Ok so with renewed addiction, picked up the PMDG 737NGX today.

 

Basic system spec: Core2Duo 6600, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 9800GX2. WinXPSP3. Sad, I know. Someday......

 

Installed like a charm, no problems there. All .dlls activated and permitted.

 

Anyways, I can pretty much get it running at 1280x1024 with high-res textures etc. and no FSX.CFG tweaks, paying attention to the "don't load planes over it, shut down and restart if you load a different plane," etc. advice in the intro manual.

 

I can barely get it running at 1920x1200 (my monitor resolution, 32-bit), and invariably get graphics spikes and OOM errors if I sneeze at it when trying it at that resolution. But, boy is it beautiful when it runs! Have a tendency in that res if I go to outside views to see the outside skin of the plane missing for the passengers in the back rows, would prefer not to expose them like that at 30,000 feet.....

 

Totally agree with any recommendations to go through the tutorials, my intention is to learn every knob and button.

 

But my question is, given the pitiful specs of my system, is there any way to run it at 1900x1200 resolution? Looks like FSX with 737NGX loaded gobbles about 1,132 MB per Task Manager, so clearly it's pushing the limits of my system before I even hit the Fly Now button.

 

If there's no hope to run it at 1900x1200, will fall back to 1280x1024 (uses less memory, clearly). But I'm hoping for some ingenious recommendations (other than FSX.CFG tweaks, those don't seem to do much for me).

 

Further context, can get everything else running fine (for me) at 1900x1200x32 (incl. all A2A Simulations planes and RealAir Lancair), this one clearly pushes the limits.

 

I don't have any scenery or other add-ons installed, I've always been quite conservative about all that with my limited hardware resources.

 

I'm hardware-Amish when it comes to my PC; my goal is to remain within my constraints rather than jump into spending thousands for more hardware, have kept this self-built system going for six years just fine that way.

 

Thanks for any tips! Have looked thru forum but you're all mostly on to far more ambitious things at this point.

and no FSX.CFG tweaks

 

That is one place to start improving your performance. My laptop isn't much better than your PC and it improved my performance quite a bit. Start by checking out Kostas guide here. This gives you many fsx.cfg tweaks and tips, I along with many others have used this guide with great success.

Hi cva1077,

 

Right I've read that and virtually memorized it; the only applicable tweak is changing the max textures size from 1024 to 4096. That doesn't seem to help with the graphics spikes while in flight or out of memory issues I run into. Similarly, HighMemFix=1 does goofy things to my system.

 

Otherwise, I get great frame rates at SeaTac with full realistic weather enabled, heavy clouds and rain, flying, say, my A2A Simulations P-51 IFR from SeaTac to Tacoma Narrows. So I've got things pretty optimized otherwise.

 

The only thing I'm looking for is something that will make the PMDG 737NGX add-on run in the same environment. It seems to choke on my system whereas everything else is okay.....?

 

It's understandable, given everything it's doing, but I'm looking for a PMDG-specific idea about whether it's possible to run it in 1920x1200 on same system. I've tried using the performance manager included to reduce to lower textures/model/etc. for virtual cockpit, but that hasn't made a difference.

 

Thanks for replying, though!

Hello,

 

unfortunately your computer is rather old and underpowered. The NGX is made for a bit more powerful systems.

If you do not wish to do a complete upgrade these days (even todays lowend computers for couple hundred should run it), I would start by adding another 2GB of RAM, that should help a fair bit.

Fabo,

 

Thanks, yeah, I'll have to replace it eventually. Rather than throw any further money at it, will be saving up for probably an Ivy Bridge-based system with fastest CPU I can afford at that point.

 

Best,

 

FT

 

I would suggest you go dx10. Ppl say it loads memory different GPu wise, so maybe you won't get ooms with it.. Read about dx10 in the forum.

 

There is some trade-offs tho

 

Are auto-gen set to sparse and what is your ai setting?

I'm on XPSP3. No DX10.

 

Oh well, all my GA planes do just fine! Plenty to do with my A2A sims!

 

This one will just have to go on the shelf until my next computer, sounds like.