Thanks to Rod - this is now my preferred NI setup. It's also in the Guide. The great thing about DX10 is, it doesn't need to be continually experimentally twiddled with.

 

Set NI as Rod suggested - basically the one I posted above - and leave it alone!

Set the FSX sliders to 1/2 or 3/4 of their normal length, with frames to 30 (I like 31) inside the sim, then work at setting BP & TBM. If it's a low-end pc - use a TBM of 40, mid-and high range - TBM = 80, then work at getting the BufferPools right. Try every setting. BP=0 first, see how it behaves, then BP=1, with an RT=131072, then RT=262144, then RT=524288, then 786432, 1048576, as far as 1310720 as the top number.

If the frames didn't stabilize or rise, change the PoolSize to 10485760 (10 MB - default is 8MB, and doesn't need to be entered here.) Once it's changed, run through each of the sizes again, noting any improvement. When you have the best setting, change the TBM - use multiples of 10. Nick recommends 40, 80 or 120, but I've found that changes as little as + or -10 will alter the achievable frame rates and their stability. 

 

That "job" will take a few days of flying a single course, round and round until you're sick of it. This one is not to be guessed at. Once you have the highest "Solid" frames, you can then move the other sliders however you want. TBM and BP are critical in getting a high, stable fr.

 

What you're doing is to build in that reserve power that DX10 has over DX9. When tuned, DX10 will smoothly handle very good amounts of traffic and weather at known "heavy" areas, while driving the aircraft like the NGX. You're running 4.8-gig with a 670 - it should be easy to hold 30 almost anywhere. I certainly can do this with my 580 and an old 5.0-gig 2600K. ... but I also run Alacrity, my ram is tweaked a little, and I use about five separate fsx.cfg, exe.xml and dll.xml, loading (by config) only the areas that I'm flying - i.e. If it's the Carenado C152II I don't load Coutl or the FSDT Addon Manager or any part of Europe or Asia if I'm flying the PNW. I also "vet" all textures for alpha's and mipmaps. Every ounce of power goes into the current FSX flight.

 

You may have read my mention of this before, but I've found a good performance indicator is the procspeed number, found in the [Main] section of the cfg file. I've slowly been collecting fsx.cfg's for about eight months, and a low number - say 6000 to 8000 or 9000 is a pretty mediocre setup, with lots of problems: 9000 - 14000 is getting warm, but once I see 18000 and above - I know she's a hot-rod! Try getting your pc up there!

You may have read my mention of this before, but I've found a good performance indicator is the procspeed number, found in the [Main] section of the cfg file. I've slowly been collecting fsx.cfg's for about eight months, and a low number - say 6000 to 8000 or 9000 is a pretty mediocre setup, with lots of problems: 9000 - 14000 is getting warm, but once I see 18000 and above - I know she's a hot-rod! Try getting your pc up there!

 

Mine shows 10046 thus far.. i guess i do have some more tweaking to do.. i hadnt realized to use this procspeed as gauge before.. good tip

Yup - it works, TSITL! And yes, with a bit of work, your 4.8-gig pc with a 670 ought to push higher than my "old?" 580!

 

It will change up (or down!) depending upon the change you make, whether different ram, different drivers - or change of Inspector or fsx.cfg settings!

Yup - it works, TSITL! And yes, with a bit of work, your 4.8-gig pc with a 670 ought to push higher than my "old?" 580!

 

It will change up (or down!) depending upon the change you make, whether different ram, different drivers - or change of Inspector or fsx.cfg settings!

Yeah provided i get back to 4.8, currently 4.6..

 

I looked again, actually, the value of 10,046 is right now with the proc at 3.5ghz.. oddly enough.. i looked back at the cfg when i had it at 4.6 and higher it also says 10,046, strange.

In case I missed it, TSITL, you have to delete the line, and then FSX will re-write it. 

In case I missed it, TSITL, you have to delete the line, and then FSX will re-write it. 

Ah great.. thanks will do

Ah great.. thanks will do

 

Procspeed is 9815.. thats pretty awful all things considered i think.. this is the i7-2600k at 4.6ghz too.. perfbucket 7.. same cfg as attached before, though bufferpools still set to usepools=0.. more tinkering to come.  Though I wonder if speedstep might just be causing the value to be lower, hence nothing to fret over.

Don't know about SS.. perfbucket will always be 7 with anything better than a Core2Duo. You could bump that 2600K up if you have the cooling. Here are some settings for you.

Don't know about SS.. perfbucket will always be 7 with anything better than a Core2Duo. You could bump that 2600K up if you have the cooling. Here are some settings for you.

 

I had it at 4.8.. but started getting random blue screens, still unclear if it was a slew of hdd issues or a combo of the two.  It was stable forever, but i suspect my voltage has been too high for too long, say 1.41 volts, yeah i know others run this and higher, but generally to avoid degradation its been said to try for 1.4 or lower i believe, so now at an offset of i think - 0.06 (need to verify), i'm at 1.408, slightly better and stable in short tests.. need to do the 12 hour or 24 hour prime95 to be sure though.. ill compare your settings though as I creep back up.

 

You may have read my mention of this before, but I've found a good performance indicator is the procspeed number, found in the [Main] section of the cfg file. I've slowly been collecting fsx.cfg's for about eight months, and a low number - say 6000 to 8000 or 9000 is a pretty mediocre setup, with lots of problems: 9000 - 14000 is getting warm, but once I see 18000 and above - I know she's a hot-rod! Try getting your pc up there!

 

 

Mine sits at 12963 at this instant. How does one go about 'getting your pc up there!' ?

Ouch! This is not possible here in this post!!,OB, but I'll give you a bit of an overview of the way I get there.

 

It's a given that the pc has to be at the highest proc speed that you can get it to - and set in the BIOS. This is taken directly from my VFR.cfg (which gets renamed)

 

DisablePreload=1

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.12   

ProcSpeed=20929

 

[PANELS]

IMAGE_QUALITY=1

 

and is based around the i7-2600K running at 5.0 gig.

 

I reckon memory needs to be (for the dual-channel buses) not more than 8 gig and at the lowest/tightest-possible timings. Speed doesn't seem to make much difference, but I would go 1866 or 2400 next time around. At this moment I'm using 1600MHz, 8-8-8-24 and 1T Corsair Vengeance.

 

I've read of a few users with HT on, but most hard-core o/c'ers use HT off, which I agree with.

 

After the BIOS is ok - then the OS W7-64 needs to be "optimized" (good buzz-word), but basically get rid of Aero, fancy desktops, UAC, icon shadowing, using as close to the old Windows "classic" desktop as possible. A good site is Windows 7 "How-To-Geek" http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/, and trim everything that you might consider unnecessary for normal operation.

 

The same applies to things like the Nvidia drivers - why load the 3D, sound and Update if it's not needed?

 

The swap file is a 100/100 MB "Custom" on C-drive, with a 3-gig as shown here. No OOM's.

 

Into fsx - textures - check all textures for alphas and mipmaps - fixing any that are missing.

 

Stop all extraneous processes before fsx starts.

 

Use "SceneryConfigEditor" to set what scenery's get loaded. (Why load/run Africa, if you only fly the PNW?)

 

FSX gets it's own 200 to 250-gig SSD.

 

If you get into the habit of "minimalizing" what is running, this will become second nature in all parts of the pc - not just FSX.

 

I use about four fsx.cfgs, and two exe and dll.xml files, so that none of the "Couatl.exe" and "Addon Manager" (along with those "[Trusted] airports, gauges and extras) get loaded when I'm flying PNW VFR.

 

I don't think there's any one "Magic Bullet" for FSX, OB, it's just applying "Best Practice" to what you have, with small improvements here and there, taking the time to evaluate each and every parameter in the fsx.cfg.

 

 I read lots of posts here from folks who have "tried" DX10 (one recent one stated "I played around for the best part of the day Friday with DX10"...) - well - it took me just under a month before I had 30 frames constant - every day, flight after flight, same route, slowly moving BP, TBM and a few other settings, including NI changes. When I began helping others analyze and make suggestions for their fsx.cfg's I noticed a trend in those "procspeed=" numbers - the "better" the system - the higher that number was. My "proof", if you will - was Les's (Mavrick11) i7-2600, where over a period of three weeks we moved from ~8,700 right up to over 19,000.

 

Spend the time, don't expect a miracle in five minutes, just work towards getting your processor to at least 4.8 gig with the matching hardware, (money and time-wise) and then practicing the above, picking up hints here and there.

Hope this helps a bit, OB!  :nea:

 

:lol:

 

All the Best,

 

 

 

Thanks Paul! I actually feel bad because I was looking more for an overview rather than a detailed response. But since you've taken the time to reply in such detail, I'll shoot back a couple of followup questions:

 

1) Does FSX recalculate and update the ProcSpeed value each time you start it or do you need to take further steps such as delete and have it rebuild the fsx.cfg to get an updated value?

 

2) I can understand how increasing your clock speed, removing extraneous processes and such could results in more processing power available to FSX in determining the ProcSpeed, but does changing something like the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION actually make a difference to the ProcSpeed? As I understand it, this is really a mechanism for tuning resource allocation in FSX (certainly important for optimizing performance!) but would not influence the actual processing power available to FSX.... or am I all wet!?

 

Cheers, Brian

Hi Brian!

 

1). Yes - would I expect that FSX recalculates the procspeed each time it starts, but it only writes it to the fsx.cfg if that line is missing. Putting a faster proc in the pc will change the number, but you won't see it until you delete the existing one.

 

2). I would expect that the mathematical algorithm used, takes hundreds of parameters into it's calculation. Your average 4-gig proc does billions of operations per second, so I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect that FFTF would be in there too. Also - that same proc is doing millions of other operations ever second that it's running - just open up ProcMonitor and watch the file action as she starts, so that number can/will be changing all the time - not only controlled by the hardware, but also by the general configuration of the pc as FSX starts. Check out the Services that start (search Services above the Start button).

 

Change FFTF - see what happens! Go even further - create a "heavy" fsx.cfg - and a "light" fsx.cfg. - maybe the original fsx.cfg, and compare the numbers!

 

Cheers,

 

 

Change FFTF - see what happens! Go even further - create a "heavy" fsx.cfg - and a "light" fsx.cfg. - maybe the original fsx.cfg, and compare the numbers!

 

I will!

 

Thanks