to it's knees if I turn up the AI, airport traffic, cars etc. It is about balance but I can now do more than I ever could. Simply put, invest in the hardware but realize that there is not a computer available that will allow everything to be set to the max.Bob

[Oliver Ooi 85]

Running FSX with FPS Limiter and set target frame rate inside FSX to unlimited always give me more fps.

[Guest jahman]

...Jahman, is the i5-2500K a cpu?

Yes, and it's cheap too. Many simmers are getting excellent results with this CPU. See.

Is the GTX 560 much better than my GTX 275 1792 mb??

Yes.

Also, what does the Bojote's tool?

See.

Thanks again for all your help. Tom

You're welcome!Cheers,- jahman.

[tf51d 284]

If you are using UT2 traffic, unless you have additional traffic in the normal traffic bgl's you want to use, turn the FSX airline and GA traffic sliders off. UT2 spawns it's own traffic in a totally different way then FSX default, so they are not needed.

[Virtualwombat 4]

The gist of venetubo's tweak is replacing FSX's shader model 2 with shader model 3 so ATI/AMD video cards, with poor shader 2 implementations (because shader 2 is obsolete), won't choke when rendering clouds. nVidia cards, OTOH, sport a better implementation of shader 2 so they don't really benefit from venetubo's shader 3 tweak.Cheers,- jahman.

You are of course correct in your description of the shader mod. However, you seem not to realize that Bjote's auto tune website does much more than address the shader issue. Many of the tweaks applied are useful for nVidia-based systems.Cheers,Noel.

[Graeme1873 3]

Running FSX with FPS Limiter and set target frame rate inside FSX to unlimited always give me more fps.

Running FSX with FPS Limiter and set target frame rate inside FSX to unlimited always give me more fps.

For me this is an absolute must. I've just bought a top of the range pc (i72600 gt570) and if I use the internal fsx fps limiter and set it to 30 fps, at big airports it turns into a slide show. However if I set the internal fsx limit to Unlimited and restrict the fps to 30 using the fps limiter I get a smooth performance and frames never drop below 15 anywhere (and most times it's up at the 25 range) with addons and all sliders full right. Give it a try and see if it makes the difference.

[Superpilotv2 2]

For me this is an absolute must. I've just bought a top of the range pc (i72600 gt570) and if I use the internal fsx fps limiter and set it to 30 fps, at big airports it turns into a slide show. However if I set the internal fsx limit to Unlimited and restrict the fps to 30 using the fps limiter I get a smooth performance and frames never drop below 15 anywhere (and most times it's up at the 25 range) with addons and all sliders full right. Give it a try and see if it makes the difference.

I´ve encountered the same. Did a test at FRA: The first flight over the airport (Aersosoft Frankfurt X with 75% traffic) with the Bell 206 and the FPS locked at 30 gave me only 9 FPS when looking at the gates. It was totaly lagging and a real sliedeshow. Thought with the better CUP this should be a problem of the past.The second one was with unlimited and the same settings as before. Now I got arround 14 FPS and somehow smooth. After 5 years, FSX is still strange in some behaviours.And I can say, that the GTX 560 is a really good card for its money. i own the EVGA Sc variant since a few days. Hadn´t any problem will now and it´s smooth and good looking. Also the card has only arround 50% usage instead of 95% on my old GTX 260 and runs a lot colder.