Since I've installed FSX, I've had my fps locked at 30 and I achieved that 30 fps in about 99 pct. of all my flying. Never gave a thought about changing it. Then I recently DL'd the Carneado King Air, and for the first time, I saw a dip in that performance. Moreover, the King Air had an effect on Tileproxy--tileproxy's textures would blur more often. I did not want to give up the King Air or Tileproxy, so I decided to reduce my fps to 18, which took a bit of trial and error. From the beginning, it seemed less smooth but Tileproxy was back to crisp and sharp textures for me.

 

I figured I would just change the fps back to 30 whenever I wasn't using the King Air. Fast forward a few weeks, and here I find myself, with the fps still locked at 18 (if only due to my being too lazy to change it back and forth). And you know what? I've gotten used to it! It's not as smooth as 30 fps was, but it seems a lot smoother than my first trying it out. I think I am beginning to understand what simmers mean when they say FSX is smoother than FS9 was. FS9 did not seem smooth back in the day of my old P3-800 when I could only crank out 18 fps around heavy scenery.

 

Anyway, I thought I would share this. I've have logged hours of flight time since my change, mostly in the King Air, RealAir turbine Duke, and Carenado's C210. It's all been enjoyable flight time spent soaring over Tileproxy's scenery.

 

Regards,

 

John

It's interesting you point that out.

 

My definition of smooth would be 12-14 FPS in ORBX PNW with absolutely no stutters and everything full right. And believe it or not, even with my system, I can achieve it! Albeit, anything faster than Cub speed and stuff starts getting blurry. But, Cub speed is what I want to go in ORBXland, so I can enjoy my investment.

 

I think "smooth" is a term that is relative to all simmers personal demands of the sim itself. If you're a low and slow flyer, you might want high FPS for other reasons than a hardcore tubeliner pilot. And your definitions of "high FPS" might be different. My "high FPS" mark is around 24. I've hit it exclusively over the Atlantic Ocean in the 747, or crossing the great plains of Kansas and Nebraska in any other commercial airliner.

It's interesting you point that out.

 

My definition of smooth would be 12-14 FPS in ORBX PNW with absolutely no stutters and everything full right. And believe it or not, even with my system, I can achieve it! Albeit, anything faster than Cub speed and stuff starts getting blurry. But, Cub speed is what I want to go in ORBXland, so I can enjoy my investment.

 

I think "smooth" is a term that is relative to all simmers personal demands of the sim itself. If you're a low and slow flyer, you might want high FPS for other reasons than a hardcore tubeliner pilot. And your definitions of "high FPS" might be different. My "high FPS" mark is around 24. I've hit it exclusively over the Atlantic Ocean in the 747, or crossing the great plains of Kansas and Nebraska in any other commercial airliner.

 

Differences in fps certainly do even out the higher one flies. At cruise altitude in the King Air, whether it's 18 fps or 30, if one is looking outside you just can't tell. Even in the C210, at 2000 ft. AGL, 18fps isn't all that bad. Even on final I no longer notice much of a difference. Only on takeoff roll, if I am looking to either side of the aircraft.

 

Just finished a flight from Napa, CA to Lakeport, CA in the C210. A great VFR route over photoreal scenery!

 

John

My system should be quite decent, but I am only getting around 20 frames per second with the add-ons I use most frequently (F1 C510, PMDG B747). My QW B757 runs even poorer. This is decent, but I was hoping for a huge improvement over my previous system, which was a Core 2 Duo iMac. With settings about one-third higher, I get around the same performance.

 

People have been telling me to overclock, but I feel rather uncomfortable doing so with a stock computer. Bojote's tweaks did not do much to improve performance, and I found that Word Not Allowed's tweaks (when applied without those of Bojote) were very ineffective. I now wish that I purchased an NVIDIA card instead.

 

Surprisingly, I need AA and AF to be turned on in order for this perfomance to be possible.

My system should be quite decent, but I am only getting around 20 frames per second with the add-ons I use most frequently (F1 C510, PMDG B747). My QW B757 runs even poorer. This is decent, but I was hoping for a huge improvement over my previous system, which was a Core 2 Duo iMac. With settings about one-third higher, I get around the same performance.

 

People have been telling me to overclock, but I feel rather uncomfortable doing so with a stock computer. Bojote's tweaks did not do much to improve performance, and I found that Word Not Allowed's tweaks (when applied without those of Bojote) were very ineffective. I now wish that I purchased an NVIDIA card instead.

 

Surprisingly, I need AA and AF to be turned on in order for this perfomance to be possible.

 

I think you can have decent performance w/o overclocking. My system is only 2.33GHZ and outside of the Carenado King Air, it was rare for my system to drop below 30 fps. However I did not enable a few things that eat fps, such as aircraft shadows in the cockpit. My scenery density is maxed and most other settings are either maxed or nearly so. I don't run AI in FSX since FSX is essentially a sightseeing platform for me (hence my extensive use of tileproxy). When I want to fly with traffic, I still use FS9 which I've saturated with WOAI aircraft and airlines.

 

Anyway, back to your reply--don't tweak anymore, don't overclock--just adjust the settings that FSX already has--you should find one or two adjustments will make a world of difference.

 

Regards,

 

John

Have you used Word Not Allowed's guide at all?

 

Do you use an external frame rate limiter and an internal frame rate lock setting of unlimited?

 

According to Word Not Allowed, frame rates should be more consistent and higher when using the internal frame rate lock of 30 and vSync, but I have not experienced this performance increase.

Have you used Word Not Allowed's guide at all?

 

Do you use an external frame rate limiter and an internal frame rate lock setting of unlimited?

 

According to Word Not Allowed, frame rates should be more consistent and higher when using the internal frame rate lock of 30 and vSync, but I have not experienced this performance increase.

 

Hm... according to several other tweaking guides it's vice versa. Internal = max, external = 30 or whatever you want. The reason behind is, as far as I understood, if you reduce the fps limit within FSX, it slows down the whole gfx "factory" which may lead to fps drops as soon as power is needed.

 

Regards

Hirschi

On my system tests, my FPS went from 23 to 28 using the external limiter (at KLGA, Tower view). About the same as Bojote's tests. I get autogen spikes, and stutters, at just unlimited and BP=0.

 

Dave

I don't get a smooth sim on anything under 30. If my fps drop to 23, it's a stuttering mess. But 30 and above is buttery smooth.

Hm... according to several other tweaking guides it's vice versa. Internal = max, external = 30 or whatever you want. The reason behind is, as far as I understood, if you reduce the fps limit within FSX, it slows down the whole gfx "factory" which may lead to fps drops as soon as power is needed.

I do not find this to be true, for unknown reasons. My frame rates are worse when I do not use an external frame rate limiter. Could this be due to the AMD graphics card? Is it normal for settings lower than anisotropic with anti-aliasing active to result in poorer performance? I always thought that that was weird. . . .

For the ATI card, AA should be off and AF on in FSX. AF should always be 16x, in CCC, as lower settings hurt performance. AA should be 4x , in CCC, but with your card you might be able to go higher. I set the Mode slider to Mid as the gauges look sharpper than SS.

 

Dave

I don't know about AMD but Nvidia has internal "power sets" to reduce wattage and fan noise. 51MHz Desktop, 405MHz for example youtube and only if you're running 3d games it is spooling up to 609MHz.

I don't know exactly, what triggers the switching between these settings but when power is stipulated it normaly increases to the appropriate level. After a fresh install of FSX without any addons and low gfx settings but with external frame rate limiter I observed, that sometimes the GPU Clock only spools up to 405MHz. It's quite enough at high level without significant weather but when the scenery amount increases, the GPU clock sometimes needs a lot of time to realize it and stays a while at 405Mhz. This leads to stuttering of course. This has to do with the external frame rate limiter because the card only provides the power to ensure 30fps. If I turn it off, fps raise to 70 and, certainly, the GPU clock switches to 609MHz.

But with higher gfx settings it is always at 609MHz.

 

Regards

Hirschi

I have the power full system and I have my FPS set to unlimited and I get good FPS. I am planning to try the Nvidia inspector but I haven't got time because school and stuff and I don't want to be all raging on FSX it give me lot of headache when FSX is making trouble.

For the ATI card, AA should be off and AF on in FSX. AF should always be 16x, in CCC, as lower settings hurt performance. AA should be 4x , in CCC, but with your card you might be able to go higher. I set the Mode slider to Mid as the gauges look sharpper than SS.

So I should use the Catalyst tool to adjust filtering? Are you saying I should leave AF checked in both but not check AA in FSX? If I change the settings in the tool (leaving Application Controlled unchecked), what do I need to check in FSX? Will the FSX filtering settings be completely ignored?

 

When I tried using the Catalyst too once, everything became somewhat blurry.

 

Can you post a screen shot of your Catalyst/FSX settings, if they are difficult to explain?

 

Thanks.

Yes, you must use CCC. Inspector doesn't work on ATI cards.

 

Setting Ansio in FSX, 16x and App Cont unchecked in CCC, will allow FSX to use Ansio at 16x. FSX doesn't look as good at lower settings. Not a big hit on tour system.

 

Settings for AA are highly system/card driven. A good place to start is 4x Standard, Override App Cont. If that doesn't hit your system too much, move up one notch and check again. When you select Edge Detect, it puts a heavier load on your system so you may need to lower the level. On the ATI card I leave FSX AA unchecked. Morph Filter I leave off.

 

Tessel - AMD Opt

 

Cat A I - High Q

 

Surface Format Opt - Enable

 

Wait fo Vertical Refresh - On Unless App Specs

 

AA Mode - Adaptive Multi Sample (Super Sample makes my gauges soft focus)

 

Triple Buff - N/A

 

Remember, no one person's settings work for all. Test one thing at a time, on the same default/saved flight, so you know which setting is helping or hurting.

 

Have fun

Dave