Hi all,

 

I've been flying with my current pc for about 6 months now and have been really happy with the results, getting about 30fps across the board with the game pretty much maxed out. I was playing with a single 21" monitor and I recently upgraded to dual 24" 1080p monitors and I'd like to take advantage of them. This is the odd part, I've dropped to about 15fps (half) with having two fullscreen views open which I guess is expected, but it doesn't seem like FSX is taking full advantage of my pc's power and I wondering first of all, why and second is there a way to test if I could somehow get better results? The temp increase on the GPU and CPU are almost nonexistant when playing FSX and that doesn't seem right to me. Is this a limitation of FSX on my system or is there something I can do to get some better results. PC specs:

 

i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz

GTX 560 Ti

8GB Ram

 

 

It can play basically anything I can throw at it, getting 60fps on ultra high on modern games, which I realize are better optimized, but it just doesn't seem like FSX is taking full advantage of my system.

 

Thanks for any help

 

Chris

What are your AA settings?

How much VRAM on the GTX 560 TI??

2 x 24" monitors is quite an increase in display parameters.

Regards

pH

How much VRAM on the GTX 560 TI??

2 x 24" monitors is quite an increase in display parameters.

Regards

pH

 

1024mb

 

What are your AA settings?

 

I have it on trilinear and on.

IMHO

You need at least a 2GB VRAM card to run that sort of screen(s) real estate!

Your video card is probably overwhelmed!

Regards

pH

IMHO

You need at least a 2GB VRAM card to run that sort of screen(s) real estate!

Your video card is probably overwhelmed!

Regards

pH

 

That's what I thought, but I just tried it, both screens at full res with full screen views and was getting about 10-25fps at JFK with the PMDG 747-8i. But afterwards I looked at my GPU usage and it maxed out at 49%. FSX is struggling, but my GPU isn't being fully utilized. Is this a normal quirk of FSX not being able to take advantage of modern hardware or is something wrong?

 

That's what I thought, but I just tried it, both screens at full res with full screen views and was getting about 10-25fps at JFK with the PMDG 747-8i. But afterwards I looked at my GPU usage and it maxed out at 49%. FSX is struggling, but my GPU isn't being fully utilized. Is this a normal quirk of FSX not being able to take advantage of modern hardware or is something wrong?

 

Scratch that, I just looked again it looks like the vram was maxxed at about 934mb. Looks like I'll be getting another GTX 560 Ti. :D

Looks like I'll be getting another GTX 560 Ti

 

Don't do that. Get a single GTX670, GTX680 or GTX580 if you feel you need more VRAM.

With two cards in SLI you don't get twice the VRAM, since for the most part it's mirrored across the GPU's in the SLI, and unless you fly very simple A/C, or 2D cockpits, or DX10, it won't help with performance either

Don't do that. Get a single GTX670, GTX680 or GTX580 if you feel you need more VRAM.

With two cards in SLI you don't get twice the VRAM, since for the most part it's mirrored across the GPU's in the SLI, and unless you fly very simple A/C, or 2D cockpits, or DX10, it won't help with performance either

 

Thanks, I was thinking it would essentially double the vram.

Thanks, I was thinking it would essentially double the vram.

 

What's your CPU & GPU usage like when you get poor performance?

What's your CPU & GPU usage like when you get poor performance?

 

Roughly 50%, the only thing I noted that was even close to max is the memory usage and mem clock speed.

 

And I wouldn't say performance was really poor, just that the FPS is all over the place with drops down to around 10 and maxing at around 25 when sitting still on the tarmac and not moving any of the views. I was more than happy when I was running 30fps.

560Ti is simply being hammered by 2 such high resolution screens. 670/680 is the way to go. Not a 2nd 560Ti. Was your 21" also 1920?

Roughly 50%, the only thing I noted that was even close to max is the memory usage and mem clock speed.

 

And I wouldn't say performance was really poor, just that the FPS is all over the place with drops down to around 10 and maxing at around 25 when sitting still on the tarmac and not moving any of the views. I was more than happy when I was running 30fps.

 

I would try playing with those settings, lower your resolution, then antialiasing... try to get your performance back somehow, then monitor your VRAM and confirm if it's really VRAM starvation (if your FPS are back to a consistent 30 at a lower resolution with a lower VRAM usage, then it's probably a VRAM issue)

What do you have in both screens exactly? a single view spanned across both monitors in full screen?

560Ti is simply being hammered by 2 such high resolution screens. 670/680 is the way to go. Not a 2nd 560Ti. Was your 21" also 1920?

 

My 21" was 1600x900 I think I know it wasn't 1920.

 

I would try playing with those settings, lower your resolution, then antialiasing... try to get your performance back somehow, then monitor your VRAM and confirm if it's really VRAM starvation (if your FPS are back to a consistent 30 at a lower resolution with a lower VRAM usage, then it's probably a VRAM issue)

What do you have in both screens exactly? a single view spanned across both monitors in full screen?

 

I like having the 2d cockpit on the first screen and then spot or tower view in the second.

 

I can get roughly 30fps with just one screen going, it's as soon as I open the "new view" that it drops.

Then you're basically rendering FSX twice, I'm pretty sure it's a CPU bottleneck. You said usage was ~50%, but is any of the cores (typically core 0) maxed out all of the time?

Then you're basically rendering FSX twice, I'm pretty sure it's a CPU bottleneck. You said usage was ~50%, but is any of the cores (typically core 0) maxed out all of the time?

 

It looked like core 2 got the most usage, that was maxed almost all the time, 3 and 4 went up and then down and 1 was always low. Total usage was between 30 and 79, but never over 79.