Sttttutering

[quadraspleen 7]

Should be no stuttering with your system, Tom, but not knowing what monitor(s) you are using makes it difficult to give you a definitive answer..

Please put your system specs and cpu speed in your profile, so that it appears under your Avatar. Then - copy and rename your fsx.cfg to "Tom_fsx.txt", and attach it to a reply, using the "More Reply Options" (bottom-right). Follow that by posting a screenshot of your Inspector settings, please!

 

 

Hey Paul, it's my system (I was OP) and my specs are in my sig

 

I have cured it but by using 17th century remedy. I amputated Windows 8. Totally rebuilt the PC. Re-installed FSX and used the Guide and NickN's new bible over at Flight1 to create the proper platform.

 

I re-installed FSX and only certain add-ons in a very specific order. I am half way through again, but can say that, as of today, I have no stuttering. I am still using DX9 so far. When I am totally done, I may go back to DX10 as it seemed to deal with newer sceneries better.

 

 

Highmemfix=1 is not a tweak. It is a fix that Microsoft developers forgot to add in SP2/Acceleration. FSDT CYVR is a known memory hog if not properly configured. I don't know if you have FSDT's version installed or not but that's the case

 

 

Hey Jim. I am aware of the HIGHMEM omission. It is the only entry I am using now, until my system is totally built and finished. I was and have been doing a lot of system-related things wrongly for the last few installs, and am now treating my FSX rig as a "single-use" device, and as such, won't be doing anything else with it.

 

I am running the FSDT CYVR with HD shadows, but with 6Gb of VRAM and 16Gb or RAM and few extra add-ons, I shouldn't be seeing any problems. My autogen slider is now at 75% and I installed the "mid" shadows on the FSDT and it is now much, much better. I shall report back when I invoke my NVI image settings, as I haven't even set that up yet this time.

 

I have now rebuilt my FSX rig twice in as many weeks. I am getting bored with it LOL

 

 

Have you tired internally locking your frames to 33? Have a look at this thread: http://forum.avsim.n...ce-faq-from-lm/

 

 

 

I no longer use any frame rate limiters. They are a placebo with my system, I think. I should not need them with 4.7Ghz and a Titan! I have tried with and without; internal and external. I get by far the best results with NO limiters anywhere and FSX at unlimited.

 

best

 

jake

[Michael Moe 493]

I no longer use any frame rate limiters. They are a placebo with my system, I think. I should not need them with 4.7Ghz and a Titan! I have tried with and without; internal and external. I get by far the best results with NO limiters anywhere and FSX at unlimited.

 

best

 

jake

 

 

Good to hear i am not the only one with better performance setting FPS to unlimited. We have simular setup. 

[Jim Young 2,356]

I am running the FSDT CYVR with HD shadows, but with 6Gb of VRAM and 16Gb or RAM and few extra add-ons, I shouldn't be seeing any problems. My autogen slider is now at 75%

This is a serious mistake many have when using FSX. They have a huge page file and have a lot of RAM but it means almost nothing to FSX or FSX addons as they are all 32-bit apps operating in a 64-bit environment. What is important is Virtual Address Space (VAS) and, when that gets low during a FSX session, you might see some stuttering as FSX is trying to find enough space to run FSX. VAS is not the same thing as the VRAM (page swap file) that you can adjust in your system settings. A large page file or virtual memory swap file does not protect anyone from the 4GB VAS limit. This is the reason I strongly recommend watching your settings and to not set anything up too high. You do not have the holy grail of computer systems (even though you do have a nice system). If you read the AVSIM FSX Configuration Guide there are different settings for different systems. AVSIM used the guidance of many developers and one was Orbx/FTX guidance. If you have a fast system (as you do) you can move your sliders up but not all to max, especially Autogen.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

[quadraspleen 7]

Hi Jim,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

When I said VRAM, I meant Video RAM. My grafx card has 6Gb of VRAM. My page file is set to 3072/3072 and I am aware of the 3072Gb limit with 32-bit applications; I run an IT company I have 16Gb as I did a lot if video editing with this machine. I don't anymore,so I shall remove half of it. I have been tweaking FSX and my system for what seems like years now (actually, it IS years LOL) and am well aware of the 32-bit wall.

 

My point was, with only two or three add-ons installed, and only flying over one of them, FSDT CYVR, with 2048mb shadows enabled, and a 6Gb grafx card, my VAS shouldn't be so low (and isn't according to Procmon) that it causes stutters as bad as I was seeing. This was before installing any ORBX sceneries; simply FSDT CYVR and a RealAir Duke Turbine on a fresh install of FSX.

 

Anyway, as I said; I think I have it licked now. I totally rebuilt my system, which is drastic, I know, but it needed it and it has made a difference.

 

 

You do not have the holy grail of computer systems

 

 

LOL - what IS the Holy Grail these days? Dual Xeons? I am running at between 4.6 and 4.7 (soon to be upgraded to a 4930K Extreme) That should be good enough to run at 25FPS, surely?

 

Again, thanks for your time, 

 

best

 

jake

 

 

 

 

[jaydor 233]

Many people do not realize how important it is to defrag after any install.  You say you have just rebuilt your system, so a defrag after each install of any program will help the files be defragmented and help keep the disc from hunting which causes stuttering.

 

Always defrag after any change to your file system..

[Jim Young 2,356]

That should be good enough to run at 25FPS, surely?

Of course. I have the Haswell 4770K and your 3930K is more efficient than mine - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3930K+%40+3.20GHz so you should have decent fps. My fps are set to unlimited (I use the settings in the AVSIM FSX Configuration Guide) and get between 32 and 60 most of the time. If I'm at a FSDT airport like KORD in heavy weather (using a commercial weather program), with the PMDG 777 running, I'll be fighting to stay in the 20's until I can finally take off. But, IMHO, anything over 15 fps is great. Anything below that is ugly and removes the fun out of flight simming. If you were around when FSX first came out in late 2006, we were fighting to stay above 15 fps and anything near 30 fps was awesome! With your system you will probably get more enjoyment out of P3DV2 as that engine has been tweaked and updated. FSX is still operating with old programming and calling textures and rendering are less efficient. However, if you keep your settings at a modest level, you'll enjoy the product much better.

 

Best regards,

[Michael Moe 493]

As said earlier by Jim the VAS is a killer - It took me some time to realise this but tweaking FSX for years do give some experience.

 

And examplecould be EGLL or CYVR for that matter. Try take you PMDG 777 or simular heavies out for a VFR in London with 75% settings and FTX England perhaps and some traffic as well and then some HD2048 textures.

 

I would get about 25-30fps relativ smooth in the T7 on this short "trip" and a OOM in DX10 on approach to EGHI Southampton but if we forget the last part    - try do the same flight from a 4-600miles distance airport and you will end up with a stutter and slideshow properly because the VAS is full. This is so frustrating after 2hours so thats why i save my flights before descent and then load up FSX again freeing som VAS.

[Paul J 349]

System Manage Size ?

 

Does this mean that Pouls recommendation is not up to date putting a pagefile OF FSX installations DRIVE :huh: ? Hmm i dont get stutter with Pouls recommendations btw.

 

Link:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/409828-improving-fsx-via-windows/?p=2688292

 

Nooooo.....  don't put the swap file on the FSX drive, Michael.  You've mis-read the post!

 

1). Windows needs a small space - for start files and ctd's, basically, and this should be a minimum of about 200MB, and so mine sits at 450MB at this moment. Here's a couple of pics with different sizing and location.

2). Don't put a swap file on an SSD.

3). Don't put a swap file on the flight sim drive.

4). This means that the swap file is going on a third physical drive (not a partitioned drive), and it must be a mechanical drive.

 

5). If there is no third drive - then the swap file should go on the operating system's drive.

 

6). Each swap file size should be "Custom", with the same figure in both boxes, as this will prevent fragmentation occurring.

 

7). Whereas this is subject to many differing experiences and opinions, the swap file should be at least 1GB, but doesn't need to be bigger than 2GB. This is because the possibility exists that one might encounter a circumstance where an application, or the OS will suddenly need that space, and if it's not there - one could end up rebuilding the whole system.

 

Jim and I both differ in a number of technical areas, Jim preferring to let Windows manage the file. 

 

I hope this clears some mud. If someone requires my in-depth reasoning for "Custom" please feel free to pm me.

 

All the Best,

 

pj

[Jim Young 2,356]

I definitely do not want to disagree with my friend Paul.  I got my info regarding SSD's from Microsoft Technet -

 

"Pagefile is exactly the kind of thing you want on your SSD. Taking it off negates one of the biggest advantages of owning one, since most of the stuff in the pagefile is small reads/writes at which SSD's excel. If you wanna limit its size, fine, but don't disable it or move it to another drive."  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/af427b34-7d1a-4a5f-81fc-855f66ae5a6d/windows-7-ssd-pagefiling-and-raid0.

 

I recently reinstalled Windows 7 and FSX and all my addons as I built my present system.  I had everything installed and KIAD was just released.  I had a system managed size page file on my SSD where my OS and FSX resides.  Flying out of KIAD I suddenly saw strange stutters.  Strange as they were each about a second long (and that's a long time in the computing world). It was unbearable!  I could not figure out what was wrong.  I checked my page file settings and saw that I only had a page file on my SSD.  I did not on my two mechanical HDD's that housed my addon scenery.  I enabled a system managed size page file for the other two drives, ran fsx, and the stutters were completely gone.  So that was my experience and why I always recommend a system manged size on all disk drives.  It might be wrong as Paul suggests but at least it is working great for me and I'm just passing it on for what it's worth.

 

Best regards,

[dgraham1284 92]

This is a great thread as I have been experiencing the same issues. And my system should have no issues running FSX.  I am going to try these suggestions out and let you know what happens. 

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

[Paul J 349]

Hi Jim; yeah - having two, three or more swap files on separate physical, mechanical hard drives is great for performance, because the disk controller can multi-task like crazy, so the act of actually accessing that dormant data - or putting it there in the first place has even less impact on a particular drive's performance.

There's a lot more to memory and drive management than can be written in a quick post, books and books and more books on the subject have been published, from every flavor of Unix, Linux, DOS, to the very latest Intel hardware running Windows 8, and optimizing those systems for any particular application. Typically - a "computer" - is thoroughly optimized as a Web server, a Security server, a File server or a Database server or an Application server, or in this case - we have an FSX application running on a personal computer - a machine not toooo much different from a server. For all intents and purposes - the way we use it - that machine is almost the equivalent of a commercial server.

A lot of "regular" settings of Windows 7 will be applicable to the FSX machine, but there's also a lot more that can be done to optimize the whole machine for the express purpose of running FSX.
That includes swap size, placement, drive type, memory type, speed, timing, plus all the things above, and from other forum threads too, that can have any impact on any particular machine - anything which will better it's performance for running FSX.

I think Nick Needham has spent a lifetime devoted to helping people understand the Microsoft Flight Simulator, and to help people come to terms with the limitations of their hardware choice, and their expectations of just how far they can take their existing FSX machine. His Bible isn't aimed at DX10, some parts not applicable - but it's one of the greatest documents on hardware choice, tuning and software implementation that anyone has ever produced for this hobby.

Getting smoothness, good frames, nice graphics, etc., is by no means an impossible dream - but it does take a lot of study, patience, perseverance, education..........and a bunch of money!

Apologies for being long-winded and philosophical,

All the Best,

pj

[dgraham1284 92]

I have followed your suggestions and my sim now runs 1000x better. Much smoother. Although now it crashes every time I exit with a fatal error and restarts. 

 

Faulting application name: fsx.exe, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb14

Faulting module name: API.DLL, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb58

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x00017177

Faulting process id: 0x381c

Faulting application start time: 0x01cef86385e0e286

Faulting application path: T:\FSX\fsx.exe

Faulting module path: T:\FSX\API.DLL

Report Id: b353e6aa-6458-11e3-82a2-240a64393cbb

Faulting package full name: 

Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

And I get ezdok crashing as well.  Event 1000

 

Thank you for all of your help.

[dgraham1284 92]

Ok, so I just saw their was an update to FSUIPC that fixed this specific issue. No more crashing. Thanks again. 

[Mr767 6]

I had to go through with three complete cycles of configuring DX10 before I got fps under control.

 

One important lesson (I learned): As soon as you get steady and good fps, image your hard-drive and continue configuring.

 

What seemed to resolve my fps-problems was removing multiple graphics adapter entries in the fsx.cfg as well as an fixing a wrongly set aa-value in nvidia inspector.

[quadraspleen 7]

hey all,

 

I've come back to this thread after a few false-dawns. I totally rebuilt my rig AGAIN. I thought I had it licked but I was deluding myself.

 

I read and re-read Jim and Paul's posts. They are right; no amount of tweaking will get you what you want unless the platform is right, and there IS NO substitute for a bad a** CPU and properly O/C'ed system (though I have found O/C'ing badly can sometimes LOWER performance through heat issues YMMV.)

 

I totally concur with Paul as well regarding NickN's bible. I re-built my rig EXACTLY using his procedures, and I can honestly say it has made a real difference. Again, YMMV obvs. Windows runs better, FSX runs better.

 

As Paul says, it makes such a difference, as to be totally part of the philosophy of preparing a machine for, and tweaking, FSX. My FSX rig has nothing on it now except FSX and is stripped down to the max.

 

It just seems to wheeze less now

 

My 3970X arrives tomorrow, upon which I shall drop it in, O/C it to 5.0Ghz and see where we are then