New to FSX. Read and u-tubed a lot about scenery add-ons and would like to buy but put off about the performance issues. Primarily I want to fly and not enjoy the view so much. Watching the vids on flyTampa's web site and even they cant get their scenery to run smoothly so what chance for me? I dont think the issues are so much fps - the human eye doesnt go faster than 20fps anyway so why bother about faster. What I do see though is something quite different - stuttering. It seems the sim pauses momentarily to 'catch its breath' accessing data, so maybe more RAM might help everybody rather than expensive video cards.

Well, I suspect stutters is the number one discussed performance issue in the fora, or at least neck-and-neck with OOM.  These days 8 Gb RAM is probably typical with many new systems at 16 Gb, so if RAM was some sort of magic bullet we would know it by now.  As it is we know we can max out FSX's process RAM, and additional RAM may provide some benefit as system cache for example, but the returns are diminishing.

 

If you go to the hardware forum you can find many performance threads worth looking at.  While the ideas of some posters can be controversial, and cause flame wars, I think the consensus is that there needs to be a balance of performance throughout the system. 

 

scott s.

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I dont think the issues are so much fps - the human eye doesnt go faster than 20fps anyway so why bother about faster.

Don't go there or you'll have people coming out of the wood work arguing otherwise.

AI traffic seems to have a significant impact as far as stutters are concerned. So for sightseeing I'd switch off both sorts of AI traffic.

I dont think the issues are so much fps

 

 

You are absolutely correct, in FSX FPS means nothing as far as gauging goes. Smoothness is what you strive for, it is not unusual to get 17- 21 FPS and smooth as glass. FSX is a strange bird, certain rules don't apply. Your biggest concern is access time for loading and processor speed for smoothness. Yes a good GPU makes a difference, but does no good without a fast processor.