I have been running FSX with accelerator for a couple of years. I had been experiencing some frame rate issues especially on the virtual cockpits of some planes.

3 days ago I downloaded the PMDG Boeing 777-200LR which I appreciate is quite demanding on processing power. However I am finding that switching to the virtual cockpit from an external view can take 10 seconds to refresh. I have tried pulling levels down on sliders, switching to 2D cockpit, zeroing traffic, reducing autogen density etc etc which does help a little, but the lag on refresh is spoiling the enjoyment of the plane

I have a Dell Studio XPS with AMD Phenom II x6 1055T processor - speed 2.8 Ghz, 8 Gig of RAM and an AMD Radeon HD500 card. Windows 7 64 bit

Is this adequate for my purposes? If not, should it be CPU or graphics card or both that need upgrading and would this be possible, rather than having to invest in a new PC?

I think your system is adequate.  IMHO, no system should have the sliders cranked up to the max.  If it makes you feel any better, my switching from external view to the VC takes about 7 seconds to refresh and my sliders are barely up (I do have a LOD_Radius of 6.5 and Texture_Max_Load of 2048 though)(see my system in sidebar).  I also have 20% traffic and no Autogen (use photoscenery).  It happens mainly in heavy weather.  With little or no weather, no problems but I still have the issue at takeoff/landings.  It is something you will have to live with unless someone here has a miracle tweak or fix.  The most important thing is to maintain decent fps as going into the single digits could trip a freeze or crash.

 

Best regards,

Thanks for the reply firehawk44.

As well as the problems above, I have slow loading times for FSX, again probably to put up with.

I have had a quote of £800 for a new PC with 4.3 GHz Intel Core i5 4670K processor, a Geforce GTX 760 2GB card and a 1000Gb hard drive.. The salesman says I would see a considerable difference, but he would wouldn't he! He says the Geforce is much more suited to FSX than the AMD card. I run Rex Overdrive, and Plan G simultaneously with FSX, with some OrbX scenery too.

Do you think the outlay for the new PC would impact significantly on my problems, or as you infer, the problems are software orientated rather than hardware?

Thanks

Sorry, firehawk44 but just looked up your system spec and I see it already exceeds that quoted for my new one, so that I guess that answers the question.

I am having real problems with a very unstable FSX since installing PMDG Boeing 777, crashing on start up three out of 5 times. After I installed the 777, I got messages from Windows that the RAAS Pro add on would cause problems and did I still want to load it. I disabled loading it in the dll.xml file, but the 777 still causes crashing. Also the switch labels in the VC are blurred to the point of unreadable, a problem others have had on the forums.

I am using FSX together with lots of other programs on my only PC. I am wondering if it might be worth buying a new PC, doing a fresh install of FSX, and dedicating this PC to FSX only.