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How to improve my specs?

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Hello everyone. May I first say that I am not particularly unhappy with my computer, and it is not too old at all (i assembled it this summer). My FPS in FSX run pretty good at 25 FPS most of the time. But, there are still some places where I seem to get only around 10-12 FPS (Airports, high traffic, etc..). I know that this is to be expected, but is there any way i can improve my computer to smooth out FSX even more? What I mean is, are there any parts that I can replace, which upgrades would count towards FPS, etc... I would experiment myself, but my knowledge of hardware is a little limited (I assembled the computer with the help of a friend). Any ideas are appreciated! Here are my specs. By the way, my FPS is locked at 25 (Setting it to unlimited causes horrible stutters).operating SystemMS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1CPUIntel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz 106 °FSandy Bridge 32nm TechnologyRAM8.00 GB DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-28)MotherboardMSI P67A-G45 (MS-7673) (SOCKET 0) 108 °FGraphicsE2350 (1920x1080@60Hz)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 TiHard Drives488GB Western Digital WDC WD5002AALX-00J37A0 ATA Device (SATA) 83 °FOptical DrivesASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA DeviceAudioRealtek High Definition Audio

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You've got pretty god specs and any upgrades would have minor impact on fps. Maybe you'd get 4-5 fps extra by replaing your harddrives with fast SSDs and overclock your CPU to 4-4,5 GHz.


Simmerhead - Making the virtual skies unsafe since 1987! 

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Hello everyone. May I first say that I am not particularly unhappy with my computer, and it is not too old at all (i assembled it this summer). My FPS in FSX run pretty good at 25 FPS most of the time. But, there are still some places where I seem to get only around 10-12 FPS (Airports, high traffic, etc..). I know that this is to be expected, but is there any way i can improve my computer to smooth out FSX even more? What I mean is, are there any parts that I can replace, which upgrades would count towards FPS, etc... I would experiment myself, but my knowledge of hardware is a little limited (I assembled the computer with the help of a friend). Any ideas are appreciated! Here are my specs. By the way, my FPS is locked at 25 (Setting it to unlimited causes horrible stutters).operating SystemMS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1CPUIntel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz 106 °FSandy Bridge 32nm TechnologyRAM8.00 GB DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-28)MotherboardMSI P67A-G45 (MS-7673) (SOCKET 0) 108 °FGraphicsE2350 (1920x1080@60Hz)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 TiHard Drives488GB Western Digital WDC WD5002AALX-00J37A0 ATA Device (SATA) 83 °FOptical DrivesASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA DeviceAudioRealtek High Definition Audio
*Overclock*. Upgrading anything on your system besides the cooler (what are you using?) will have absolutely no impact on frames in your situation. You will see huge performance gains with that CPU running at 4.5GHz.
Maybe you'd get 4-5 fps extra by replaing your harddrives with fast SSDs
No. Please don't lead people to believe an SSD will improve FPS in any way what-so-ever. There will literally be no impact on FPS with the addition of an SSD. Only better load times.

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Guest jahman
you'd get 4-5 fps extra by replaing your harddrives with fast SSDs and overclock your CPU to 4-4,5 GHz
And 10 extra FPS by going to 4.5 -5.0 GHz (well qwithin the reach of your CPU with an adequate cooler like the Corsair Hydro 100.
106°F??? What?
That's 41 ºC, plenty of room to OC.Cheers,- jahman.

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Hello everyone. May I first say that I am not particularly unhappy with my computer, and it is not too old at all (i assembled it this summer). My FPS in FSX run pretty good at 25 FPS most of the time. But, there are still some places where I seem to get only around 10-12 FPS (Airports, high traffic, etc..). I know that this is to be expected, but is there any way i can improve my computer to smooth out FSX even more? What I mean is, are there any parts that I can replace, which upgrades would count towards FPS, etc... I would experiment myself, but my knowledge of hardware is a little limited (I assembled the computer with the help of a friend). Any ideas are appreciated! Here are my specs. By the way, my FPS is locked at 25 (Setting it to unlimited causes horrible stutters).operating SystemMS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1CPUIntel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz 106 °FSandy Bridge 32nm TechnologyRAM8.00 GB DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-28)MotherboardMSI P67A-G45 (MS-7673) (SOCKET 0) 108 °FGraphicsE2350 (1920x1080@60Hz)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 TiHard Drives488GB Western Digital WDC WD5002AALX-00J37A0 ATA Device (SATA) 83 °FOptical DrivesASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA DeviceAudioRealtek High Definition Audio
Hiya Hamoody, first off let me just agree with Zach and say Simmerhead, with respect, you shouldn't post stuff about SSD without knowing the realities. An SSD wil NOT increase framerates, an SSD will NOT help blurries, SSD's will NOT help stuttering, what an SSD wil do is load the actual sim far faster than you could have hoped for! So instead of waiting maybe five minutes for FSX to load it could load in 30 seconds! A worthwhile upgrade in my opinion, but you will have to put your own worth on that one. The other benefit is, there is never any ambiguity regarding having to defragment the drive because of messed files, as they are solid state.You have a rig that is top of the pile for performance, and the only thing that you need to do to get the absolute best out of it is to overclock to 4.6 to 5ghz. Which can be done with ease with the SB CPUs, providing you know how to OC of course.With respect to guys talking about extra frames, what does an extra 10 frames mean. Does it mean an extra 10 frames above a framerate of 50 when in an external view, which is an increase of 20% or an increase of 10 frames when sat at an airport in the VC with 20 frames, which effectively would be an increase in peformance of 50%!! I don't think so.Jahman is right about the framerate increase if you OC to about 4.5, however to say it would be 10 frames is a little ambiguous. I would prefer to say you'd see about a 20% increase, that way you can work out your framerate with different flying scenarios.You are on the money to fix your framerates at 25, absolutely. I have mine set at 26 after many days of tweaking. Some guys get a better flying experience by running unlocked, but I have never found that has worked on any of my rigs. A locked framerate will release CPU performance for texture and scenery loading. You seem to have your finger on the button from what you say in your post.So, to summarise, as has already been said, the best way to increase framerate is to OC your CPU. However, I always like to think of the term performance to also include smoothness. Although smoothness usually goes hand in hand with extra frames, this is not always the case, as the extra frames can simply disguise stuttering to one degree or another. The other thing to consider with great interest is tweaking the cfg. Once again, a properly tweaked cfg can return huge benefits in the way of both framerates and smoothness. With a correctly tweaked cfg. you could see an increase in framerates of 20%. The other thing that can have a dramatic effect on performance, and something that is often overlooked are the FSX control sliders. Untick a couple of boxes, drop a couple of sliders by a notch and once again you can see some surprising results.If you would like to post some screenies of your FSX control panel, we could check that things are correct in that department before going any further. Also please reply with what aircraft you fly the most. Cheers.

Howard
MSI Mag B650 Tomahawk MB, Ryzen7-7800X3D CPU@5ghz, Arctic AIO II 360 cooler, Nvidia RTX3090 GPU, 32gb DDR5@6000Mhz, SSD/2Tb+SSD/500Gb+OS, Corsair 1000W PSU, Philips BDM4350UC 43" 4K IPS, MFG Crosswinds, TQ6 Throttle, Fulcrum One Yoke
My FlightSim YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@skyhigh776

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Hiya Hamoody, first off let me just agree with Zach and say Simmerhead, with respect, you shouldn't post stuff about SSD without knowing the realities. An SSD wil NOT increase framerates, an SSD will NOT help blurries, SSD's will NOT help stuttering, what an SSD wil do is load the actual sim far faster than you could have hoped for! So instead of waiting maybe five minutes for FSX to load it could load in 30 seconds! A worthwhile upgrade in my opinion, but you will have to put your own worth on that one. The other benefit is, there is never any ambiguity regarding having to defragment the drive because of messed files, as they are solid state.You have a rig that is top of the pile for performance, and the only thing that you need to do to get the absolute best out of it is to overclock to 4.6 to 5ghz. Which can be done with ease with the SB CPUs, providing you know how to OC of course.With respect to guys talking about extra frames, what does an extra 10 frames mean. Does it mean an extra 10 frames above a framerate of 50 when in an external view, which is an increase of 20% or an increase of 10 frames when sat at an airport in the VC with 20 frames, which effectively would be an increase in peformance of 50%!! I don't think so.Jahman is right about the framerate increase if you OC to about 4.5, however to say it would be 10 frames is a little ambiguous. I would prefer to say you'd see about a 20% increase, that way you can work out your framerate with different flying scenarios.You are on the money to fix your framerates at 25, absolutely. I have mine set at 26 after many days of tweaking. Some guys get a better flying experience by running unlocked, but I have never found that has worked on any of my rigs. A locked framerate will release CPU performance for texture and scenery loading. You seem to have your finger on the button from what you say in your post.So, to summarise, as has already been said, the best way to increase framerate is to OC your CPU. However, I always like to think of the term performance to also include smoothness. Although smoothness usually goes hand in hand with extra frames, this is not always the case, as the extra frames can simply disguise stuttering to one degree or another. The other thing to consider with great interest is tweaking the cfg. Once again, a properly tweaked cfg can return huge benefits in the way of both framerates and smoothness. With a correctly tweaked cfg. you could see an increase in framerates of 20%. The other thing that can have a dramatic effect on performance, and something that is often overlooked are the FSX control sliders. Untick a couple of boxes, drop a couple of sliders by a notch and once again you can see some surprising results.If you would like to post some screenies of your FSX control panel, we could check that things are correct in that department before going any further. Also please reply with what aircraft you fly the most. Cheers.
Thank you very much for all of the detailed advice. Here are some screen shots of my control boards. Tell me if you need more. As for the aircraft I fly the most, it would have to be the FSS SAAB 340. But it seems like I get the same FS results no matter what type of aircraft I fly (Even with FPS intensive ones such as the PMDG J41 and CLS A330/A340 series). By the way, would I need any extra cooling equipment before I try to overclock?rf.jpgUntitled.jpg

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Hamoody, we essentially have the same rig. As others have said, OC that mamajama! I have my i7 at 4.5 right now and am hoping to save up and get some better cooling to push it to 5 at some point. I'm not an OC'ing expert, but I've learned that if you do, go through the bios and don't leave HT on. Its benefit to FSX is marginal if any, and it increases temps. A couple of questions... how much fooling around with the cfg file have you done? There may be some tweaks you can apply that *might* help, but be careful going down that route as they can introduce some instability as well. Also, check out this link - http://www.simforums.com/forums/nhancer-settings-for-new-drivers-updated-v1932_topic36586.html. This is a little old but still helps.I went through a tweak fest a couple of days ago and I discovered the single biggest limitation to performance on my machine was vsync (that is, having it on). I have one scenario that I use for testing, which puts the QW 757 right above JFK flying toward Manhattan at dusk with LaGuardia visible. UTX, GEX, REX, etc all active. With vsync on I was seemingly stuck at about 19 - 23 fps. Off, it jumped to 29 - 32. There is a little bit of tearing but it was worth the smoothness. Good luck with the tweaking and testing!

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Thank you very much for all of the detailed advice. Here are some screen shots of my control boards. Tell me if you need more. As for the aircraft I fly the most, it would have to be the FSS SAAB 340. But it seems like I get the same FS results no matter what type of aircraft I fly (Even with FPS intensive ones such as the PMDG J41 and CLS A330/A340 series). By the way, would I need any extra cooling equipment before I try to overclock?
Hi Hamoody,OK, firstly. AVG antivirus, it is a very subjective matter what AV someone uses. you can only be guided by what people say. There are good ones and not so good ones. However, all I can say is I was recommended AVG free version and I have been using it on two office machines for the past 12 years and on my current FSX rig for the past 2 years and in that time NOT ONCE have I had any issues. That is all I will say on the matter.As for your settings, you have a similar rig to me, so I have posted mine here.NB: A couple of points. NEVER copy someone elses settings and then forget about things expecting them to deliver exactly the same results as the other person. this can happen but more so that your settings will need tweaking. Tweaking your cfg entails making ONE change at a time and testing in between each change. Ensure your test scenario is ALWAYS the same. Same airport, same scenery config, same weather everything. the best way is to save a flight and call it your test flight and then every time you want to test a tweak simply return to the test flight. I also write down pertinent info at the end of ewach test flight. Anyway, here are my FSX settings.762Capture.jpg325Capture2.jpg174Capture3.jpg176Capture4.jpg571Capture5.jpgYOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM IS YOUR AUTOGEN SETTING. now this setting is PURELY subjective. Some fellas prefer extra autogen at the expense of frames, smoothness and texture loading. I personally prefer textures to load quickly and for a smooth FSX experience. I have attained this in the NGX by locking frames at 26, which is (almost) as smooth as butter. why 26? only through testing and so forth, you could try 25, not a lot of difference. When flying in GA I have an autogen of very dense, once again I can attain this through lower locked framerates. So these setting of mine remain constant except for the Autogen and the traffic settings. If I am flying the NGX I will have airlines set at 30% and if flying GA I will have only GA set at 30%. This is only if you have addon AI traffic like Ultimate Traffic or My Traffic X. if you only have FSX AI then I suggest you reduce this setting to 20%. Again purely perosnal, I hear some guys running at 100% ??? Not sure how 'cos that will place a lot of unnecessary load on other aspects in FSX. DO NOT have road traffic set at more than 15%Have you got Nvidia Inspector. If not I suggest you do a quick search on Google and install it. Let me know either way and I'll set you some guidelines.As for a cooler for overclocking, yes you are correct, you will need a replacement cooler for your CPU if you are going to OC, which to be frank is a necessity if you want to exploit the full potential of FSX. There are plenty to choose from. One thing to avoid is spending more than is necessary. Because the new SB processors run cooler than their predcessors it is not necessary to go water cooled, but a simple, well reviewed cooler like the Hyper 212 plus is more than adequate and cheap.As for your cfg. you should visit http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html and allow this tool to tweak your cfg automatically. Once again, you should see a big improvement, but before you do so. Copy my FSX slider settings and take on board my advice and let us know how you get on before going down the cfg tweak route.EDIT: It is important to only tweak your cfg once you have a well adjusted FSX in the CP and you have a stable overclock, only then should you consider tweaking the cfg. If you don't intend to OC then by all means try out the Venetubo tweak.Let us know how you get on. Cheers.PS: Ensure you pay attention to the unticked boxes etc. in the FSX CP, not only the sliders. Cheers. Edited by Rockliffe

Howard
MSI Mag B650 Tomahawk MB, Ryzen7-7800X3D CPU@5ghz, Arctic AIO II 360 cooler, Nvidia RTX3090 GPU, 32gb DDR5@6000Mhz, SSD/2Tb+SSD/500Gb+OS, Corsair 1000W PSU, Philips BDM4350UC 43" 4K IPS, MFG Crosswinds, TQ6 Throttle, Fulcrum One Yoke
My FlightSim YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@skyhigh776

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Sorry folks. I'm not going to argue about SSD impact on fps and stand corrected. I should have split the O/C and SSD into two sentences. To me an SSD is worth it's money because of the faster load times and no need to defrag. Also, it makes Windows and virtual memory work quicker in the background.As for overclocking be sure you know what you're doing. There is very little to gain from 4,5 GHz to 5 GHz in terms of fps, but very much to lose in terms of destroying your hardware. Be sure you know how to monitor temperatures and test stability if you overclock.


Simmerhead - Making the virtual skies unsafe since 1987! 

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