Hey all,So i look out the side window of my ngx, and my photoscenery is not completely smooth. It jumps a bit from time to time. I dont like it. I want it glass-smooth. I need more, newer, shinier hardware.I suspect im talking about gear that's not invented yet, but im interested in where the bottleneck is that is causing the performance to be less than perfect.To clarify: i have what was considered a ninja system when i built it a year ago, an i7 with decent overclock. My system is tuned to the max. Im doing all the clever things with cfg files and external frame limiters that can be done. I'm running over a terabyte of photoscenery, and the stuff i want perfect smoothness for is 0.5m/pixel - in other words, i'm stretching the bounds of what anyone would expect a modern computerto do.But the question remains - what hardware stops perfect photoscenery performance? i suspect it's the memory throughput. Is there any improvement on the horizon with ivy? Would sandy bridge be worse than an i7 because of the dual rather than triple channel memory? (btw, I'm running mushkin radioactive 2000mhz memory at a 1600mhz clock speed.)The second potential culprit is the cpu. I know that my [email protected] is not fast enough for me. I believe sandybridge would be a little better (though still not fast enough), but i'm worried that the cpu is only a minor issue and that the memory etc might counterbalance my clockspeed increase.The final thought is the gpu, im currently running a gtx570. I'm looking forward to pcie 3.0 video cards like many others, but i suspect that this will mainly help autogen. And i run with autogen off. I'm not sure whether video card has much of a role with the massive amount of texture loads i'm trying to get from hdd to screen.And finally hardvdisk access. I suspect that this doesn't really make much difference. I'm running three ssds (os, fsx and a new one for photoscenery). I dont really notice a difference with my photoscenery performance when scenery is installed to a ssd compared with the sata3 hdd i also use.So that's the sitrep. What future tech am i waiting for? Will anything current - a gtx580, an i7 2600k, some newer memory with crisper timings - help me?Thanks!

Uh... Thanks panda, even though i have no idea what you just said. Hope the hangover tomorrow isnt too bad.

Sandy bridge will help, but I would recommend holding on to what you have until the release of ivy bridge in April. I've also been experimenting with massive photoscenery and will be looking for the optimal solution myself.

Most hardware talk is focused on normal fsx ie with autogen. Phtoscenery requirements are likley to be a bit different. What is it with ivy that you think will help? Just clock speed, or is there something good in the architecture?I'm finding the current generation really good for 1m/pixel photoscenery, but finding it gets a bit less smooth when i up the resolution to 0.5m/pixel.

Most hardware talk is focused on normal fsx ie with autogen. Phtoscenery requirements are likley to be a bit different. What is it with ivy that you think will help? Just clock speed, or is there something good in the architecture?I'm finding the current generation really good for 1m/pixel photoscenery, but finding it gets a bit less smooth when i up the resolution to 0.5m/pixel.

What photo scenery are you using? It sounds like it maybe some you created yourself.I use MSE, MSX and some freeware for a couple of islands. My photo scenery looks great.One thing that can be a bottle neck, besides your 4.0GHz OC, is if you have all three SSD's on the same SATA controller. If your X58 MB has more than one SATA controller you can try moving your photo scenery SSD to a separate SATA controller.My MB has one Intel (6 ports), one JMicron (1 port) and one Marvell controller (2 ports). Marvell controllers on the X58 boards had a lot of problems so if you move it to a Marvell controller and you start having BSOD's, CTD, freezes in FSX, etc. then take it off the Marvell controller. If you want to spend the time updating the drivers for the Marvell controller you can try that to see if it helps.

Most hardware talk is focused on normal fsx ie with autogen. Phtoscenery requirements are likley to be a bit different. What is it with ivy that you think will help? Just clock speed, or is there something good in the architecture?I'm finding the current generation really good for 1m/pixel photoscenery, but finding it gets a bit less smooth when i up the resolution to 0.5m/pixel.

I recommend Ivy because it's only 3 or 4 months away and your 950 ought to hold you over just fine until then. I can't say how Ivy Bridge will compare to Sandy Bridge, but it ought to OC a little higher and we know for sure it will run cooler. IB will also support PCI-E 3.0, but as you already pointed out, that may not bring anything to the table since your not running autogen. I'm not even sure PCI-E 3.0 will do anything for autogen!It might also be interesting to see if the Z77 boards bring anything in addition to native USB 3.0 support.It's an interesting question as I'm also not so concerned with running autogen. That changes the game completely and it would be cool to know how different hardware affects the performance.

@idaho, being a photoscenery fan i'm running most of the famous types - mse (all the complete states) msx, aerosoft germany, the freeware nl2000, horizon ukI've also spent some time starting to cover the rest of the world (mainly us) with homebrewed scenery. It looks brilliant i think, way better than the commercial stuff in terms of image clarity. 0.5m/pixel is breathtaking, but i note the hardware just starts to struggle a little. But having seen it, i know i want to fly over a world covered with photoscenery of this resolution.@cmeeks, i seem to remember reading somewhere photoscenery needs good memory bandwidth and im not sure what ivy rings to that table. I think a little more clock would help as well, a some of the microstutters are probably due to the cpu getting behind - i cant run at a consistent locked 30fps with all addons, but that would be my goal (dont think ill quite get there with ivy bridge either, imho).

Here's a good quick article that explains why Ivy Bridge should be impressive: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20059431-64.html

Good read but pretty basic. And no mention of fsx or photoscenery strangely enough :)Still, i'm easily excitable and 3d transistors and 22nm tech sound good. I'm sure i will be building an ivy bridge system once the chips and mobos arrive.

IB to be released April 8th or 9th according to this article: http://www.techpower...il-8-Debut.html

I upped my antialiasing last night (to 32 times) and noted the microstutters appeared/got worse. That suggests to me that this might be a graphics card issue. I normally run on the nirmal 8s/8sq.So maybe keppler cards and pcie v3.0 re what we really need.

I'm hoping so. Nobody will know until somebody tries it.Looks like Intel is also including Thunderbolt in one of their top of the line Z77 boards (http://www.guru3d.co...ssors-surfaces/). Perhaps other mobo makers will follow.

Lower your display driver settings (go back to the default set up by Nvidia). Lower your sliders in FSX, especially in the AI settings. Your sliders under the scenery tab should not all be maxed out either. Allow your graphics to "breathe" and not put so much stress on rendering. You do not have a system capable of having high settings without having graphic issues. Get rid of the tweaks in your FSX.cfg. Use just the highmemfix=1 tweak. FSX is a really old program. It is hoped that Microsoft Flight will be programmed much better to handle the current CPU's/GPU's and system memory so that your current system can handle it and you can get crisp clear graphics then. I know I'm dreaming but that's what I hope will happen...Best regards,Jim

So i look out the side window of my ngx, and my photoscenery is not completely smooth. It jumps a bit from time to time. I dont like it.

Before we go into buying more hardware are you sure that vsync is enabled and actually working? This sounds like a vsync screen tearing issue.

Before we go into buying more hardware are you sure that vsync is enabled and actually working? This sounds like a vsync screen tearing issue.

Also, do you use an FPS limiter. This might fix the stutters. - It worked for me haha.