I was one of those that gave up on FSX. I could always get good fps but the stutters while turning completely boggled me and made me toss aside FSX as a software blunder that never should have been. It continued to intrigue me why it had such a huge following, though. I knew that not everybody had $5000 rigs that could gobble up FSX, so people must be getting performance out of more mainstream hardware. So I started combing the internet for all the tweaks. After months of trying this and trying that it came down to one major tweak that made all the difference, "Bufferpools". I won't say what I set it at because I want to avoid starting arguments about why it is wrong, but it worked for me. So not only do I get high fps now I also hardly ever see a stutter. I thought I had the turning stutters solved when I used Ramdisk to load my sound files, this only solved the small stutter I would get when the ATC would start "talking". The real revelation came when I started playing with bufferpools and now everything is silky smooth. I only use default FSX however without addons, anything added seems to induce small stutters again, and I am a stickler for smooth frames. I have autogen and scenery set at very dense, airline and GA traffic at 100, road traffic 25, leisure boats and ferries at 35 I use no airport vehicle traffic(It kills me at large hubs) I know that would be a deal breaker for some, but I would rather see planes at smooth frames than see luggage carts . I use my driver to set AA and anisotropic filter. I use the vsync tweak also. My weather settings are maximum except clouds render to seventy miles which I change to 90 at high altitude cruise. Textures are at maximum default and mesh complexity is at 100. No default bloom, I use Enb which I have tweaked not to oversaturate or cause blurriness(It can look really good If you take sometime to mess with it, even at night and use a good tweaked sun halo, which took me some time to find.) So after months of trying every tweak out there. It all came down to a few things for me, bufferpools, ramdisk for sound, not going to high in settings, and using gamebooster to kill off some background processes. Now it's like a whole new world has opened up for me in fsx, I thoroughly enjoy using it now, it really is a beautiful sim. I just wanted to say thanks to the people on here that I read posts from that even if I don't reply, have helped me figure this stuff out. Also Nick, if he reads this, for his guide that helped give me a baseline for bufferpools. It really does take some time to figure out what works for you and what doesn't, but it was kinda fun.

Default FSX with no addons is really not worth mentioning...IMO. For most modern machines that hardly poses a challenge,

Default FSX with no addons is really not worth mentioning...IMO. For most modern machines that hardly poses a challenge,

Maybe for someone that has an OC'ed I7 with SLI high end video cards it's not. The internet is full of people like me that have above recommended hardware but it still gives them a problem. Also what is smooth to someone else isn't to me. I've seen other rigs running fsx whose owners say are playing it flawlessy to see what their secret was only to see stutters everywhere. Anyways the post was only meant to say thanks for the advice I've seen on here.

Maybe for someone that has an OC'ed I7 with SLI high end video cards it's not. The internet is full of people like me that have above recommended hardware but it still gives them a problem. Also what is smooth to someone else isn't to me. I've seen other rigs running fsx whose owners say are playing it flawlessy to see what their secret was only to see stutters everywhere. Anyways the post was only meant to say thanks for the advice I've seen on here.

Glad you're happy with your laptop!Vanilla FSX is not really an issue for modern low end PCs (laptops) like yours. Really, it's not. That's the only point Vincent was trying to get across. (but I don't think it's relevant to your post!)

Edited March 4, 201214 yr by ZachLW

meant to say thanks for the advice I've seen on here.

Hey,I really appreciate reading what you had to say about your computer and how you tuned it to run FSX the way you like. Now that you are writing in here I hope you stick around and become a part of the community. It's a helpful and friendly bunch around here. Good to see you.kind regards,

Default FSX with no addons is really not worth mentioning...IMO. For most modern machines that hardly poses a challenge,

Default FSX ran horrible on my computer without the bufferpool tweak, so it is still a challenge to get FSX working properly. What does 70-80 fps mean if it stutters, skips and flashes... We need FS11. I know plenty non hardcore simmers that has given up on FSX because of all the hazzle.

For me, two areas seemed to have most impact on stutterning.usepools=0 (I use it just about ok with a 512 meg videocard, but it really works best with cards of 1 gig and higher) - gives big performance improvements too.affinitymask=14 (is a real stutter solver as it uses only cores 1, 2 & 3 for fsx, leaving core 0 free to deal with background processes.Benefits can also be gained through tweaks inthe following areas, though tend tobe extremely system specific:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTUPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMITFIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTIONIAN

Nice post and welcome to the forums Stoli!The forums here at Avsim, contain a wealth of good information from some very knowledgeable users, and I have found that extremely beneficial and really helps improve my enjoyment of flying FSX.I myself run FSX with a few add-ons, that really changed what I view outside the window - for the better, much better.FS Genesis MeshUTXGEXREX2I have a pretty decent system horsepower wise, certainly not the best by today's standards, but pretty decent. But of course, FSX has this knack of being able to bring pretty much any system to it's knees, if we ask too much of it.But just a few simple tweaks, has really made a difference for me. I rarely see any stutters anymore, bout the only time is if I am in some heavy weather with my REX HD clouds, and mainly if viewing from the external view. Framerates stay pretty decent for me as well.Probably the two big things that helped me were - like you, Bufferpools - I actually made mine 0, and the performance increase especially at the airports really improved for me. The other thing that really helped on my visuals, was adding the HIGHMEMFIX=1 statement to the top of my [GRAPHICS] section. And finally, following NickN's guide, for the most part, in setting up and using Nvidia Inspector to handle my graphics cards settings, and using the external fps limiter set to 30 fps in Inspector , with unlimited set in FSX.I did some other minor things, like reducing the max amount of auotgen displayed through the fsx.cfg file and couple of other items I don't remember off the top of my head.Overall though, I now find FSX so much more pleasing, both from a visual and a performance standpoint. And to date <knocking on wood>, I have yet to have a CTD or system freeze, with FSX.Have fun!

Edited March 4, 201214 yr by dburne

Thanks for the welcomes. I was watching a few videos and looked at a few other posts and it seems that the rare tiny jitters I see now are pretty much the best I can hope for from FSX. I mean the videos I watched were from guys with OC'ed first gen I7's and way better video cards than mine and they seemed to have the same tiny rare jitters also, but they were using lots of addons. My little lappy actually can run many new games very well, without tweaking, FSX has been the first program I've had to put this much effort into. Flight actually runs very well on it. So looking at what other people can get out of it, I am very pleased with what I have now. Thanks again.

Edited March 6, 201214 yr by Stoli151