Hello dear simmers, I'm asking everyone with an AMD cpu here. I don't want Intel fans in here telling me I should've bought an Intel cpu, I have an AMD and don't want this thread turned into flames, ok?

 

Now my little story, in december last year I bought myself the new AMD FX8350 8-core cpu and a new mobo (ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0). It's an upgrade from my old Phenom 2 X4 B50 which struggled quite a bit with the addons I installed over time. I'm now trying to get the most out of this new beast within FSX without overclocking. I'm running addons like REX Essential + Overdrive, GEX, UTX, Aerosoft airports (LOWI, ELLX) and at those 2 airports I'm getting 15-22 fps in the PMDG 737NGX. With UTX night lighting enabled it's almost unflyable when on the approach into ELLX, fps drop down to 10.. My sliders are at 70% average, air traffic at 50, road traffic 20%, cloud draw distance at 90m (traffic and clouds somehow don't seem to harm my performance). My fsx.cfg is also tweaked from Bojote's website, affinitymask set at 224 (gave me the best results).

I can say that the swap to the FX made a difference, although not as much as I was expecting from a 4GHz cpu. This left me with some doubts and that's why I'm posting here in the forum.

 

Also my PC specs:

 

OS: Win 7 64bit Home Edition

CPU: AMD FX8350 4.0GHz (Turbo Boost up to 4,3GHz)

GPU: Radeon HD6870

Memory: 8GB DDR3 Kingston HyperX Memory 1333MHz

Harddisk: 500GB HDD

PSU: 750W

Monitor Setup: Eyefinity with 3968x1080p Res. (when running at 1920x1080 there's no huge difference in fps)

 

I would be glad if you could give me some hints as I'm new to the AMD FX processors.

 

Kind regards

 

Max

Not too much you can do if you rule out overclocking.

Faster RAM (2133MHz) would give your FPS a small boost (8% or so)

 

Apply the Bufferpools=0 tweak if you haven't already

hello dazz, bufferpools tweak is already done. Problem with the memory is they're also new, so buying new sticks wouldn't make sense to me right now. One thing I haven't considered yet is changing the RAM timings, they're set at 9-9-9-25, but I read somewhere that lowering the timings and underclocking the sticks would need perfect balance and it wouldn't really boost the performance?

lowering the timings and underclocking the sticks

 

That would only make things worse. You mainly want fast clocks in your RAM. CAS does also have some impact, but if your sticks are rated at 1333 CL9, I'm afraid that's it.

 

I know you don't want to hear this, but FSX can't really use more than 3 or 4 cores "efficiently", and most of the time only one at 100%. Since Piledriver is not particularly fast in single threaded workloads, your CPU is not a good match for FSX at all.

That's what I don't get, FSX was released in 2006, there already were quad core processors on the market, yet MS can't get this simulator to efficiently work with 4 hence even at least 2 cores. Instead they pull out a cheap copy of FS9.. Are we really lost there?

That's what I don't get, FSX was released in 2006, there already were quad core processors on the market,

 

I was curious about this, I dont recal "Dual Core" processor being available in late 2005 and 2006. From what I found. Dual Core, not quad core CPU's became readily available in 2007? FSX was more than likely being developed in 2004 and 2005.

That's what I don't get, FSX was released in 2006, there already were quad core processors on the market, yet MS can't get this simulator to efficiently work with 4 hence even at least 2 cores. Instead they pull out a cheap copy of FS9.. Are we really lost there?

 

If it makes you feel better, I also went with AMD for my first FSX rig and was extremely disappointed.

AMD are great for the money if you have a use for all them cores, and very capable for running GPU bound games (most games are after all) but FSX is a whole different animal.

 

Don't sweat it, just relax your settings a tad and get flying. Even us Intel owners with cutting edge parts have to make compromises

I used AMD for FS up to the introduction of the I7. So Im not serial Intel praiser but the performance of the 2600K I'm using considerably out performs the AMD's I used in the past. IMO, its just because the I7 overclocks so much better which FSX likes alot. I could never get an AMD CPU above 4.0 and then it was never very stable. I do use AMD's in ALL my office computers so I'm not anti AMD. I support them alot, just not for FSX.

 

As far as blaming FSX. My sim, and many others, runs fantastic with just about every addon available,so it cant be all an FSX issue.

I was curious about this, I dont recal "Dual Core" processor being available in late 2005 and 2006. From what I found. Dual Core, not quad core CPU's became readily available in 2007? FSX was more than likely being developed in 2004 and 2005.

 

Quad core processors from Intel were released in 2006 http://news.cnet.com/Intel-quad-core-chips-arriving-in-2006/2100-1006_3-6096192.html

Even Battlefield 3 supports 8 cores though the game was released in late 2011 just like the first 8 core desktop processor from AMD.

 

I used AMD for FS up to the introduction of the I7. So Im not serial Intel praiser but the performance of the 2600K I'm using considerably out performs the AMD's I used in the past. IMO, its just because the I7 overclocks so much better which FSX likes alot. I could never get an AMD CPU above 4.0 and then it was never very stable. I do use AMD's in ALL my office computers so I'm not anti AMD. I support them alot, just not for FSX.

 

As far as blaming FSX. My sim, and many others, runs fantastic with just about every addon available,so it cant be all an FSX issue.

 

Newer AMD cpus overclock very well, even better than Intels as far as I have seen.

And yes, FSX i.e. Microsoft is to blame because they could've achieved much more in performance gains. You can't tell me that even a brandnew stock I7 3770 will run FSX out of the box, maxed with heavy addons flawlessly.

This simulator is 7 years old, yet when you buy a new PC you have to pay more than 1000$, tweak your cfg, overclock the cpu and do many compromises to run this without being plagued by lags. This is nothing else than a bad joke, sorry..

Intel for FSX is better cpu, i5 3570k cranks out more fps than my amd fx6100 does does at the same settings. Its not that AMD produces bad cpu its the just benchmarks for intel help run fsx way smoother. Think intel overpriced and steals money compared to AMD, and only bought intel CPU just for FSX based on benchmarks over the last couple of years. AMD and Intel go toe to toe when there even usage of gpu and cpu, but Intel wins hands when the games more dependant on CPU. If game gets 100fps and intel cpu costs $500, and then AMD got CPU that gets 85 fps and costs $129 then I would go with AMD one. Yet, in FSX FPS hit below 20 and intel getting 18 fps and AMD getting 10 fps would have to use Intel or downscale my settings. Opt for for 500 one its tryin to avoid single digit fps.