Battle of the Guides

[Lawyer+Pilot 126]

I'm two days away from the estimated ship date of my new Zeus Thunder 2500 from Cyberpower. We'll see if they hit the target date, but that's beside the point. What I am trying to do is gather all the information I'll need to get an FSX setup that is as near to optimum as possible. I'm familiar with the Windows 7 and FSX guides produced by NickN back in 2010. I used those to get my current rig up to snuff. But in order to get maximum benefit from my new Ivy Brigde, I thought it would be a good idea to get the latest and greatest guides. I stumbled across Word Not Allowed's guide and Avsim's "Official Hardware Guide" created by Paul J, both of which are recent and purport to be aimed at setting up FSX on Sandy/Ivy bridge systems. Here is what I've come up with so far for a plan of attack:

 

1.) Windows 7 setup - NickN's guide at http://www.simforums...187.html#198187

 

2.) FSX installation following NickN's advice at http://www.simforums...topic29041.html

 

So far so good. Next step:

 

3.) NVidia Inspector and FSX tuning and FSX.cfg tweaking.

 

And there's where the consensus seems to break down. Over the last few days, I've been trying to differentiate between Avsim's Official Hardware Guide (http://forum.avsim.n...-guide-for-fsx/) or Word Not Allowed's FSX/P3D Software and Hardware Guide. Although they are similar in a number of respects, the approaches are somewhat different in key areas such as Bufferpools, TBM, Affinity Mask, Anisotropic filtering, etc. Up until a few days ago, Word Not Allowed's post at http://forum.avsim.n...-guide-for-fsx/ had links for both the Avsim guide AND Word Not Allowed's FSX/P3D Software and Hardware Guide. For some reason, Word Not Allowed appears to have fallen out of grace and was even banned from Avsim, so I've heard. As far as I can tell, it appears to stem from some rather vitriolic disagreements between he and NickN, but I won't speculate any farther. What's interesting is that Word Not Allowed's post no longer has the link for his guide. It only has the link for Avsim's Official Guide. That's unfortunate for a couple of reasons. First, regardless of any disagreements between Word Not Allowed and NickN, several users have seen great results following Word Not Allowed's guide. Just read some of the replies to his post. You can easily locate the guide by searching the Web, but Avsim's greatness comes from the fact that it is a repository for this sort of information--a one stop shop. Why remove the link? In fact, when I previewed this post, I got a message saying that "You have entered a link to a website that the administrator does not allow links to." Wow, what happened, folks?!

 

Second, there are some 20 pages of replies in Word Not Allowed's post. A number of these replies are from users describing their success using Word Not Allowed's guide. However, because the link to Word Not Allowed's guide was removed from Word Not Allowed's original post, one could easily conclude that these users are referring instead to Avsim's Official Guide. That's quite deceptive, and this point would be lost on anyone who didn't happen to see the thread prior to a few days ago.

 

Personally, I don't care who wins the scuffle for the distinction of authoring the "Premier FSX setup guide." But I am very much interested in being able to discern whether people with the new Sandy and Ivy Bridge processors are having better results with one approach over the other. Can we all shake hands and agree to get along?

 

And, if not, would someone with a similar setup to mine at least tell me about their experience using either of the two competing guides? My new specs are below:

 

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CD: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive [-34] (BLACK COLOR)

COOLANT: Standard Coolant

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3770K 3.50 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1155 (All Venom OC Certified)

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HDD2: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD [+112] (Single Drive)

IUSB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports

KEYBOARD: AZZA Multimedia USB Gaming Keyboard

MEMORY: 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/1866MHz Dual Channel Memory [+29] (Corsair Vengeance [+29])

MOPAD1: * Cooler Master Storm Speed-RX Gaming Mouse Pad [+16]

MOTHERBOARD: [CrossFireX/SLI] ASUS P8Z77-V Pro Intel Z77 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ IRST, Lucid Virtu MVP, Wi-Fi GO!, 7.1 HD Audio, Intel GbLAN, Display Port, 3x PCIe x16 (2 Gen3, 1 Gen2), 2x PCie x1 & 2 PCI (All Venom OC Certified) [+140]

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NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network

OS: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium [+0] (64-bit Edition)

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SPEAKERS: Logitech Z313 2.1 DT speaker [+48]

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 4GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card [+354] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)

XWNC1: ASUS USB-N13 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter [+22]

 

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[PieEater 10]

Well seeing as how you've got all your hardware sorted out I'd suggest this isn't the right forum for you, maybe the FSX specific one? Maybe a well meaning Moderator will move it for you.

 

In the meantime get your rig set up and then see what if any issues you think you're having, that should give those in the know some pointers to the right mods for you.

[Lawyer+Pilot 126]

Well seeing as how you've got all your hardware sorted out I'd suggest this isn't the right forum for you, maybe the FSX specific one? Maybe a well meaning Moderator will move it for you.

 

In the meantime get your rig set up and then see what if any issues you think you're having, that should give those in the know some pointers to the right mods for you.

 

I'm not really sure where this thread should go. I picked this forum because both Word Not Allowed's thread (http://forum.avsim.net/topic/370594-software-hardware-guide-for-fsx/) and SpiritFlyer's link to the AVSIM Official Guide (http://forum.avsim.net/topic/398016-avsims-official-software-and-hardware-guide-for-fsx/) are located in this forum. It seemed logical...

[PieEater 10]

My Apologies, it looks like the new Official Software & hardware guide stickie at the top of this forum would make suitable readng for you.

[Lawyer+Pilot 126]

I guess it might make sense to move this to the config/setup forum. Any willing mod? [sticks up thumb to hitch a ride...]

 

My Apologies, it looks like the new Official Software & hardware guide stickie at the top of this forum would make suitable readng for you.

 

That's the competing guide I'm referring to. The approach in that guide is somewhat different than Word Not Allowed's. I'm just hoping for an honest comparison of the two so I can minimize the trial and error. I know, I know, a little trial and error is the name of the game. But I'd hate to turn a deaf ear to some useful experiences.

 

And, yes, I've read both guides cover to cover.

[SpiritFlyer 987]

There is no way that a fair comparison could be made with the variables of individual machines, subjective evaluations, and the partisan bickering that would dominate this subject. There is no place for this thread or this subject to go but downhill. No way. Locked.