the talking about cores reminded me of something else. since we have the same CPU (4 cores)

you might want to see if you already have this in your fsx.cfg

 

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=14

 

for me this seems to work best. for an indepth explanation of this setting you can consult the usual tweaking guides, it basically tells fsx how to use the cores.

Hi Olli4740, sorry for the mixed up....i though I saw your siggy with Bill something on that, but I was mistaken.  Terribly sorry for this.  Thanks for the explanation.  I will keep this in mind and will monitor the size of fsx.exe when I am back from my business trip.  It's a bit ironic isn'it...my fairly capable gaming rig has to run a relatively old application at a reduced setting.

 

(...)

regards

 

No worries, I was just kidding ...

 

the talking about cores reminded me of something else. since we have the same CPU (4 cores)

you might want to see if you already have this in your fsx.cfg

 

[JOBSCHEDULER]

AffinityMask=14

 

for me this seems to work best. for an indepth explanation of this setting you can consult the usual tweaking guides, it basically tells fsx how to use the cores.

 

W7 does a pretty good job by itself to balance load between those cores. You could give AffinityMask a try, but keep in mind that settings are different for 4core CPUs with or without hyperthreading (4coreHT adds 4 shadow cores to the equation, so the AM value must be different).

 

 

The spiking can also come from an overloaded GPU (snip)

 

This is usually the problem.  Too high of autogen, cloud cover, water detail settings in combination can lead to these spikes.  What seems to happen is FSX floods the graphics card with too much data and the card can't keep up, resulting in spikes and other graphics artifacts such as white textures.  Try using the free MSI Afterburner tool to monitor GPU usage.

Supporting what has been said above about the GPU, this occurs for me when using the Bufferpools tweak. I do see better performance with it, so I have learned to accept it, but if removed the spikes disappear as well.

"Autogen spikes" can be stopped, on most computers, by locking FPS at 30 instead of unlimited. The twesks will help the stuttering.

 

Dave

I had these on my old Core2Duo when I set my settings up too high, Autogen particularly, and AI traffic. Turning them down magically fixed everything, no tweaks needed.

 

and by correctly tweaking you can leave your sliders at a higher setting, while eliminating the artifacts and enjoy more details!

 

 

FSX is 32bit and 32bit applications can use a maximum of 4GB RAM - the 'default' is, they are configured to use just about half of that (2GB).

 

This is a wrong statement.  In a 32 bit version of Windows, FSX can only use 2GB unless you employ the /3GB or UserVA switch.  Then FSX can only use up to a max of 3 GB.  In a 64 bit environment, FSX can use up to a max of 4GB's.  Any additional memory installed will be used for running Windows applications and services.  So, if you only have 4GB's of memory, FSX will probably use the max of 3GB's as Windows needs the rest to run apps.  A better explanation can be found in NickN's Setting up FSX and Tuning It guide - http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html.  You were on the right track though.  Just wanted to clarify it as I think it is important that anyone using FSX should install a 64 bit version of Windows 7 or 8.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Thanks for clarifying, Jim.

 

I had the OP's 64 bit OS in my mind but didn't refer to it explicitly.