FSX - The Beast I Could Not Slay

[Kuragiman 227]

And it came to pass that K-Man did see a future of flying high in the skies and learning to be a virtual pilot to fly upon the holy Vatsim and join a mighty Virtual Airline that he could zoom around in his PMDG 737 NGX with.

 

Low, legend says, that K-Man, after having such dreams of epic fun, did go forth and throw nearly $5000 out upon a Rig of Legendary Epicness.   It did look something like this:

 

Intel 3930k 6-Core CPU OC'd to 4.6ghz-Stable with Corsair H100i Water Cooler

ASUS Sabertooth X79 Overclocking Motherboard

32 Gigs of G.Skill Rampage set to 1600mhz with 9-9-9-24-1T timings

ASUS GTX 770 DCII OC Video card with 2 Gigs of DDR5 Ram

2 WD Velociraptors 10k RPM HDDs and 1 Black WD 7200 RPM HDD

3x24" ASUS 1920x1080 Monitors

Saitek X65F, Saitek Combat Pedals, Saitek Professional Yoke and Throttle Quad

Win 7 64-bit Pro fully up to date on updates and all drivers at the latest and greatest

 

And he built it.  And it was good and all games thrown upon the altar of gaming sacrifice were accepted and consumed by the gods of gaming.    At last, it was time to grab the legendary beast, FSX, and conqueror and make it his epic flying mount.   And so with great joy he did install the beast and he did slide the sliders of doom to their maxes and did minor tweaks to prep for wide screen goodness across 3 monitors and when he opened the sacred FSX and did load his first flight from his home airport of Dallas Love Field in Texas, he did weep at the beauty of it all but his tears turned from joy into anguish for the FRAPS FPS counter did say that this $5000 machine of Legendary Epicness was only hammering a meer 52 FPS in the Virtual Cockpit.   Some prophets of the great FSX would argue, that is good, but K-Man did say NAY for a $5000 Legendary Machine should be able to crush a foe that was unleashed in 2006.    And then he read upon the Internetz that FSX code sucks more than the black hole at the center of the galaxy but there was light upon the grim news for the community had written 132 different guides, all different and all contradicting themselves.

 

And then it came to pass that K-Man did find the Holy Grail of FSX Tweakers known as *******'s Auto Tweaker.    With eagerness he did click upon the tweaker after plugging in his PC stats and behold, *******'s popped out a config with all manner of Blues and Reds and said, 'Do these things that I command and ye shall have a smooth and glorious FSX.'    Alas... they were but empty promises that brought tearing, black textures and stutters that are the story of legend among those who have fought with the FSX beast.

 

Upon more tomes of knowledge he did pour his time, digging into dungeons deep and low and behold.. he did find the Word Not Allowed's Guide and the AVSIM Guide and the tome of NVIDIA Inspector and he did do these things

• Set AffinityMask to 62 to unleash the power of 5 of the 6 non-threaded cores
• Set the often abused and misunderstood Bufferpools to 0 for the mighty GTX 770 DR2 OC should surely be able to handle the load!
• Did install FTX Global to add non-suck textures and fix the broken trees
• Did turn off all scenery traffic, air and ground and did slide the clouds back to 70miles from 100miles for Rex Essentials Had gifted him with clouds of beauty.. and clouds of wrecking ball FPS destruction.
• He did set the glorious Fiber Frames to a meer 0.01, the setting of the gods!
• His Texture Bandwidth was 120 for the power and speed of the GPU and CPU and the masses of RAM and VRAM should be able to benefit!
• He did set his Inspector up to do 4xS rather than the community suggested 8xSQ for SQ makes the clouds eat upon the cherished FPS like so much delicious cherry pie

 

and behold the results:

 

                                          Before Tweaks :  After Tweaks

Virtual Cocpit:                            52                         72

Outside Left View:                      63                        83

Orbital:                                       87                        148

Flyby:                                        123                       174

 

Improvements made, he cheered at the victory that was his.   At last... it ran better though he was not yet satisfied for the many many MANY videos upon the YouTubes did show people with lesser and inferior machines of ancient lore blasting through the sky with 50 add-ons, ENB injectors and tons of maxed settings while recording with the greatest of ease.   His own machine weeped bitter tears at attempting to even think about recording.    True, most who make such videos, do in fact lie, so K-Man was told, by letting their editing software correct the terrible FPS they were in fact getting while recording but then there were those who did not appear to cheat.   They just... DID.   And K-Man's jealousy grew for these mere mortals with their lowly ancient machines had the appearance of making his Legendary Machine look like a giant paperweight before the beast!

 

For over 2 months he tried many many tweak configs, suggestions, hints, ancient voodoo rituals... nothing seemed to work.  He uninstalled and re-installed FSX and the plethora of addons no less than 6 times, starting over from scratch when he mangled his install to badly and STILL he could not get the performance others had boasted about and so... he settled on the After Tweaks numbers above and locked down the FPS to 30 and set the Vsync in the Inspector to 1/2 Refresh.   Smoothness... beauty.... no stutters.. good load times on textures... minor blurries.         And so... he thought he had slain the beast... but it was not to be so... for on this very day....   he did re-install the following add-ons:

 

FTX Global (Without Lights Option since it punches FPS right in the nether regions)

FSUPIC for without this FSX does explode and catch fire upon exiting a flight

REX with Essentials Overdrive for it's textures are unmatched though it's weather engine doth smoke much crack on wind turbulence

PMDG 737 800/900NGX with SP1C for this plane is the mother of all planes.  Keep your shiny new 777... the 800NG is the love and dream of this pilot... though the 777 is coming next for K-Man does wish to fly to Japan one day.

 

He has many more add-ons to yet add such as cities and airports, all payware.   But he stopped at PMDG 737 for when he loaded back in with his AMAZING performance listed above, PMDG did grab the FPS by it's throat and choke the Legendary PC to death, demanding its wallet and jewelry, with Rex's Cloud Generation system cackling in the background.     FSX could now no longer hold to the 30 FPS it was locked at and was more around 22 FPS just after takeoff over DFW, getting back to 30 FPS once clearing about 12000 feet.   This is without REX weather running, just the default Fair Weather.   If Rex was allowed to run it's weather they would stomp the Legendary PC into the earth.

 

K-Man's mind was then blown... for that means between PMDG and REX Clouds over 50 FPS was lost... from ONE plane... and some fluffy clouds.     Do not even dare to go inside the eye of a storm for each drop of rain are the tears of many who have fought FSX about bad weather and lost....   15 FPS upon takeoff in a storm...   

 

He had tweaked all, read all, done all over and over and over again.     He cannot slay the beast!     He dare not add back Utlimate Traffic 2 for between that, PMDG and REX the FPS will be -25 which will cause the entire universe to be destroyed and all who fly upon it.

 

Attached is the FSX.CFG file of K-Man as it currently stands.    How do people like Frooglepete on YouTube get their bloody FSX to run smooth as glass in their videos?   K-Man has followed all their suggestions and nothing works.    The Legendary Computer puts up a legendary middle-finger and refuses to throw a proper saddle on FSX's back so it can be ridden to glory...   It's enough to drive a man to drink....   oh wait.. I am drinking... which is why this entire post is in 3rd person and told old school fantasy style.   

 

I just want to fly my PMDG with Rex Weather, FTX Global and Ultimate Traffic 2 running and have it stay stable at 30FPS...   T_T    There should be no reason for this PC to not be able to do this when people with older 2600k and 960's and GTX 400/500 series video cards are just whizzing around with no problems.   What am I missing?   

 

*hides in the corner crying*

 

And apparently I can't attach any kind of file so... if anyone wants to see my FSX.CFG file just PM me.   Any help is appreciated.

[ryanbatc 12,846]

Entertaining post.

 

I just cut the crap and add the only real tweak....  highmemfix=1

 

Adjust sliders accordingly - it is a balancing act.  Oh, save different cfg's to different scenarios.  NGX+gazillion addons won't work with max settings... sooner or later = OOM.

 

Good luck

[Kuragiman 227]

Oh, anyone running PMDG.   If you can, I want a comparison.     Take off from KDAL at 5pm with just Fair Weather running and tell me what you are getting.   I am curious to see what others are getting in the DFW area.

 

I did cut the crap.   I actually added one tweak at a time and went and tested it.   I have an EXCEL spreadsheet with every test on it, what I added and what the results were.    I could not get past 72 FPS in the normal MS Boeing 737 so I decided to clamp it all down to 30 FPS then PMDG came through with it's wrecking ball.

 

I don't have many add-ons added at the moment;  I just have REX, ORBX FTX Global and PMDG.

[MikeT707 1,181]

K-Man,

Your account is epic.

[Kuragiman 227]

K-Man,

Your account is epic.

 

If only my FPS was epic to match.. XD      I am going to beat this thing!  I swear it!   

[McDaniel 48]

btw all those videos on youtube are made with fsrecorder and thats the reason why they are so smooth...

[ryanbatc 12,846]

True... reference most the vids on you tube... they can run 1/2 speed sim rate, then speed it up with the recording tools...  at 1/2 time compression you'll get ultra smooth perf and fps.

[SierraHotel 980]

You could try the legendary DX10 failing that try taking a goat to a high place, build an alter etc etc.

[zmak 331]

There you go @ 1000ft climb

 

 

 

i52500k OC 4400

GTX 560ti

[Kuragiman 227]

Almost twice my FPS.    That's crazy.  How!?    Are you a single monitor setup and are you playing in window mode?   What are your slider settings?

 

 

There you go @ 1000ft climb

 

 

 

i52500k OC 4400

GTX 560ti

[zmak 331]

All Sliders maxed except auto gen one notch back from full.

That was in windowed mode, single monitor using a Projector and screen

 

Im using the ******* fix with buffer pools at 0

 

edit

water 2x high

[Kuragiman 227]

You could try the legendary DX10 failing that try taking a goat to a high place, build an alter etc etc.

 

I was told to stay FAR FAR away from the DX10 features of FSX.   Is this no longer relevant in this new day and age of super computers?

True... reference most the vids on you tube... they can run 1/2 speed sim rate, then speed it up with the recording tools...  at 1/2 time compression you'll get ultra smooth perf and fps.

 

Yeah I had a feeling FSRecorder was removing the work load and the final touches were getting polished in Sony or Adobe.

[Trans_27 Pilot Chase 59]

Entertaining post.

 

I just cut the crap and add the only real tweak.... highmemfix=1

 

Adjust sliders accordingly - it is a balancing act. Oh, save different cfg's to different scenarios. NGX+gazillion addons won't work with max settings... sooner or later = OOM.

 

Good luck

Ryan,

 

You just made me want to do a fresh re install just so I can have the bare essentials. I don't have much installed anyways, I just want to tweak. Its a sickness. That's why I avoid posts like this.

[zmak 331]

If it were me I would run the rig through these bench tests and compare your scores. That way you will know if you have a faulty build (it happens) or FSX and its installation is the culprit

 

prime 95

Furmark

 

download memtest to memory stick and boot from it and let it run a few passes

 

http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

 

 

edit

 

sorry to state the obvious but dont forget to disable anti virus whilst testing and in fsx

[SierraHotel 980]

I was told to stay FAR FAR away from the DX10 features of FSX.   Is this no longer relevant in this new day and age of super computers?

 

You are correct, this is no longer relevant. In fact there is a new piece of software (release within the next couple of weeks) Which will make DX10 "the only way to go"