Alienware m17x r4 low FPS

[estipi 0]

Hi again everyone!

 

I got a little big question here. I am seriously low on FPS (around 10) when starting a flight at Gatwick with a Gatwick addon + ORBX England +Active Sky +Ultimate Traffic and using PMDG 737 ngx. GEX Europe UTX Europe as well, but I think Orbx England overwrote them. The scenery is quite nice actually. BUT impossible to fly due to the low fps of course. In Insbruck X I get aroung 14 fps, not much of a difference. Anywere else in the word without scenery addons or modifications I get 30-40 no problem. 

My specs are: Alienware m17x r4, Intel Core i7 3840QM CPU @ 2,80 GHz, RAM 16, GTX 680M. I got this computer in hopes to fly FSX at good speed.....

I already tweaked fsx.cfg, limited the fps to 40 via NVidia inspector but still get 10 fps....

 

Question is - should I hyperthread my processor and overlock the graphics card? how dangerous can it be for the laptop?

 

Thank you!

[learn-by-flying 37]

I would not start OCing a card in a laptop, simply not enough cooling. How did you tweak the config file? Also, do you have bufferpools set to 0, I've seen people get good results with the external limiter as horrible results with external limiters, try the internal fsx one and see what you come up with. My FSX installation is tweaked via Word Not Allowed's guide.

[shamrockflyer 647]

 

 

 CPU @ 2,80 GHz

To be honest with you, I think this is your main reason for low frame rates. 

 

My current CPU is 2.8GHz at stock, I OC'd it too 3.6GHz. Much better frames than what I used to have. I believe with a program such as FSX, the higher the numbers on the CPU (Example: 3-4+ Ghz) the better performance you're going to get. FSX is very CPU dependent and can seriously lag on a really low clock such as yours. 

 

I wouldn't recommend using/buying any Alienware product either, regardless of what you're going to use it for, especially FSX! 

[learn-by-flying 37]

To be honest with you, I think this is your main reason for low frame rates. 

 

My current CPU is 2.8GHz at stock, I OC'd it too 3.6GHz. Much better frames than what I used to have. I believe with a program such as FSX, the higher the numbers on the CPU (Example: 3-4+ Ghz) the better performance you're going to get. FSX is very CPU dependent and can seriously lag on a really low clock such as yours. 

 

I wouldn't recommend using/buying any Alienware product either, regardless of what you're going to use it for, especially FSX! 

 

 

I must have read that as 3.8! Yes 2.8ghz will bottleneck FSX and cause the low frames. Alienware/Dell build some of the best gaming rigs, don't let people sway you away from the fact that you have a good system with a laptop, I have an R4 Aurora myself.

[shamrockflyer 647]

I must have read that as 3.8! Yes 2.8ghz will bottleneck FSX and cause the low frames. Alienware/Dell build some of the best gaming rigs, don't let people sway you away from the fact that you have a good system with a laptop, I have an R4 Aurora myself.

My current system is an Alienware case, but all custom spec inside. For the amount I paid for it back in 07/08 it wasn't worth the money! 

[estipi 0]

Thanks for the replies!!!!!

 

Well, actually I am quite impressed with Alienware so far! Fine laptop. If money will allow I will stick to the brand.

 

Bergman,

 

So for tweaking I used Venetube.

 

In my fsx.cfg file I only found this about bufflepools: [bufferPools]    Should I add a line like: bufferpools = 0  And where exactly do I add it into?

 

Shamrock, so you also have a CPU @ 2.8  but you overclocked it?  How dangerous will it be to overclock my laptop you think? I only have extra fan cooling under the laptop.

 

Thanks again!

[shamrockflyer 647]

 

Shamrock, so you also have a CPU @ 2.8  but you overclocked it?  How dangerous will it be to overclock my laptop you think? I only have extra fan cooling under the laptop.

 

 

As Tom said, over-clocking on a laptop isn't recommended. There isn't enough space for sufficient cooling and therefor can potentially destroy your CPU if you even attempt to overclock your CPU on your laptop. 

[estipi 0]

Okay, somehow the FPS at that Gatwick airport with all of the addons got up to 18-24 fps!!!!

 

I installed game booster 2 which shuts down most processes and also performed FSX defrag using the same software and set fps to 35 on the NVidia inspector. it wasn't on before as I thought.

 

 

Well I think I will give the OC a try sometime just to see the difference. My standard desktop temperature is 33-37 C

[shamrockflyer 647]

 

Well I think I will give the OC a try sometime just to see the difference. My standard desktop temperature is 33-37 C

Well, if you mess things up don't come blaming us! 

 

Seriously, overclocking on a laptop is not recommended. 

 

Also; what is your PSU?

[estipi 0]

There is no way I am going to blame you guys!

 

The power supply is 240W ....  that's all I know...

 

Well, the FPS were good until the middle of the flight from EGKK to EHAM (I'm doing this PMDG tutorial)......and just before descent they dropped like crazy down to 5! I was above the sea, so there is not mush of scenery going on....   very strange.  And then I keep getting this smartassembly error right after I start to descend and crash to desktop....   :mad:  I did download the 14 day trial of smartassembly but it don't help. Also run FSX in Vista service pack 2 compatibility mode since I have Windows 8.

The fps problem I almost fixed...and now this

Oh and yeah, first I got a small drop in FPS when I started recording my flight. 

 

Somehow I got a gut feeling that recording a flight or playing a flight back has something to do with this smartassembly error.....

[estipi 0]

On second though, the smartassembly error could be due to a possible conflict between ORBX England and GEX Europe..... ??

[learn-by-flying 37]

Estipi,

 

The power supplies in the Alienware's are the same as the mobile Precisions. The 17 will have the 240watt and the 14 will have the 180watt, the issue with OCing (heat aside) is that the processor may become power starved due to the lack of. I am also not an expert on laptop processors but in the desktop arena you need an unlocked processor to OC, not sure if yours is or not. Again you do it at your own risk.

 

With bufferpools set to 0, you are bypassing the CPU and sending instructions directly to the GPU, some good reading is in this guide and it will tell you how to apply the tweak, http://#####.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/ (Mods, I am not sure if linking to this is allowed due to the recent events, if it is not I am very sorry).

[shamrockflyer 647]

On second though, the smartassembly error could be due to a possible conflict between ORBX England and GEX Europe..... ??

Just a thought: do you have the UIAutomationCore.dll in your FSX directory?

 

If not Google "UIAutomationcore.dll FSX" it apparently fixes some crashes with-in FSX. It works for me.

[estipi 0]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I downloaded the UIAutomationcore.dll couple of days ago and it helped preventing crashes from the menu of the game.

Anyway, I deleted GEX Europe and only left UTX and ORBX Europe England (I think orbx besides England also affects the rest of Europe) and was able to finish the flight okay. Perhaps the problem was the conflict between GEX and Orbx because the crashes occurred right when I was leaving England and therefore the smartassembly errors.

 

OC will be my last option of course. I will do some research before I do it and will try to get the fps up without it.

 

And again, thanks for the help! :smile:

[JordanChin 24]

estipi, I'm actually running FSX on my laptop too with a 1st gen i7 processor (i7-940XM). There's a strong chance that either your CPU is throttling due to heat, or reaching it's power limits and not being able to maintain the current turbo boost. The 240W PSU that you have should be more than enough to give you power, but once the processor reaches it's TDP or temps go up, it'll throttle giving you low FPS. Keep in mind some Alienware laptops have throttling issues due to how the CPU works and settings in BIOS, but you can download an application called ThrottleStop to help overcome that. I should warn you, using ThrottleStop will push the processor beyond it's limits and temps WILL go up since it'll try to prevent throttling.

 

Here's the link to download it:http://www.techinferno.com/downloads/?did=41

 

And here's the guide:http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

 

As for overclocking, there's no way to overclock non extreme CPUs, unless there's some option that's available in bios to change your base clock (which I doubt). ThrottleStop allows you to change the multipliers, but that's ONLY available for extreme CPUs, you can mess around with the TDP and TDC (My advice, don't touch the TDC and increase the TDP by 20 from it's default value). So depending on the amount of cores being used, you'll only have overclocking from turbo boost.