Based on my experience I think this is the way it goes for FSX or any other legacy executable (or even new apps that use a cfg.file)

 

When you start FSX, it looks for the fsx.cfg file.

If the file does not exists then it uses default hard coded values plus the procspeed test, plus whatever other test it might run and recreates the file. It then sets default values and finally loads the main screen. (EOS)

 

On the other hand, if the cfg file exists then it parses it. Some sections and values are must have and others are "optional/hidden" (like HIGHMEMFIX BUFFERPOOLS etc)

 

When a must have key-value is not present in the cfg file (in this case procspeed) then the FSX executable runs the test and writes the value to the appropriate section, then parses the rest of the file and closes it..

I don't think any other settings is overwritten when this happens, but will find out.

 

Cheers

It looks like the speed of the CPU is changing constantly, but I'm sure that on the boot screen says 3.57ghz every time.

Hi Mate

 

Your CPU speed changing constantly is actually quite normal behaviour, its actually something called Intel Speedstep...

If your PC is not very busy, your CPU is throttled back to save power and reduce tempuratures and noise...

 

Much like your natural use of throttle in your car. You dont sit idle at full throttle, but because you dont, it takes a few seconds longer to get going again, and from what I know of FSX so far, here is what I guess is happening.

 

Your CPU throttles itself back from 3.5ghz, to probably something like 1.2ghz if doing hardly anything, so you then fire up FSX and FSX craps its pants because it reads the CPU speed as the current idle speed and sets the FSX.cfg file to match those resources, but by then, your CPU has powered itself back to full steam 3.5ghz...

 

Are you familiar with your motherboard BIOS?

If so, go in there and disable "Intel Speedstep" and try it all again, delete your proc line, reload and fly, and dont delete it again...

 

With your CPU now running at a constant 3.5ghz, and NOT throttling itself back when idle, my guess is FSX will then be able to take an accurate reading of it and run accordingly..

 

I could be wrong of course, but I'm 100% correct about Intel Speedstep, thats what makes your CPU frequency change frequently..

I disable it on mine becaue it makes other apps stutter and become jumpy, so I switch it off and let the CPU run at full pelt 24/7...

You are correct about speedstep (which is actually enabled on my system..) but how does that explain that FSX works OK when the fsx.cfg file gets deleted..

 

i wonder if subsequent changes to the FSX settings are the culprit..

The Q9505 CPU has a max speed of 2.83GHZ, Speedstep, and no HT. If you are getting 3.6GHZ then it must be overclocked. When you start FSX, Speedstep (if enabled) will take the CPU to full speed and hold it there. It will not come down until you close FSX. You can prove it with CPU-Z.

 

Take out the overclock as it may be unstable with the heavy load FSX puts on it.

 

Run MemTest86 to test your memory.

 

Dave

Yeah, speedstep is active, I don't want to "torture" CPU when idle, just a thought.

Tested memory a year ago, and did several tests @ 3.6ghz in Intel Burn Test, that lasts for at least half an hour. I even tested in a 3ds max, rendered some animation for 8 hours, so it's stable.

 

Anyway I did some test flights tonight without deleting procspeed, and it seems ok, maybe BP=0 stuff helps, who knows. Maybe Inspector did the trick, again who knows. Will test further, so far so good!

 

Thanks for feedback guys!

You are welcome.

 

Dave

An OC can actually become unstable with time, even tho it used to be stable at some point. This is because of a hardware degradation effect called electromigration. Now, I dont think an unstable OC is the culprit of your problem, the symptoms for an unstable OC is usually app crashes and bluescreens, very rarely (never) reduced application performance. Slightly OT, I agree, but its at least something to keep in mind when it comes to overclocks

Pe11

Hi all!

 

I'm very new at this forum, but I'm old in Flight Simulations, and also in FSX.

Anyway recently FSX started to be "Choppy" at 40fps, not fluid like before. Also, and more important, the scenery was loading very very slowly, blurries all the way. So I decided to delete fsx.cfg and FSX was working again perfectly. Next day I started it second time after deleting fsx.cfg, and all strange behaviour is here again. So I started monitoring what is wrong with fsx.cfg, decided to delete ProcSpeed line just for experiment and voilla FSX working good again! So now, every time I want to fly I must enter fsx.cfg and delete ProcSpeed line to allow FSX to insert a proper new value. Now ProcSpeed=10155, yesterday ProcSpeed=10402, so that's not a small difference!

I have decend setup, [email protected], nVidia GTX 560OC, 4GB or RAM, Win7 64bit.

It looks like the speed of the CPU is changing constantly, but I'm sure that on the boot screen says 3.57ghz every time.

 

Any ideas what is causing this?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

4GB looks a bit low for fsx, you might want to get 6GB atleast. Running FSX my RAM usage is always around 4.7 etc GB. Might be worth checking this with task manager process tool.

Usage here is around 1.8 while cruising, then on descent and especially approach ram usage can be above 2gb, and then fps will drop hard, from 25 to 15fps, just because of ram usage!

Anyway I know for userva command in win7 to allow FSX to use 3gb. At least FSX doesn't crash in over 2gb usage, like sometimes.

The /3GB switch is on used with 32 bit Windows and is not needed in 64 bit.

 

You might try the XMP memory setting in BIOS.

 

Dave

Not /3GB switch, it's for XP. Google increaseuserva for win7 64bit

 

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2246915

 

I used same "fix" for FSX, no more CTDs in high memory usage situations.

@Pe11e: Not sure what you are saying as you indicate (to me) that you can use the increaseuserva switch for 64 bit systems. The 'increaseuserva' switch for Vista and Windows 7 is for 32 bit systems only. Do not use with 64 bit OS's. FSX can only 'see' up to 4GB of memory with Windows 7 64 bit. If you have more memory, the rest will be used for running the OS so you should have more than 4 GB of memory installed so FSX can use the most available. I have 8 GB and FSX runs great. For Windows 32 bit, FSX can only 'see' up to 3 GB with the 'switch'. If you do not have the switch installed for 32 bit systems, then FSX can only see up to 2 GB. This is why it is important to upgrade to a 64 bit system as FSX is memory and CPU power hungry.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Yes, I have 4gb of RAM.

I saw an article for increaseuserva switch regarding FSX on 64bit systems. Long story short, system runs fine, FSX runs fine on high memory usage also (no CTDs), so I finished researching about increaseuserva as far as everything runs fine.

I dug out this thread to share something new, at least for me

Two days ago FSX started to stutter badly, not only visually, but also audio stutters (clicks in the sound and very short silent pauses). So I went to delete ProcSpeed value to allow FSX to regenerate it. Nope, no luck, same stutters. Then I copied a procspeed value from some older cfg, same result, maybe fps was a bit higher (or a placebo). So it was apparently some faulty tweak in my cfg. In a blink of an eye, I deleted all my BUFFERPOOLS lines "usepools=1" and "poolsize=25000000", and voilla stutters gone, everything is just fine now. From now on I will call it [sTUTTERPOOLS]. :rolleyes:

 

One thing that is not clear to me , is that FSX decided to stutter, and to load autogen slower than normal by itself, with above bufferpools values FSX ran perfectly until two days ago. Did some plane, or addon, or something third changed FSX behaviour is beyond me. Very very fragile platform.

 

At least I found a proof that procspeed is not something that I believed it is. Shame.