I'm struggling trying to get decent frame rates on my system with FSX. Oddly enough, a friend of mine who has almost identical hardware gets much higher frame rates than I do.But first things first.My system (the important bits):

• Windows 7 Pro x64
• Core 2 Quad Q9550 (12M Cache, 2.83 GHz x 4, 1333 MHz FSB)
• 8GB 1066MHz DDR2 RAM
• eVGA GTX 570

My friend's system has the same processor, but 4GB RAM instead of 8GB and a (much) older NVidia card. I think it's a series 9 or even 7 card. Either way, not in the same ballparks as the GTX 570. Also, he's running XP x86 while I'm running Win7 x64.He has his frame rate limited to 26fps and is actually getting 26 fps at all times. I on the other hand, get with the same settings (graphics, scenery, realism, traffic, etc) only 8 fps. Quite a big difference! When I use the Automated Tweaking and Tuning Tool My frame rate increases to about 18 fps. Although much better, still not even close to my friend's fps without any tweaks.So, anyone any ideas?

Edited March 2, 201214 yr by Zippy1970

You get 8FPS at the same location as your friend? Just a detail actually, 8FPS is indeed low, but there are so many factors that can cause your problem, it's next to impossible to pinpoint the cause of your problem. Could be drivers, could be fsx.cfg settings, could be settings of PCIE in BIOS, can actually be almost hundred of reasons. Revert back to original fsx.cfg, check how many sections of this[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570.0]are in fsx.cfg file. In case there are more than one, delete all but one entry.Try to fly a mission named Sitka approach and report what are your frames there.Uuuups, I did it again - Zippy we were not supposed to be here - there is special forum for your kind of problems - sorry once more admins.

Edited March 2, 201214 yr by adr179

Uuuups, I did it again - Zippy we were not supposed to be here - there is special forum for your kind of problems - sorry once more admins.

I had read the sticky before posting and this is not hardware/driver related. There's nothing wrong with my hardware, nor is there anything wrong with my drivers. Sure, the wrong drivers can give/take a few frames per second, but not cut it to 15% of what you should get.This thread is about tweaking FSX which is exactly what the sticky says this section is for. So yeah, I think we are supposed to be here. :)

You get 8FPS at the same location as your friend?

Yes, same location, same airplane, same settings. He gets 26+ fps, I get ~8 fps. I do have a second graphics card in my system (3 monitors), but when comparing his system with mine, I only use one monitor. So I actually disable the second graphics card and two monitors.

Edited March 2, 201214 yr by Zippy1970

Then, first of all take the second card out, use one display, clear the graphic cards section in fsx.cfg and see what you get.

Sorry for the late reply. Had some other things to do in the mean time (like work ;)).I wanted to know if the difference in FPS (between my friend's FSX and mine) was caused by the OS. He is running XP x86 while I am running Win7 x64. My system is dual boot (it's actually octuple boot, but that's another story) so I booted in XP and installed FSX there. I got much higher framerates. Where I got 8 fps in Win7, I got 20+ now. That pointed to the OS being the culprit but just to be sure, I copied FSX.cfg over from the XP partition to the Win7 partition and sure enough, now I got the same higher framerates in Win7 too. So apparently, something got messed up in my original FSX.cfg. I haven't compared the two yet so I don't know what the difference is yet but that will be the next step.Anyway, so I took the FSX.cfg and ran that through the Tweaking and Tuning tool. That gave me quite a big fps increase with my old FSX.cfg so I was expecting to see some increase here too.Nothing. None whatsoever. For some strange reason, the tweaked FSX.cfg did not give me any increase at all - which is pretty strange to say the least.So next step is to figure out what the difference is between my old FSX.cfg and the one created in XP. And why running it through the Tweaking and Tuning tool give me no increase in fps at all.

Edited March 3, 201214 yr by Zippy1970

Bojote's tweaks are more beneficial on some systems and some users are reporting no gain whatsoever. Also be beware, displaying outside views on multiple monitors will reduce your FPS significantly, higher resolutions also.So if you are getting frames you'd expect from your hardware, I don't see why you'd want to fun your fsx.cfg at automatic tweaking site. I have more than one machine that's capable of running FS X and never noticed any performance degradation on Win7 compared to XP, so it must be something else that causes your problems and makes such a big difference in Win7.

Personally I'd not tweak anything right off the bat except for one entry...Backup your current .cfg (just save the file to something like fsx.cfg.bak) and next time FSX starts it will write a new one. When it has done that just add this...[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1When that is done, run FSX and see how it is. It will probably suck. What you need next is to setup a profile with nvidia Inspector per these simforums settings:http://www.simforums.com/forums/fsx-and-nhancer-settings-for-new-drivers-updated_topic36586.htmlFSX actually runs better with higher settings.

Edited March 3, 201214 yr by ryanbatcund

Sorry for the very late reply. Work got in the way of the fun stuff again. :)Anyway, I deleted the FSX.cfg file and let FSX create a new one. I tested my framerates and I got on average about 28 fps. One thing I forgot to mention is that I'm running a TripleHead setup, so after setting

WideViewAspect=True

I tested framerate again. Now I was getting only 20 fps. So this is what I did subsequently - measured framerates after the changes are in bold:

1. Added HIGHMEMFIX=1 -> 20 fps
2. Made all the recommended changes with NVidia Inspector -> 20 fps
3. Set Filtering to Trilinear -> 20 fps
4. Added AffinityMask=14 -> 20 fps
5. Set Filtering to Anisotropic -> 20 fps
6. Added [bufferPools] RejectThreshold=131072 -> 20 fps
7. Set TextureMaxLoad=12 -> 20 fps

As you can see, not a single change made any difference to the framerate.Is this what's to be expected from my system? Is FSX really such a resource hog?

Zippy, it's going to be very very hard for us to pinpoint where the problem lies.You said more than one time that your settings are all the same, so there is not much to go on here.Something is wrong.Now, how can we know what's wrong when you already said you tried everything?Answer/do these:What CPU does your friend have?Run slimdrivers driversupdate and see if you have drivers that you should update.Check for the newest chipset drivers.Install all windows updates (make sure!).Make sure there are no processes running taking CPU cycles away (process explorer here is a great help, eventually process monitor)If the CPU has HT, disable it.And try using Usepools=0 (ONLY that in the BUFFERPOOLS section, no other entries) + HIGHMEMFIX + appropriate Affinitymask.

Also is your friend using TH2G?Running FSX across 3 screens lowers frames significantly... at least from what I've seen my coworkers run...

Sorry for the very late reply. Work got in the way of the fun stuff again. :)Anyway, I deleted the FSX.cfg file and let FSX create a new one. I tested my framerates and I got on average about 28 fps. One thing I forgot to mention is that I'm running a TripleHead setup, so after setting

WideViewAspect=True

I tested framerate again. Now I was getting only 20 fps. So this is what I did subsequently - measured framerates after the changes are in bold:

1. Added HIGHMEMFIX=1 -> 20 fps
2. Made all the recommended changes with NVidia Inspector -> 20 fps
3. Set Filtering to Trilinear -> 20 fps
4. Added AffinityMask=14 -> 20 fps
5. Set Filtering to Anisotropic -> 20 fps
6. Added [bufferPools] RejectThreshold=131072 -> 20 fps
7. Set TextureMaxLoad=12 -> 20 fps

As you can see, not a single change made any difference to the framerate.Is this what's to be expected from my system? Is FSX really such a resource hog?

Are you sure you're locked framerate isn't set to 20?