First off, my first post here, I have wound up on these forums dozens of times through google searches now I am finally posting.

 

I have an approx 3 year old Alienware M17x with two GTX260m vid cards.

Drivers are 257.38. Direct X 11 is installed.

 

That is the latest I can get from Dell and downloading the latest (310.something?) compatible driver from nVidia, it won't install. The cards are running in "hybrid SLI." Quad core 2.0ghz processor.

 

The issue I am having is not just textures but EVERYTHING flickers, 2d and 3d cockpits, outside world ground/sky/cloud/structure textures. Everything flickers. At night it is worse and everything has a blue hue to it when it flickers (night in sim time that is).

 

From searching these forums I have played with my settings in game, set up buffer pools in fsx.cfg to 850mb, installed and set up the external FPS limiter and set the game to unlimited, and ran the bojote fsx.cfg tweak and saved that one and again made sure buffer pools was still on. The problem still persists.

 

I am a helicopter pilot in real life and love FSX but I just cant deal with the flickers anymore!!!

 

Any and all help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance

First off... welcome to AVSIM !! Now, you said you set your BufferPools to 850 mb ?? That is way wrong. I have a 260 and I find it best to use:

 

 

[bUFFERPOOLS]

PoolSize=0

 

Secondly, a SLI setup for FSX has been proven to cause issues.

Thirdly, and you may not want to hear this but it is the truth, 2 ghz CPU for FSX wont cut it. To be able to enjoy FSX you need a Quad Core CPU running @ 4ghz

 

With all that said this does not mean you wont be able to USE FSX but.... FS9 may be a better option until you upgrade your CPU. Try to disable SLI and start out with a CLEAN CFG and go from there.

check your screen resolution, should be 60hz, sometimes running hybrid SLI can half it to 30hz.

very rare but worth checking.

 

Ron.

Don't have time to test at just this moment but I will post results a little later today when I look in to the res/refresh rate. But I just wanted to say thanks for the replies and clarify --

 

I have a quad core 2ghz processor and the dual gtx260m's. 4gb ram, win7 64bit.

 

I know I could definitely stand for an upgrade but frankly I could care less if the graphics are picture perfect or not, I just want to get it to a usable state. I will be upgrading memory and cleaning the hell out of this laptop but I can't just yet as the warranty hasn't expired yet and opening an alienware will kill the warranty.

 

Again, thanks for the replies, I will search around for a clean .cfg file and check the refresh rate and post results.

Clean cfg, no fps limiter and checked refresh rate @60hz. Loaded it up and it worked beautifully. However the next time I opened the game it is right back to the same flickering issue.

 

Also wroth noting, when I go to look at my screens refresh rate, my only two options are 59hz and 60hz. I can set it to 60 and immediately open it up again and it is back at 59... and repeat. It just always sets itself back to 59 after I apply.

 

So the problem persists.