OK, thank you for you answers! I now found another thing, that could be a performance problem:My processor is actually overclocked to 4,2 GHz. With CPU-Z I found out, that it sometimes run at only 1,6 GHz. Could that be a problem? (And how can I fix that?...)Regards

Intel's Gen 2 processors (i5 and i7) employ Speedstep technology which is an energy saver. Your processor speed is based on two basic variables, the BCLK speed which defaults to 100MHz and the Multiplier which "throttles up" the CPU. My i7-2600K shipped with BCLK=100 and Multiplier=38, this results in a Turbo speed of 3.8GHz. The chip can be conservatively OC'd to 4.6GHz by setting Multiplier=46.0, any higher and you have to adjust power, voltage and BCLK frequency. All this can be searched in detail on any OC web site. You have plenty of horsepower to run FSX and your config. You might try turning off "AffinityMask" which allows FSX to use all of your CPU cores. This chip set feature allows you to "reserve" a processor core for programs that must be designed and enabled to use it. It doesn't restrict other programs from using miltiple cores if they're needed. You may get a sligth performance bump by allowing FSX the use of all your cores. Make sure that you turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS since FSX doesn't support it. Finally, 18 fps is pretty typical for perforrmance with your system. Smooth panning, quick scenery updates and no stutters are more important in optimizing FSX.Good Luck,

Intel's Gen 2 processors (i5 and i7) employ Speedstep technology which is an energy saver. Your processor speed is based on two basic variables, the BCLK speed which defaults to 100MHz and the Multiplier which "throttles up" the CPU. My i7-2600K shipped with BCLK=100 and Multiplier=38, this results in a Turbo speed of 3.8GHz. The chip can be conservatively OC'd to 4.6GHz by setting Multiplier=46.0, any higher and you have to adjust power, voltage and BCLK frequency. All this can be searched in detail on any OC web site. You have plenty of horsepower to run FSX and your config. You might try turning off "AffinityMask" which allows FSX to use all of your CPU cores. This chip set feature allows you to "reserve" a processor core for programs that must be designed and enabled to use it. It doesn't restrict other programs from using miltiple cores if they're needed. You may get a sligth performance bump by allowing FSX the use of all your cores. Make sure that you turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS since FSX doesn't support it. Finally, 18 fps is pretty typical for perforrmance with your system. Smooth panning, quick scenery updates and no stutters are more important in optimizing FSX.Good Luck,

Thank you for your answer! One question: What do you mean with "turning off the Affinity Mask"?Cheers

It's a setting in fsx.cfg that tells fsx what cores on your CPU to use for each of its threads.Fiber thread = always first coreMain thread = defaults to first core, but am can be used to shift it over to the second.Texture loading threads = whatever core the main thread is on, plus any remaining cores.It's common to set your affinity mask so the main thread is on the second core. That separates it from the fiber thread & frees up the first core some for whatever else the system might need it for.Affinity mask setting will vary from pc to pc depending on how many physical cores are in your CPU and whether or not you have hyperthreading enabled.Edited for typo, dyac...

Edited January 16, 201214 yr by MrKen

It's a setting in fsx.cfg that tells fsx what cores on your CPU to use for each of its threads.Fiber thread = always first coreMain thread = defaults to first core, but am can be used to shift it over to the second.Texture loading threads = whatever core the main thread is on, plus any remaining cores.It's common to set your affinity mask so the main thread is on the second core. That separates it from the fiber thread & frees up the first core some for whatever else the system might need it for.Affinity mask setting will vary from pc to pc depending on how many physical cores are in your CPU and whether or not you have hyperthreading enabled.Edited for typo, dyac...

I have an I5 2500K. What would you recommend?

Personally I would recommend AffinityMask=14. That puts the main thread on the second core & leaves the last two enabled for texture threads.15 enables all cores, so both the fiber thread and the main thread will both be on the first core.You may have to play with it a bit. It may (possibly) work out that 13 (main thread on first core, 2nd core disabled, textures on 3rd & 4th) actually works better for you. It's worth fiddling, but by & large 14 is usually best for quad cores without hyperthreading.

nvidia inspector has a built in limiter, if you have an nvidia card and the latest beta drivers

David-The effect that AffinityMask has on the performance of FSX is based on so many variables that it is almost impossible to benchmark it. Reserving any core for system support, background operations or FSX add-ons can either increase performance or decrease it, and then only marginally, based on the software and hardware each system uses or runs. Even among systems with "identical" specs there will be a difference in operation based on an impossible mix of parameters that each program, hardware driver or BIOS setting brings to the table.Win7 64 and Vista 64 use Intel core optimization code that meters CPU resources. IMHO, letting Intel and Microsoft "do their thing" works better than trying to second guess them. At any rate you can experiment by either deleting the AffinityMask=xxxx entry in your fsx.cfg file or using AffinityMask=14 which reserves core 0 (the first core). BTW, the choice of cores reserved via AffinityMask has no effect on CPU performance as long as only one core at a time is reserved. Again, AffinityMask only tells an enabled program which core to start on. If the process demands more resources, the chip will allocate them using all CPU resources and cores. Please note that this tweak is only applicable to CPUs with 4 or more cores. Hyperthreading sets up additional virtual cores but FSX is not optimized to use it and the overhead and clock cycles needed to run it outweigh any gain you hope to get.If you do try the tweak,tThe appropriate entries for AffinityMask are:

• AffinityMask=15 //cores on, 1 1 1 1 (default)
• AffinityMask=14 //core0 off, 1 1 1 0
• AffinityMask=13 //core1 off, 1 1 0 1
• AffinityMask=11 //core2 off, 1 0 1 1
• AffinityMask=7 //core3 off, 0 1 1 1

Note that you can reserve more than one core but the performance hit is so substantial that there is really no reason to do it.There are some really good discussions on this topic in the hardware forums. I hope this answers some of your questions.Regards,

Edited January 16, 201214 yr by rickb1293

Using ******* Bojote's FSX tweaker http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html set my affinity mask to 84. I really don't notice any difference in performance compared to not having any affinity mask entry in my .cfg at all.

A word on Speedstep...I'm overclocking my i7920 to 4GHz. I have speedstep on.Works great, saves energy, and clocks back up to 4GHz as soon as I fire up anything that needs it. [Like the sim]I am aware that some recommend it off for overclocking, but I've had it both on and off, and as i say, no issues for me whatsoever with it on. So don't automatically assume you have to have Speedstep off.Frame rate limiters...The latest nVidia driver contains a very effective frame rate limiter, you can access it with nVidia Inspector. It woks perfectly, and no need to mess about with batch files or any of that stuff.