Hi All,

 

I've been tweaking FSX for a long time, with the web config editor and the general recommended settings.

 

I run most things fairly high but not max, and it works quite well most of the time... if I'm sitting still or paused :)

 

Using MSI afterburner i can see my GPU usage, it's usually between 20% and 80% depending how close I am to clouds.

 

However I have this problem where textures are very slow to load, sometimes in a fast plane (Legacy) I come up to a new mountain or hill and it's all blurry. It finally loads the clear details when I'm about to leave the area.

 

Same thing happens when switching to view AI traffic planes, sometimes they are white for a full 10 seconds before they load.

 

I have the whole FSX on an SSD, and I've tested the SSD performance with CrystalDiskMark and it's read is 320mb/s so no problems there.

 

CPU is an i7 at 5Ghz.

Ram is 8GB not fully utilised.

Card is ATI 7970 3GB, not fully utilized.

 

I think either:

a) ATI cards are crap at loading FSX instructions?; or

b.) There must be some FSX.cfg setting I can tell it to force it to load these textures?

 

I run unlimited frames in FSX. I have tried with and without the external frame rate limiter.

 

Any tips would be appreciated to stop the slow texture loads and blurriness that plagues me when I go low and fast

Ditto my friend. You and I have almost identical setups and identical problems. (I have two ATI x-fire)

I'm hoping for some replies here :Waiting:

I feel your pain but you'll have to turn down your settings. There is no other solution. Have you read Word Not Allowed's software and hardware guide here on AVSIM regarding the setup of your system and system settings? It's pinned over in the Hardware forum. There's another great guide by Nick N on Setting up FSX and Tuning it. It has been updated somewhat. Both are very knowledgeable regarding FSX and the latest hardware. The original FSX wasn't really made with ATI cards as ATI was slow on coming up with drivers for Windows Vista (the OS that came out around the time FSX was released). Nvidia had them almost instantly and it took ATI several months to get on the bandwagon. However, things have changed over the years and ATI now has better hardware and the drivers to run them in a Windows 7 environment. Both Nvidia and ATI no longer really support FSX but at least Nvidia has a basic setup for FSX developed by Nvidia techs. Srdan Word Not Allowed wrote his guide to try to answer your kind of issues as we all experience them occasionally. So you might want to check out some of his tweaks and recommendations.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Thanks for the replies.

 

I think it was my fault actually I've been pushing the boundaries with FPS and I set the limiter to 60.

 

Not a good idea I think after reading this article I found:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555738

 

Limiting FPS will allow it to finish the landscape.

 

I'll go back to a 30fps limit and see how it goes.

Both Nvidia and ATI no longer really support FSX but at least Nvidia has a basic setup for FSX developed by Nvidia techs. Srdan Word Not Allowed wrote his guide to try to answer your kind of issues as we all experience them occasionally. So you might want to check out some of his tweaks and recommendations.

Yup. I know. I just foolishly spent money on two ATI cards since I needed (or thought I did) more monitors. I will sell them and get the NVidia instead.

I have ALWAYS used NVidea in the past, and have been pleased with their FSX performance.

 

I recently built a somewhat serious rig with Saitek stuff and wanted 4 monitors to do wide view

Yup. I know. I just foolishly spent money on two ATI cards since I needed (or thought I did) more monitors. I will sell them and get the NVidia instead.

I have ALWAYS used NVidea in the past, and have been pleased with their FSX performance.

 

I recently built a somewhat serious rig with Saitek stuff and wanted 4 monitors to do wide view

 

Hi,

 

Is it related to the crossfire configuration? Most sims aren't very good with multi-GPU I try to steer clear of that and just get the fastest single GPU card available.

 

I must admit it was a bit of a knee jerk reaction for me to blame my ATI, when blurries is just as likely related to CPU not keeping up.

 

I have 3 monitors in Portrait/Landscape/Portrait config and can run at 5970x1600 resolution via SoftTH. The ATI card handles this without maxxing out, I think it's still CPU that limits us even these days with FSX.

 

I wonder if the CPUs will ever catchup to what FSX is demanding to give us the covetted 60fps we desire. Prepar3d will probably be out with directx11 and a new engine before that happens!

No, I disabled crossfire since it seemed like it was making matters worse (as you said). I did run 4 monitors reasonably well, but replaced it with a center 42" monitor and a 21" for GPS and such on the side instead.

I'm running the CPU at 4.7 with water cooling and it holds up well temperature wise.

I'm just going to bite the bullet and get the best possible NVidia card so I can follow other peoples recommendations. Life is too short to experiment with video settings in FSX.

Like; make a change -reboot-start GEX/FSX-wait..wait.....wait-nope looks the same- Repeat.

Not for me.

Well Nvidia needs similar tweaking, but the best tweaks are available already ie you can copy others Nvidia settings more reliably.

 

ATI drivers on the other hand, less reliable.

 

I would like to get a gtx 680 and sell my 7979 but I don't think it will be the holy grail and worth the $900 that the 680 costs. Maybe next year..

No $900 card for me neither. I found GTX680 cards in the low $500's on Amazon and I might just bite that bullet.

$500 you must be in the USA, in Australia, NZ, UK etc there is a big markup on import, plus taxes :(

 

That's the other reason I prefer a single card, I only pay the markup once instead of twice.

I've gone through Kostas excellent guide again and found the LOD set to 6.5 helps as well as changing to the internal limiter.

 

Everything is looking sharp! Thanks Word Not Allowed