I have managed to get decent performance out of P3D and FSX Dx10. Using the latter, I am still getting heavy drops during heavy clouds and precipitation.

 

My current setup is this

 

2700k @ 4.8 GHz (One core is lazy,so won't go further without better cooling)

Noctua DH14

8 GB Ram

2x GTX 580

3x Dell U2711 2560x1440

Win7 x64

 

I'm not going back to 1 monitor

 

Running Dx10 and FSX I can see that the gpu spikes when in heavy clouds. I'm not using much AA either. The fps drops from 26-30 to 15-17.

Back in Dx9 mode the gpu load drops significantly but it is all on the CPU.

 

I suppose my options are:

 

1. Get more headroom buying 2x GTX 680 or GTX 690.

2. Buy 3 new monitors with lower resolution.

 

I don't really have a budget, but I will try not to go excessive unless there are big gains.

The goal is to get the fps to stay locked around 30 fps and not drop below 20.

 

Any opinions on the options, or do you have a better solution perhaps ?

 

In advance, thanks.

For my setup I went with a second 580. Center display runs off one 580 and the two outside displays run off the 2nd 580. With P3D I can achieve 30fps most of the time with Nvidia Surround (you'll never "lock" 30fps in all situations - sliders maxed). I would not even think of trying to attempt this anymore with FSX.

 

You don't say what your display resolution is. My (3) 27" are 1080's. I don't think 1200's would have made much visual difference but could take further beating with the cpu (especially FSX).

You need more CPU , aim CPU limited @5.4ghz with 3770k and thats 5.7 on a SB.

 

I updated my post with the resolution. Each monitor has a native resolution of 2560x1440.

 

For my setup I went with a second 580. Center display runs off one 580 and the two outside displays run off the 2nd 580. With P3D I can achieve 30fps most of the time with Nvidia Surround (you'll never "lock" 30fps in all situations - sliders maxed). I would not even think of trying to attempt this anymore with FSX.

 

You don't say what your display resolution is. My (3) 27" are 1080's. I don't think 1200's would have made much visual difference but could take further beating with the cpu (especially FSX).

Seems difficult to have a high FPS using surround. I have a similar set-up to yours and get 20-22 most of the time at medium size airport. Word Not Allowed tweaks applied. i overclock to 4.5 so I can maybe push a little bit on that but at 1% gain by 0.1 Ghz, i can just expect around 3% gain from the CPU.

 

I run most slider to the right but some that draw a lot of power one notch to the left. i also reduced REX clouds from 4096 to 1024 as clouds definitively hit the FPS severely.

 

Pierre

 

 

I managed to push the overclock to 4,9 GHz and i can probably og higher as FSX won't tax the cpu as hard as Intel Burn test or Prime95. I'm also using 1024 REX clouds. My tests are conducted With default and Australia ORBX scenery.I think i will try to do other AA, FSAA for isntance.I'm probably not going to try a 5,5 GHZ overclock With phase cooling

Seems difficult to have a high FPS using surround. I have a similar set-up to yours and get 20-22 most of the time at medium size airport. Word Not Allowed tweaks applied. i overclock to 4.5 so I can maybe push a little bit on that but at 1% gain by 0.1 Ghz, i can just expect around 3% gain from the CPU.

 

I run most slider to the right but some that draw a lot of power one notch to the left. i also reduced REX clouds from 4096 to 1024 as clouds definitively hit the FPS severely.

 

Pierre

FSX can sometimes push a CPU as hard as the intel burn test does, and certainly harder than pretty much every other game out there, there are very few program's other than video encoding and synthetic tests that will push a modern CPU as hard.

My subjective findings is that this does not happen on my system. I'm not near the temperature when in fsx.

I also pretty much discovered that this is all cpu bound, so there is nothing really to do but wait for a much faster cpu or better code(P3D)

 

 

FSX can sometimes push a CPU as hard as the intel burn test does, and certainly harder than pretty much every other game out there, there are very few program's other than video encoding and synthetic tests that will push a modern CPU as hard.