Using affinitymask 255/ no affinitymask (all 8 cores), The first core is 90-95% with very few, infrequent spikes to 100%. All the other cores? They lie at around 5-10% usage. One or two may reach 40% or 50%. This is all staring directly at NYC at 1600ft at 300 KIAS in a Project Airbus A320, with REX OD weather set to "building storms". FPS is around 14-20.

Using affinitymask 255/ no affinitymask (all 8 cores), The first core is 90-95% with very few, infrequent spikes to 100%. All the other cores? They lie at around 5-10% usage. One or two may reach 40% or 50%. This is all staring directly at NYC at 1600ft at 300 KIAS in a Project Airbus A320, with REX OD weather set to "building storms". FPS is around 14-20.

 

With the main scheduler running already so close to 100% you really have very little room for improvement with anything other than a faster CPU. You are CPU limited there

Yea, I know that is a possibility...But with AMD CPUs, I can never tell. I used to have an Athlon X2 at 2.2 GHz, and initially ran FSX with really bad integrated graphics. When I upgraded to a GT430 gpu, my performance was through the roof (relatively), and I could turn up a bunch of settings really high.

 

I am quite happy now, and whether a 570 can improve stuff for me is not a huge deal. I still use my computer primarily for other work. Besides, I prefer real flying!

The first core is 90-95% with very few, infrequent spikes to 100%.

Is that with unlimited FPS set or with a FPS lock set within FSX?

 

One part of me would like to play around with a Bulldozer and its modules. Given that the terrain engine is using 32 and 64bit FP, and that the FP resources are shared within the modules I guess it will have an impact. Question is how much?

 

Have you ever tried with affinitymask 249?

I set FPS to unlimited and do not use FPS limiter. Any sort of limit on the FPS led to lower, albeit more consistent framerates (FPS limiter eventually stopped having any noticeable impact).

 

As for 249, I have never heard of it before this post, so I tried it out, and Cores 1 and 2 (2nd and 3rd cores) were "turned off", and perf was about the same, overall usage was less though, with the fiber CPU stuck at the same old 90-95% (sometimes a bit less). As I said, AMD CPU scaling on FSX continues to surprise me, because my old Athlon was definitely running at 100% the whole time (before and after the upgrade), and it was the GPU that made the huge difference.

It's only the first core that is producing FPS, the Main thread. The other ones are texture and terrain loaders. I thought that removing a texture and terrain loader from the same module as the Main thread might be helpful. With Intels Hyperthreading it's night and day if you hyperthread a T&t loader with the main thread. But AMDs modules are not HT, so the effects will differ.

 

Something is bottlenecking you if you are only getting 90% and sometimes less load on the Main thread. It should be 95-100% all the time. I suspect your GT530.

Yup! That's what I suspected all along...I am looking a t a 570 2gb or a 7870 2gb (can't afford a 670, and compute performance is pretty important to the work I do, so...Kepler really won't help with that). Also replacing my RAM with faster clocks and lower cas timings sometime soon.

I tried Dx10 mode today (somehow relatively unglitchy!), and the main fiber was running at only around 80%, sometimes much lower! Of course, since Dx10 mode is more gpu-dependent , that should not be much of a surprise.

Yup! That's what I suspected all along...I am looking a t a 570 2gb or a 7870 2gb (can't afford a 670, and compute performance is pretty important to the work I do, so...Kepler really won't help with that). Also replacing my RAM with faster clocks and lower cas timings sometime soon.

Stick with the 570 or a 580 then. You should be a few good bargains on them around. Stay away from AMD/ATI if you want decent performance with clouds in FSX. They are great in other applications but not in FSX I'm afraid.

Stick with the 570 or a 580 then. You should be a few good bargains on them around. Stay away from AMD/ATI if you want decent performance with clouds in FSX. They are great in other applications but not in FSX I'm afraid.

 

Thanks for the advice!