Actually after posting my question I found the built-in limiter in Nvidia Inspector so I think I'm gonna start trying that one out since that way I don't have to add anything extra to my FSX setup always trying to keep it as "clean" as possible.

 

Great to hear about your successful flights! I know very well how good it feels after lots of time and effort to finally get something in return!

 

FSX sure is a real beast to tame!

Actually after posting my question I found the built-in limiter in Nvidia Inspector so I think I'm gonna start trying that one out since that way I don't have to add anything extra to my FSX setup always trying to keep it as "clean" as possible.

 

Great to hear about your successful flights! I know very well how good it feels after lots of time and effort to finally get something in return!

 

FSX sure is a real beast to tame!

 

I found the Nvidia FPS limiter did not make my flights as smooth and stutter free as vento's limiter.  I don't know why.    If you aren't getting the results you want through inspectors limiter try Vento's.   Worked great for me.

OK, will do some testing and keep this in mind - thanks for the tip!

brought the volts down to 1.44

Can the i-series CPUs actually sustain such a high voltage?

 

(And please don't use water cooling as an argument. Excessive voltage will harm your CPU's life expectancy regardless of temperature.)

 

With the Qs or Es from back in the day, going above 1.40V earned you a few disconcerted replies or a facepunch from CPU rights activists.

 

 

 

Also, nice to see that the old lesson of "high frequencies, low timings" still holds true. It's the only way to make a brick like FSX go supersonic.

Some tools I like for testing stability and performance:

 

Prime95

SiSoftware Sandra Pro 2013

 

DRAM timing is often the biggest source of system stability problems.  After any timing/frequency changes, I will run Prime95 first to ensure stability, then I run Sandra Pro 2013 memory benchmarks to see if I've actually improved performance (Memory bandwidth, Cache & Memory Latency, Cache Bandwidth, Memory Transaction Throughput).  SiSoftware Sandra Pro 2013 costs money, but it's a really good tool to see if what you've done has helped or hurt performance. 

OCCT also makes an excellent stability test and CPU burn tool. One nice feature is the ability to set temperature (and other) thresholds what will stop the test if exceeded.

+1 for OCCT.

Can the i-series CPUs actually sustain such a high voltage?

 

(And please don't use water cooling as an argument. Excessive voltage will harm your CPU's life expectancy regardless of temperature.)

 

With the Qs or Es from back in the day, going above 1.40V earned you a few disconcerted replies or a facepunch from CPU rights activists.

 

 

 

Also, nice to see that the old lesson of "high frequencies, low timings" still holds true. It's the only way to make a brick like FSX go supersonic.

 

Well the tweaking guide I followed is directly from ASUS Engineers regarding their ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard and the i7 3930k series of processors.    Danger zone, according to them, is anything beyond 1.5volts though they recommend you try to stay away from this high end if at all possible.    But the 1.44 I am at is acceptable.     My idle temp is 36c and my 95Prime stress test heat leveled off at 62c.    As with anything, the life span of the chip will be compromised if you go over their absolutely safe like of 1.35volts but the lifespan is still adequate enough for me that in 5 years I am going to want a new chip anyway.

I found there was no difference in FSX between running at 4.4 ghz and 4.6 ghz OC and 4.4 ghz seems to be the benchmark and the recommend OC for gaming

Well the tweaking guide I followed is directly from ASUS Engineers regarding their ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard and the i7 3930k series of processors.    Danger zone, according to them, is anything beyond 1.5volts though they recommend you try to stay away from this high end if at all possible.    But the 1.44 I am at is acceptable.     My idle temp is 36c and my 95Prime stress test heat leveled off at 62c.    As with anything, the life span of the chip will be compromised if you go over their absolutely safe like of 1.35volts but the lifespan is still adequate enough for me that in 5 years I am going to want a new chip anyway.

 

The voltages still seem to be a bit excessive. But maybe six cores and that integrated GPU are simply more demanding.

The voltages still seem to be a bit excessive. But maybe six cores and that integrated GPU are simply more demanding.

 

Yeah at 1.41 volts with 4.6+ ghz the system becomes unstable and starts to BSOD.   It is now stable at 1.44volts.

when I was OCing I would fly through all the benchmarks tests and then confidently start up FSX with the vision of the frame counter glued to 30. Only to get a blue screen within 5 minutes because it is a Beast!

Did a flight using the built-in FPS limiter in Nvidia Inspector and I'm happy to say the improvement over using the built-in FPS limiter in FSX was major! I have the FPS locked at 30.

 

When using the FSX limiter I often noticed how the FPS would jump up and down and sometimes it went down to as low as 10-15 FPS for a fraction of a second for no appearent reason. Now when using the FPS limiter in NI instead the FPS stayed perfectly locked at 30 FPS for 99% of the flight from ESSA-EBBR online on Vatsim with Aerosoft airport scenery for both ESSA and EBBR.

 

Must say I'm a bit surprised since Word Not Allowed's FSX guide which I've followed setting up both my computer and FSX clearly states he hasn't been able to find any advantage running an external FPS limiter over the default FSX FPS limiter but in my case the difference is nothing short of amazing !!

 

Then I thought I would also comment on overclocking and FSX. Of course it's important to make sure your overclock is stable before trying to run FSX using an overclocked PC but the fact that you are not able to run burn-in tools such as Prime95 or OCCT doens't necessary mean you will not be able to successfully run FSX. I've been running my Core i7 2700K @ 4.8 GHz for over 2 years now I think and when I first bought this setup and focused on the overclocking part I remember I had a very hard time making the overclock 100% stable when running Prime95. What happened was everything was good for about 1-2 hours and all "workers" were running along just fine but then after this time passed usually 1 of the "workers" (CPU cores) stopped working. I spent LOTS of time trying to fix this since many people said you should make sure you're able to run your overclock for many hours at 100% load before you can consider the overclock to be stable. Eventually I chose to disregard from these type of comments and thought to myself that if I'm able to run my CPU at 100% load for over 1 hour I do think it won't be a problem running FSX for a couple of hours considering the load will never be even close to what the load is when using these types of "static" burn-in tools. And...sure enough I've now flown hundreds of flights using this 4.8 GHz overclock with no problems what so ever and a FSX where I'm able to have both great IQ as well as FPS using some of the toughest addons like the PMDG NGX flying into major addons airports such as Aerosoft EHAM and this online on Vatsim. Sure the FPS takes a hit when flying in the most extreme conditions but it's still pretty OK and at least in my eyes fully enjoyable.

 

So...with all this said if you're just about to start trying some overclocking don't be afraid an overclock which isn't 100% stable when running a tool such as Prime95 for several hours will always cause you problems "IRL" ie when running for instance FSX. However if you do get strange problems such as sudded CTDs or BSODs it could be your overclock and then you can try just lowering the speed a bit or raise you voltage a bit to see if it makes any difference. Overclocking is an art in itself and the only way to find out how it will work for you is by doing your own testing in your own environment and not only by relying 100% on static burn-in tools.

Did a flight using the built-in FPS limiter in Nvidia Inspector and I'm happy to say the improvement over using the built-in FPS limiter in FSX was major! I have the FPS locked at 30.

 

When using the FSX limiter I often noticed how the FPS would jump up and down and sometimes it went down to as low as 10-15 FPS for a fraction of a second for no appearent reason. Now when using the FPS limiter in NI instead the FPS stayed perfectly locked at 30 FPS for 99% of the flight from ESSA-EBBR online on Vatsim with Aerosoft airport scenery for both ESSA and EBBR.

 

Must say I'm a bit surprised since Word Not Allowed's FSX guide which I've followed setting up both my computer and FSX clearly states he hasn't been able to find any advantage running an external FPS limiter over the default FSX FPS limiter but in my case the difference is nothing short of amazing !!

 

Then I thought I would also comment on overclocking and FSX. Of course it's important to make sure your overclock is stable before trying to run FSX using an overclocked PC but the fact that you are not able to run burn-in tools such as Prime95 or OCCT doens't necessary mean you will not be able to successfully run FSX. I've been running my Core i7 2700K @ 4.8 GHz for over 2 years now I think and when I first bought this setup and focused on the overclocking part I remember I had a very hard time making the overclock 100% stable when running Prime95. What happened was everything was good for about 1-2 hours and all "workers" were running along just fine but then after this time passed usually 1 of the "workers" (CPU cores) stopped working. I spent LOTS of time trying to fix this since many people said you should make sure you're able to run your overclock for many hours at 100% load before you can consider the overclock to be stable. Eventually I chose to disregard from these type of comments and thought to myself that if I'm able to run my CPU at 100% load for over 1 hour I do think it won't be a problem running FSX for a couple of hours considering the load will never be even close to what the load is when using these types of "static" burn-in tools. And...sure enough I've now flown hundreds of flights using this 4.8 GHz overclock with no problems what so ever and a FSX where I'm able to have both great IQ as well as FPS using some of the toughest addons like the PMDG NGX flying into major addons airports such as Aerosoft EHAM and this online on Vatsim. Sure the FPS takes a hit when flying in the most extreme conditions but it's still pretty OK and at least in my eyes fully enjoyable.

 

So...with all this said if you're just about to start trying some overclocking don't be afraid an overclock which isn't 100% stable when running a tool such as Prime95 for several hours will always cause you problems "IRL" ie when running for instance FSX. However if you do get strange problems such as sudded CTDs or BSODs it could be your overclock and then you can try just lowering the speed a bit or raise you voltage a bit to see if it makes any difference. Overclocking is an art in itself and the only way to find out how it will work for you is by doing your own testing in your own environment and not only by relying 100% on static burn-in tools.

So, you now you have Inspector locked at 30 and FSX set to unlimited? Is this correct.

 

The only problem I've had when setting FSX to unlimited FPS and Inspector locked to 30, is "blurries" when flying fast.

 

I'm not sure if it's system related, but I've tried both methods and to avoid blurries I have to lock FSX fps to 30 and all is well.

The question is......what is your framerate in the most detailed environment that you want in FSX? If it's over 30, then you are in "epic" land.