hey guys,

 

OK. My specs are in my sigs. Something weird is going on.

 

So, I finish building my new rig last week. I built the rig with W7 Pro on SSD1. The SSD is a Crucial M4 SATA3 6Gb/s model. It has had good reviews so far.

 

Anyway, Windows installs fine. It boots from cold in around 20 seconds. I am happy

 

Originally, and because I couldn't wait (coz I'm too impatient!) I took a Raptor 400 from work and installed FSX onto it. I installed all of my ORBX sceneries and did a few limited tweaks from Word Not Allowed's great new tweaking guide. I was only using BP=0 and HIGHMEMFIX=1 at first.

 

It ran like a dream. I was immediately aware of why ppl are saying that the 3930K is a good CPU for FSX. I always limit to 30FPS, and the smoothness was really great. At this point, I am running the "stock" overclock that the board offers when you boot it up (3.8Ghz as opposed to 3.2) I didn't change any settings in the BIOS (even reset it to make sure) so, this is all great, and I large it up about how great my new system is.

 

So, I then get my second SSD through the post and do a flat file copy from the Raptor drive to the second SSD. The copy fails in the middle, so I run the Raptor through a disk checker and it has a bad sector. I fix the drive and finish the copy. I re-installed ORBX to make sure.

 

Over the next day or two I mess around with various bits and pieces like the cfg and tweaking the O/C settings (remember FSX was set up with very minimal O/C settings) and get it stable at 4.7 (3 hours on 6x threads in Prime95 with no problems at all and a pretty stable 65 degrees throughout) My grafx card is stock no O/C for now.

 

Then something weird happens: At some point I have done something stupid, because I go back into FSX and guess what? My performance is awful. I am getting huge jumps in FR from 15-30 and back again. When I pan around it is super-smooth for a second or two then jerky as all hell, then back again..like something is "throttling" it.

 

This carries on in or out of an ORBX area, although the ORBX trees do seem to make a big difference. I am totally confused by this and start panicking that I have bad RAM or some other hideous disaster..

 

Anyway, I am in the process of a total rebuild (of everything - Windows, FSX, the lot) from scratch. I have reset my BIOS (why does my Rampage "preset" an O/C of 3.8 even when it has been BIOS reset?) and I will report back. I don't expect an answer to these problems now, especially as I am doing a full rebuild, and any config suggestions will go unused for now at least..I was and am wondering why this might have happened?

 

What can cause FSX to suddenly do this? As I say, it is the smoothest I have _ever_ seen FSX, and was rock-solid at 30FPS, but then this weird semi-jerk thing that appeared after a day or so of messing around has got me stumped..

 

I know it isn't the SSD as SSD's cannot affect FSX performance per say (apart from loading times etc - which are amazing btw)

 

Any ideas?

 

I will have finished my total rebuild by late tonight so I will report back. I should have Fraps'd it but I didn't even put Fraps on it yet..

 

Thanks guys

 

jake

Off the top of my head

 

- CPU overheating

- GPU overheating

- GPU in adaptive power management mode instead of maximum performance

 

It really could be anything, and the only approach I know for this kind of issues is an elimination process. Also try to remember what was that you changed lately, by the time the problem started: settings you changed, software /addons / drivers you installed... overclock... anything

 

Reinstalling would be the last resort

Thanks for the reply, Dazz...I have been thinking, whilst at work, that I would do exactly that: i.e. not reinstall Windoze. W7 is working fine. I have already uninstalled FSX, as I want to do an FSmark11 test with a fresh build, so I'll just be re-installing that (and 15Gb of ORBX scenry LOL)

 

EDIT: as for overheating: CPU never above 65deg (40 when not O/C and in FSX)..not O/C'ing my grafx card so no heat issues there..I've been monitoring it for this very reason..I have a very good liquid cooler and a great new case (CoolerMaster 620 or something..big white thing that lools like a stormtrooper)

 

best

 

jake

And once again I stumble upon another person that is having these stutters with his LGA 2011 system.

Hi Arjen,

 

But the thing is, when I first set it up, with FSX on the Raptor it was truly awesome. I then did something, whether hardware or software related, I really don't know, that cocked it up. For at least an hour and a half it was a revelation..I used a tiny bit of tweak, and then did a whole load of stuff - like some newbie with his first PC, and borked it..I will resurrect it; I am running a few passes of Memtest just to reassure myself I don't have a bad stick of RAM that my O/C tweaking may have exposed, and then I'm going to reinstall FSX and see where we are with various O/C and non-O/C profiles and stock FSX..

 

But as for the LGA2011 stutter issue, do you think it could be the memory controller? Quad-channel? Intel mobo drivers perhaps? Are there a lot of these issues? I wasn't aware..

 

J

My bet is a) bad SATA cable, bad SATA-drive, drive controller or firmware c) bad mobo SATA controller. Everything points to the SSD as poor performance started after moving your stuff there. Check if your drive has new firmware and update it. Several SATA-drives have strange problems. See also BIOS updates for motherboard.

 

I'm pretty certain, that problem isn't your cpu or memory, but something is wrong when system is making reads from your SSD. This may not show on desktop. And the 3.8GHz is the max default turbo speed for 3930K.

When Win 7 was repeatedly trying to access the bad sector on that Raptor, it may have reverted the disk access mode to PIO mode instead of DMA mode for the HDD controller. Once that's done, the only way I know of to get it to revert back to DMA is to uninstall the HDD controller driver in device manager and let Windows re-detect and reinstall it. In PIO mode, the sort of nasty slow lag effects you describe can happen.

 

Anyway, I recommend you google PIO mode and check that out as a possibility.

 

Edit: Here's a MS knowledgebase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/ Though the article is for Win XP/Server2003, the reg key referenced for the CRC error count still works in Vista/W7, and presumably this might still apply.

I think it's simply the LGA 2011 platform. Back in 2006 FSX was not designed for CPU's that are as big as a big cracker, with 6 cores. The simple answer is, FSX doesn't know how to handle these ultra-modern hardware.

If still have FS98 here, I tried it on my PC a while ago. Why can't I get more than 5 FPS? Because FS98 was not designed for this kind of hardware so it doesn't know how to handle it. Same for FSX now. I've said a couple of times that we are now approaching the point where a hardware upgrade is actually gonna be a downgrade.

 

You are not the only one with stutters on his LGA 2011 system, I've seen everyone single LGA 2011 user complaining about stutters in FSX, although FPS is really good.

 

Maybe you can try disabling 2 cores, turn off HT, and remove two memory sticks and try again in FSX. In this way you've got more like a quadcore + dual channel system. If the stutters stop you know what the problem is.

 

Also the affinitymask setting could be wrong. I know pretty much nothing about binary codes so I can't give you any advice on this but I heard 1344 might work on 6 cores with HT off. Not sure though, but worth a try.

I think it's simply the LGA 2011 platform. Back in 2006 FSX was not designed for CPU's that are as big as a big cracker, with 6 cores. The simple answer is, FSX doesn't know how to handle these ultra-modern hardware.

If still have FS98 here, I tried it on my PC a while ago. Why can't I get more than 5 FPS? Because FS98 was not designed for this kind of hardware so it doesn't know how to handle it. Same for FSX now. I've said a couple of times that we are now approaching the point where a hardware upgrade is actually gonna be a downgrade.

 

You are not the only one with stutters on his LGA 2011 system, I've seen everyone single LGA 2011 user complaining about stutters in FSX, although FPS is really good.

 

Maybe you can try disabling 2 cores, turn off HT, and remove two memory sticks and try again in FSX. In this way you've got more like a quadcore + dual channel system. If the stutters stop you know what the problem is.

 

Also the affinitymask setting could be wrong. I know pretty much nothing about binary codes so I can't give you any advice on this but I heard 1344 might work on 6 cores with HT off. Not sure though, but worth a try.

If all that would be true, you would have poor performance also with "regular" SBs. Oh wait, even more people experience stutters and poor performance in their SBs also, I can read of it forums all the time!

 

Stop the nonsense.

 

FS98 is wholly different thing. At the time of it's release we didn't even have NT kernel based operating systems, but monolithic hybrid 16/32-bit Windowses with MSDOS bootloaders. And even with your example the OS is the topmost factor, not the hardware, because we are x86 compatible still. If you could throw Win98 in and find appropriate drivers for it, FS98 would run nicely on your modern computer. With FSX, we are still using the same family of OS and are still 32-bit compatible with software. Yes, some older Win XP based software has problems running in modern 64-bit Windowses, but that is also OS and driver based, not platform.

 

OP also said, that his FSX worked flawlessly until he made some changes and everything points to that something is wrong with either SSD or HD. But you are ignoring it because you have made up your mind that it must be the platform.

With stutters I mean real stutters. Z68 systems don't really have the longer stutters, more like continiously happening very small hiccups. Not stutters.

Jake,

 

After you get it working smoothly. Make a back up. This way you can always go back to the point where it was smooth.

I run an LGA 2011 system, and have no stutters. I have HT enabled for other applications, and do not use any Affinity Mask settings. while many are reporting problems, it is not true that "every" LGA 2011 user has these issues. Maybe it's just those that post happen to be those with troubles?

With stutters I mean real stutters. Z68 systems don't really have the longer stutters, more like continiously happening very small hiccups. Not stutters.

Whatever stutters you like, the fault is not on the a. SB-E processor b. X79 chipset. Period. If it would, we'd have same problems with SBs or the SBE platform would have a defect causing poor performance with almost every other application as well. Defect in this case may be almost anywhere else in the hardware, like the faulty things I and some others mentioned before or some other broken piece of hardware on SATA or PCIE buses causing problems to hardware. It may be missing drivers or messed up Windows, although in this case it is very unlikely as i understand this is fresh install.

 

FSX forums are full of good meaning people giving all sorts of meaningless "advices" for people's performance problems without understanding enough of the hardware or software and spreading hearsay based on nothing and much of it is simply rubbish (like "HT makes FSX run worse" -legend popping up now and then). Other silliness are the "tweaking" advices, which most of are completely useless or just messing things up for people trying to do anything to get their performance up, no matter what. I'm not surprised that Flight1's NickN is frustrated to give support for their products to people who have messed their FSX configs with all that crap and are complaining about blurriness, flashes, bad performance or whatever with Flight1 products.

 

I also want to remind that many hardware forums are great places to obtain knowledge and help for computer related problems and for example overclocking. There are people with huge knowledge in those places, but they aren't most likely active FSX players hanging in Avsim or any other flightsim forum.

 

I don't want to be rude or anything else, but giving advice to people in a subject such as complicated as modern computer system without having proper knowledge can actually cause more problems and take the focus in troubleshooting to wrong direction.

I run an LGA 2011 system, and have no stutters. I have HT enabled for other applications, and do not use any Affinity Mask settings. while many are reporting problems, it is not true that "every" LGA 2011 user has these issues. Maybe it's just those that post happen to be those with troubles?

This. Affinity mask settings are useless and big cause for texture blurriness. I, for example can run FSX unlimited with driver level FPS limiter without blurriness, but it gets messy if using affinitymask. Blurries also appear with AM in heavy areas even with frames limited in FSX. Also, you are correct in that problems rise up easily on forums and there are far many of them in other platforms. Also X79 is a lot more rare than X58 or all LGA1155 platforms and few complaining about problems with their SBEs isn't the right reason to draw silly conclusions.

 

I repeat once again: There is nothing wrong with the X79 platform itself. Like with so many that are experiencing unsatisfying performance with FSX and their SBs, Nehalems or Gulftowns and at the same time some are simming happily with same processors and chipsets, there are so many possibilities that can be wrong in their configuration starting from the messed up OS and FSX configuration to the defect hardware components.

Some tweaks are good for some systems. Some are not. What I have noticed is that even the experts agree that FSX's performance is system specific.

 

Years ago Dario and I discussed Sparse Grid Supersampling as the best way to avoid shimmers. Now, all of a sudden NickN has a guide advising that it should be considered, based on today's hardware.

 

Tomorrow it might be a different story, based on hardware.