Hey guys, I am having a issue with frame rates... I recently installed trafficX with the civil and military addon. The best frame rates at major airports i can get is about 10fps.... I am running a powerful system... AMD FX-8150 8 core cpu, on an Asus Sabertooth 990fx motherboard with 32 GB ram, and an EVGA 550FX 2gb videocard. and WIN7 Ultimate 64Bit Is trafficX really that demanding on hardware? Any suggestions on anything? maybe replace TrafficX with a different AI addon?

Traffic addons with maxed out settings really suck FPS out of the system when you are in major hubs. New York area is perhaps the worst with heavy autogen in general and then three big airports JFK, La Guerdia and Newark in close vicinity. I don't have a clue how heavy TrafficX is compared to others or what your settings are, but this is just in general.

 

Second, AMD's Bulldozers aren't the best possible processor especially for gaming and FSX compared to Intels core i5 and i7-lines. It lacks performance especially when you have programs which are heavy on one thread. Bulldozer chips get their best performance when all 8 cores have load. Interner is full of bulldozer benchmarks, so you can search for your self how Bulldozers compare to different intel processors. In many cases differences are huge and bulldozers lose even to preceding Phenom and Thuban line of processors.

 

Third, although quite sufficient, your GPU is not top-of-the line units many here are using. Especially heavy AA and bad weather with some HD cloud textures load heavily your GPU and rendering huge amounts of AI planes don't help either.

 

All in all, yes traffic addons in general are heavy on fps. Also, your rig although decent is not among the best, so I wouldn't be surprised that at least in some conditions you lag 10-15 fps behind those who use some Sandy or Ivy i7 processors clocked to 4.5-5GHz and use GTX480 or better GPUs. Some tweaks make also difference, mainly bufferpools and affinitymask settings.

Yeah, the system started out with what I could afford at the time. I bought the 550 on sale at bestbuy, then came into some extra income, and spent what i could to build the best system for the money. I have considered selling the current system and dumping a little more $$ into a new build.

Sir, your system is not powerful enough for FSX at major airports with high traffic levels. Not many systems can handle this load. My system has an Ivy Bridge CPU and a GTX680 and yet I also struggle with framerates in some conditions. I do not run more than 16% traffic, either GA, airliners or road traffic and I avoid major cities. I recommend you use Word Not Allowed's guide:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/386999-kostas-software-hardware-guide-for-fsx-link/

 

And lower your traffic and autogen sliders.

 

Cheers,

 

Noel.

Do you guys think if I install another if not a third 550 in SLI would help? How is WofAi? ive heard its not quite as FR demanding...

Do you guys think if I install another if not a third 550 in SLI would help? How is WofAi? ive heard its not quite as FR demanding...

In your case SLI would not help. Save your dough for a future upgrade. I use UT2 and I find it to be pretty good on frames along with pretty good AI models. I tried MyTraffic a few years ago and it didnt perfrom very good for me. I also thought it looked horrible. No experience with WOAI.

Do you guys think if I install another if not a third 550 in SLI would help? How is WofAi? ive heard its not quite as FR demanding...

 

Multiple graphics cards in SLI aren't helpful to the sim, except marginally at very high res. Don't waste your money. FSX loves a powerful CPU.

 

Basically FSX is not coded to make full use of your graphics card. A powerful graphics card helps, but not as much as the CPU.

 

At its core, FSX is archaic software that Microsoft bolted new features too, that the sim could barely handle. They did this, so they could charge full price.

I don't know what options TrafficX has, but if there is one to operate jetways like there is in UT2, make sure it's turned off. That will kill frames.

No system can handle 100% traffic with Mytraffic or Traffic X + major airport and still have good FPS.