A few days ago the old Nvidia 210 i had running fsx finally decided it didnt want to play nice anymore, and got thrown into the "crap hardware" bin i keep in my basement. I was feeling froggy on what to replace it with and decided to bite the bullet and REALLY do an upgrade and bought a Geforce GTX 550 TI 2GB. Easy install, and divers were already installed so that was a breeze too. Then the problems started. I went to run the windows experience index just to see what it would score and suddenly the computer hard shut down on me. Not a good sign. Did some research on the symptoms and found out it was looking like i had an underpowered system. So I crack the case open and dig out the power supply and discover that it had a 240w power supply! (this is the stock power supply on a HP quad core, and i had no idea it was so low or i would have replaced it a long time ago.) Off i go to the big box and plop down another 60 bucks for a 520w power supply and get everything hooked back up again and fire it up with fingers crossed. All good there. Run the windows experience index again and this time it scores great with a 7.4 on the graphics result.

 

I start FSX and it is running great. Smooth as silk, just drops to 20+fps in those heavy areas, but it is simply great everywhere else. The only sliders i dont have on full are the cloud coverage which is set at "dense" instead of "extremely dense." And the AI is backed down to 40 percent for the airliners and 15 percent for the GA, but i have My Traffic X installed and those settings are about "realistic" settings for that addon. Then i found that new trick with Nvidia inspector and using it to limit the FPS to 30, and ANY hint of stutters are gone now too.

 

Very happy and satisfied with fsx now, but somewhat sad because sometimes half the fun of this hobby is tinkering with getting it to run good, and it doesnt look like i have to do much of that anymore. Maybe i can actually devote more time to flying now.

half the fun of this hobby is tinkering with getting it to run good,

 

It is what makes it hobby. Not much fun not being able to customize,

It is what makes it hobby. Not much fun not being able to customize,

 

Yeah, I'm half purposely not upgrading my system cause I enjoy tweaking, installing addons and testing more than the actual flying. lol