I have what I consider to be a mid-high end computer and the specs should allow FSX to run smoothly, or so I thought.

 

The problem is that whenever I start a flight, the FPS is around 30 locked at add-airports (50 unlocked at default airports). But then it steadily decreases to the 10s and sometimes below 10 after 15 minutes or so of flying (I may sound a bit spoiled, but I need these frames as I run a FSX YouTube channel).

 

Here are my specs:

MB: ASRock H97M Pro4

CPU: Intel i5-4690K Haswell overclocked to 4.2GHz

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master 120V Seidon

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX650 1GB

RAM: 8GB (4GB x2) DDR3

PSU: Dynex 520W

 

As you can see, my computer should be able to handle FSX well, but for some reason it's not. I've tried a clean fsx.cfg, defragging the hard disk, using the Nvidia Inspector settings, and lowering cloud and water settings on REX4, but none of those fixed the problem.

 

What do you guys think is causing this problem? Hardware bottleneck? Improper software configuration? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

have a look at your system ram usage while you are flying. if it is showing 7.5 or more you might benefit from upping your ram a bit. fsx only uses 4g but i find that between windows, a few browser windows, and utilities that the other 4g can get eaten up really quickly and this can cause some slowdowns if it starts wanting to swap out the fsx used memory. this condition contributed more to stutters than a long term framerate reduction though so i'm not sure that's your issue.

 

you mentioned that you are recording for a video channel, do you see the slowdown even without using the recording software? i use fraps sometimes and found that i get significantly better performance in fsx if i make sure it is writing to my ssd and not to my data drive.

 

you don't mention which aircraft you are using but you might want to eliminate the possibility that it is related to a specific aircraft. 

 

is it always 15 minutes? does it depend on where you fly or how high you are flying? if you sit at the airport does it stay at the high frames indefinitely?

 

a vanilla fsx.cfg should be ok with a reasonable system but i always get a nice little boost from bojote's tweak tool. some people here say it's tweaks are outdated or uneccesary but they generally work well for me, it is possibly worth a try (just back up your old one first) http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

 

cheers and good luck

-andy crosby

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

From what I remember, the task manager indicates that the total RAM usage rarely exceeded 5.00GB.

And yes, I get the slowdown regardless of if I'm using FRAPS or not.

 

I see the slowdown with many types of aircraft, from default aircraft flying on FSX missions to flying the PMDG 777 on long-haul routes.

 

It isn't always 15 minutes. It's random, but the slowdown happens after some flying on the sim. For example, I flew a couple of FSX race missions which took about 30~40 minutes in total, and then frames started to drop.

Although the frames I get at default and add-on airports are different, they still suffer the same problem. The 40+ frames I get with the PMDG 777 at let's say KMFD drops to 20 or below and the 20 frames I get with the FlyTampa KMDW and PMDG 737NGX drops to mid-10s or below.

 

I have used Venetubo's tweaker, but I'll try it again later tonight.

So, I ran FSX on a clean fsx.cfg. I ran one of the missions and then paused the sim for about 2 to 3 hours. When I un-paused it, sure enough the frame rates went down to the single digits. I looked on task manager and checked the RAM usage. What caught my eyes was that the total physical memory that was free was only 4MB!!! Does that mean a RAM upgrade?