New System, How to Optimise FS9?

[cka411 0]

I just built a new computer and wanted to get FS9 back onto it. Set up is,

 

AMD 8350 8-Core 4.00GHz

16GB Ram

2 R9 270x 2GB Cards in Crossfire

FS9 is on a SSD

 

I have used a FS9 Configurator, used resized tree textures, REX Clouds and texture and quite a few addons, well, a lot. Also ran the DXTFixer having searched the forums lately.

 

In most airports I get good performance, near the 50FPS benchmark. In some like FlyTampa Dubai or FSDT LAX it runs around mid 20s. Now here's where I'm having some issues. with a layer of clouds, we'll say I use the real world weather thing in FS, it creates a layer, I get maybe 15 FPS.

 

I know that FS9 cannot use more than 1 core, I also know it cannot use crossfire. But it blows my mind that with clouds on, even with them shurnk down to 512x512 and DXT3d the system can suffer that much.

 

I've tried to read these forums a lot, nothing as of late has helped much so I turned to my own thread. I don't know as much as many on here about how to tweak the game around but any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Virtpilot 151]

Hello,

that´s the thing with AMD video card. That hit also me when I bought my new Computer, the clouds brings the system to it´s knees. Should have bought a Nvidia video card. Lesson learned conserning my next computer. I use HDE v2 clouds and got my TEXTURE_BANDWITH_MULT set to 240, that has helped a bit.

[cka411 0]

Thanks I will try that, I know there's a lot of tips and tricks to FS9.cfg, a lot went back to 2005 and some helped some didn't, I will try that, and yeah, lesson learned, but for the price it was hard to pass up on w R9s!!

[cka411 0]

I managed to figure this out, and I will post an answer if this ever helps anyone. FS9 being an older game and reading more and more posts from 2005 when hardware was progressing and the game was staying the same, a thought came to mind to try, dumb down all the Catalyst Control Center settings to the most basic, and see, because even on a Crossfire R9 set up, FS9 can't take advantage of that, so I did the reverse, everything is on it's most basic setting, the same looks great, Anti-Aliasing isn't an issue, and the frame rates are steady at 50 even with 3D clouds.

 

I don't claim that this will work with everyone, but it just worked for me.

[WingZ 547]

FWIW using nVidia... the latest drivers perform poorly on FS9. and I use ones dated 6 years ago.

Not unreasonable, as our software is sort of... Previous Generation.

 

Perhaps the same would apply to ATI/AMD

[Virtpilot 151]

That´s an interesting finding. Could you please post your settings in Catalyst Control Center so I will try them also,

[sascha 314]

Personally I find that the latest set of Nvidia drivers has worked wonders for my FS9. I still use an Nvidia 9800GT (or is that 9600?) and WIndows Vista.

 

Just goes to show ...

 

No one tweak or driver set will work perfectly on the next system.

 

In my experience each new computer/setup has taken a new set of tweaks to optimize.

[jagabom 21]

Good idea cka411. I use an AMD card as well. Will have to try this. HISR290.

Jim

CYWG