Low Performance with i5-2500K

[flight1986 37]

Hello all,I am new to this forum and wanted to get your guys opnion on a fix if possible. I just upgraded my AMD Phenom II x4 965BE with Asus M4A89GTD Mobo at 4.02GHz to a Intel i5-2500K with Asus P8Z68-v LX @ 4.7GHz. The strange thing is that with my AMD i was able to get 15-20 fps with PMDG NGX with Ohare-X, now with the intel it is extremely choppy and not flyable. I have done the Bojotes tweak, running external frame limiter. I dont know what else to look at.Current PC specs:CPU: i5-2500k @ 4.7GHzMobo: Asus P8Z68-v LXMemory: G. Skill DDR3 1600 (12800) Cas: 8Cooler: Corsair H50GPU: Galaxy GTS 450 1GBHDD: Barracuda Seagate 500GBI keep seeing youtube videos with people that have the i5 and get great FPS I just dont get it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thank you,Arslan D.

[Paul J 349]

Video card.To get the best out of a proc at 4.7 gig, (allowing BufferPools=0 or close to it) you need to 'balance' the system with a better card than the Galaxy.

[flight1986 37]

Video card.To get the best out of a proc at 4.7 gig, (allowing BufferPools=0 or close to it) you need to 'balance' the system with a better card than the Galaxy.

Thank you for your reply. What would you recommend for GPU I turned the OC down to 4.4GHz now but will go back up. Also the bufferpool=39000000 right now, you are recommending it to =0? I am also thinking about getting a ssd 120gb and just putting FSX and OS on it.

[diajohn 169]

Before you spend money on a video card, how much memory do you have? I have a similar setup running my I5 at a minimal oc of 4.1 and fly smooth everywhere. That is with an older Radeon 4850 video card. Frankly I found with my system, overclocking the processor a lot caused FSX to fly badly.

[worldclassleader 0]

SSD wont make a major difference. I have FSX on a 5400RPM HDD and it works flawless. Check your [JOB SCHEDULER] Affinity Mask in your FSX config file; the modified one from Botje's tweaks. I would set it to 255 or 84. Also, don't under clock the CPU. If it's stable at 4.7GHz when running a stability test like Prime 95, then you should be fine in FSX. Most likely, it's your FSX settings in the game.Uncheck features like:

• Plane casts shadow on itself
• Plane casts shadow on the ground
• Flares

That should help.Also, try lowering the sliders until you've acheived FPS that meets your needs.Lastly, depending on your resolution, that GTS450 may not be enough. I play this game at 1920x1080p and wouldn't settle for anything less than a GTX560Ti/GTX460. My standard GPU is a Nvidia GTX570 for the FSX systems that I build.Hope this helps.

[ryanbatc 12,842]

The video card is a huge factor. The 450 is a budget card usually sold in stores like Best Buy. Could you step up to a GTX 560ti or 570?

[Paul J 349]

What would you recommend for GPU I turned the OC down to 4.4GHz now but will go back up. Also the bufferpool=39000000 right now, you are recommending it to =0? I am also thinking about getting a ssd 120gb and just putting FSX and OS on it.

Any high-end Nvidia card will do the trick, Arsian. If you can run the i5 at 4.7, then do so - that will give you a 'base' to get those solid 30 fps with fairly high graphics, realistic traffic while allowing high-end aircraft or scenery addons. You also need the memory to run at a minimum of 1600, with fairly tight timings. Once the hardware is running cool and reliably at a high-ish speed - getting smoothness on top of that is a matter of adding some new settings to the fsx.cfg, and changing a few others. The Tips and Tricks forum has a number of other simmers cfg's, plus you can also try mine if you do purchase something akin to the 580.With regard to BP - no - I'm not saying 'use bp=0', Arsian - it's not a 'given' that this setting is correct. My pc works well with a BP of 8 gig (8388608), but with a small Reject Threshold of 128kB. Along with HIGHMEMFIX=1 and Water = High 2.x I, and another nine or ten changes to the fsx.cfg I have no artifacts and run very smoothly with any aircraft around the OrbX PNW (along with a modified Fly Tampa KSEA) with zero artifacts and a very solid, smooth 30 fps - locked or with the FPS_Limiter_02.SSD.... Put either the OS or FSX on it - but not both. The OS is continually working and you don't want it fighting with FSX. The SSD will give you faster texture/scenery/aircraft load times initially, but you'll not notice any great increase in performance above that. Programs run in memory, virtual or otherwise, and once fsx is loaded and running it makes only occasional calls to disc, whereas the OS is constantly working between disc and memory.WorldClassLeader's and Ryan's advice is also very correct.

[flight1986 37]

Before you spend money on a video card, how much memory do you have? I have a similar setup running my I5 at a minimal oc of 4.1 and fly smooth everywhere. That is with an older Radeon 4850 video card. Frankly I found with my system, overclocking the processor a lot caused FSX to fly badly.

Thanks for your input, I thought about the whole issue with Overclocking, but I keep seeing ppl with even 5GHz and have really smooth flight, I know that FSX is very CPU intensive and its all about the higher clock speed. I am running 8gb memory on Windows 7 64-bit OS.

[flight1986 37]

SSD wont make a major difference. I have FSX on a 5400RPM HDD and it works flawless. Check your [JOB SCHEDULER] Affinity Mask in your FSX config file; the modified one from Botje's tweaks. I would set it to 255 or 84. Also, don't under clock the CPU. If it's stable at 4.7GHz when running a stability test like Prime 95, then you should be fine in FSX. Most likely, it's your FSX settings in the game.Uncheck features like:

• Plane casts shadow on itself
• Plane casts shadow on the ground
• Flares

That should help.Also, try lowering the sliders until you've acheived FPS that meets your needs.Lastly, depending on your resolution, that GTS450 may not be enough. I play this game at 1920x1080p and wouldn't settle for anything less than a GTX560Ti/GTX460. My standard GPU is a Nvidia GTX570 for the FSX systems that I build.Hope this helps.

Glad you mentioned something about the SSD, i have kept debating on getting one. As for my resolution I am at 1600 X 1200, thats the highest I can go. The settings you described to uncheck and all I did and no help, I did try to check if my GPU is being bottlenecked by the CPU or vice versa, and set all sliders to the left and my FPS went up to 40-60 FPS, once I change it back my FPS go down to 10, granted that is with me running with add ons:PMDG 737 NGXREX 2UTXGEXWORLDOFAI TrafficFS Dream Team Ohare X and Midway XAerosoft Chicago XI usually start my flights out of Ohare and I understand that I will nver get 30 FPS with PMDG and FSDT as hey are so heavy, but if my AMD 965 BE was able to give me upper teens then the i5 should be better as it is rated best CPU for FSX, from research.

The video card is a huge factor. The 450 is a budget card usually sold in stores like Best Buy. Could you step up to a GTX 560ti or 570?

See this is what is so confusing about FSX, everyone says its CPU intensive and only 25% GPU, but then if you dont have a higher end GPU FSX runs like &@($*. As for getting a GPU i can afford any of them really, but I also do not want to blow my money on high end GPUs when it wont even get fully utilized.

Any high-end Nvidia card will do the trick, Arsian. If you can run the i5 at 4.7, then do so - that will give you a 'base' to get those solid 30 fps with fairly high graphics, realistic traffic while allowing high-end aircraft or scenery addons. You also need the memory to run at a minimum of 1600, with fairly tight timings. Once the hardware is running cool and reliably at a high-ish speed - getting smoothness on top of that is a matter of adding some new settings to the fsx.cfg, and changing a few others. The Tips and Tricks forum has a number of other simmers cfg's, plus you can also try mine if you do purchase something akin to the 580.With regard to BP - no - I'm not saying 'use bp=0', Arsian - it's not a 'given' that this setting is correct. My pc works well with a BP of 8 gig (8388608), but with a small Reject Threshold of 128kB. Along with HIGHMEMFIX=1 and Water = High 2.x I, and another nine or ten changes to the fsx.cfg I have no artifacts and run very smoothly with any aircraft around the OrbX PNW (along with a modified Fly Tampa KSEA) with zero artifacts and a very solid, smooth 30 fps - locked or with the FPS_Limiter_02.SSD.... Put either the OS or FSX on it - but not both. The OS is continually working and you don't want it fighting with FSX. The SSD will give you faster texture/scenery/aircraft load times initially, but you'll not notice any great increase in performance above that. Programs run in memory, virtual or otherwise, and once fsx is loaded and running it makes only occasional calls to disc, whereas the OS is constantly working between disc and memory.WorldClassLeader's and Ryan's advice is also very correct.

Paul,Thanks for the detailed response. I was looking at the GTX 580 2 GB so still looking around. I keep playing around with my FSX.CFG and seening very little change. I am just confused why my AMD ran better then the highly recommended i5-2500k.

[diajohn 169]

I think we get so involved with junk, we have no time to just fly and that includes me. I do have the 2500k oc to a mild 4.1 with a Z68 Asus MB and 8g of Corsair memory running on a standard harddrive and the Radeon 4850. At KORD with the same software you use except I use Ultimate Traffic at 100% and no frame limiter, I get around 30fps and it is totally smooth. I would be almost ashamed to say how many other processes I have running along with my VA Acars and Radar contact anit-virus and assorted junk. My radeon is supposed to struggle with clouds and it does because it is raining at KORD right now. Guess I just can't fly my PMDG NG.I keep thinking about upgrading to a more expensive Nvidia video card and an SSD but it seems impossible to justify the costs when I could be spending it elsewhere.

[Guest]

Before you buy ANYTHING based on the answers given here, you REALLY have to know what ingame settings people use. For example, diajohn posted twice that he is having totally smooth performance. Great for him. But if he is using autogen at Normal then 1. it's no wonder performance is smooth and 2. you might not want less that Extremely dense autogen, so listening to his advice is rather useless... (I am just using diajohn as an example here: I don't have a clue what settings he uses...).Arslan is having bad performance but it might well be that if he used diajohn's ingame settings, performance would be great... without buying anything. Hope you understand what I am trying to say.It is AMAZING how many topic there are where people give each other advice about what to buy or not and talk about bad peformance or smooth performance WITHOUT posting their ingame settings...!!! That's completely useless. And then I am not even talking about resolutions, FSAA settings, etc. etc. etc.

[Paul J 349]

Jeez - I'm sorry I spoke. Maybe I'll just shut up and not try to help anyone at all. Maybe just go to a different forum where my 'comments' won't upset someone.

[flight1986 37]

Before you buy ANYTHING based on the answers given here, you REALLY have to know what ingame settings people use. For example, diajohn posted twice that he is having totally smooth performance. Great for him. But if he is using autogen at Normal then 1. it's no wonder performance is smooth and 2. you might not want less that Extremely dense autogen, so listening to his advice is rather useless... (I am just using diajohn as an example here: I don't have a clue what settings he uses...).Arslan is having bad performance but it might well be that if he used diajohn's ingame settings, performance would be great... without buying anything. Hope you understand what I am trying to say.It is AMAZING how many topic there are where people give each other advice about what to buy or not and talk about bad peformance or smooth performance WITHOUT posting their ingame settings...!!! That's completely useless. And then I am not even talking about resolutions, FSAA settings, etc. etc. etc.

J van E,Thank you for your post. I can see where your coming from but everyones input is valid. Granted what makes FSX run smooth is settings and that is whats hard to fid out. On youtube jon5700 has a simple system and runs fsx like hes using i7 extreme.

[flight1986 37]

Before you buy ANYTHING based on the answers given here, you REALLY have to know what ingame settings people use. For example, diajohn posted twice that he is having totally smooth performance. Great for him. But if he is using autogen at Normal then 1. it's no wonder performance is smooth and 2. you might not want less that Extremely dense autogen, so listening to his advice is rather useless... (I am just using diajohn as an example here: I don't have a clue what settings he uses...).Arslan is having bad performance but it might well be that if he used diajohn's ingame settings, performance would be great... without buying anything. Hope you understand what I am trying to say.It is AMAZING how many topic there are where people give each other advice about what to buy or not and talk about bad peformance or smooth performance WITHOUT posting their ingame settings...!!! That's completely useless. And then I am not even talking about resolutions, FSAA settings, etc. etc. etc.

J van E,What is your current PC specs and settings if you dont mind me asking?

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Jeez - I'm sorry I spoke. Maybe I'll just shut up and not try to help anyone at all. Maybe just go to a different forum where my 'comments' won't upset someone.

Hey Paul, don't take Jeroen's comments the wrong way, he's a good guy over on the Orbx forum. The problem with forums is you never get to hear someones' intination in their voice! In fact I agree with everything Jeroen said and I'm sure the last on his mind is to upset someone. Besides, I didn't think anything was particulalry aimed at you personally Paul, anyway, have a good day fellas.