Now that I have my i7-6700K/GTX 980 system up and running, and FSX-SE tuned well in DX9, I thought I'd try DX10 preview mode and check the results. For my text, I went with a simple scenario of the default C172 at Page Municipal in Arizona. FTX Global and Vector were installed, along with FSGenesis mesh, but no other add-on scenery. Using the most recent nVidia drivers, and DX10 was set up with Steve's DX10 Fixer and the defaults (FSX.cfg and Inspector) recommended in the Mutley's Hanger review of that product. Obviously, framerate was set to unlimited.

 

Using DX9, the framerate was 59-60, with occasional spikes to 119.

 

Using DX10 preview mode, the framerate dropped to 28-30, with very rare spikes to 179.

 

Now, I've heard DX10 results are very system-dependent, but it's usually been in the sense that one person will claim a doubling of framerate, while another will report no significant difference. This is the first time I've heard of FPS being cut in half. Am I doing something wrong, or do I just have to accept that, for whatever reason, FSX-SE and DX10 just don't play well with my particular system?

You'll probably get 100 replies, but I think the consensus is in terms of FPS you shouldn't see a significant difference, plus or minus. There's certainly nothing that I've ever read that a frame rate cut in half is a potential consequence attributable to the particularities of your system. However with the incredible number of variables it would likely be difficult to troubleshoot with the community short of posting your cfg, nvidia inspector settings, and Steve's DX10 settings. I suspect the more experienced users may have specific suggestions, but I know for myself when I've had unexplained performance issues the first step is starting with a clean cfg.

Doesn't sound right. You should try rebuilding your shader files.

 

Go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX and delete the Shaders10 and Shaders folders. Relaunch FSX to rebuild.

 

See if there is a difference.

Well, I deleted my .cfg and let FSX build a new one (since it immediately asked to include a bunch of assets as "trusted," I can't call it completely "clean," but it certainly wasn't including anything I wasn't running under DX9. Started up FSX, set DX10 preview to on (which, of course, meant restarting) and display resolution to my standard 1920x1080x32. Shut down FSX, and set WideAspectView (or whatever it's called) to true. Tried again -- still no better than 28-30 overall, with very rare spikes into the 100 range.

Thanks for the shader suggestion. Will try when I get home.

The recommendations offered at Mutley's Hanger are nearly two years old, and your new hardware is state of the art...  so you might consider Adam's DX10 set-up recommendations (Adam took over for Paul Johnson who assembled the original guide for Avsim). Adam's site is here: http://www.nzfsim.org/index.php?dsp=downloads&view=50&f_sort=fixer%C2'>

 

HTH

 

Greg

Tried a shader rebuild. No luck. FPS still at around 30-31, with the occasional spike to around 197 and dip to around 6.4.

I've never seen any machine capable of DX10 not run FSX quicker than with DX9, DX9 is always slower than DX10, 10 comes after 9. But with DX10 comes shadows in cockpit and other fancy lighting effects that make DX9 look dated (because it is), and reduce the performance overall. Also settings in NI between DX9 and DX10/11 are not generally properly understood. I suggest trying a clean NVidia profile, see instructions near the top of this page More about using CP, and NI, for DX9, DX10, and DX11, and use DX10 settings provided. Keep Sparse grid sampling down from 8x, and remember that only the *Transparency* supersampling modes work in DX10, "Antialiasing - Setting" values do nothing for DX10 they are for DX9.
 

Thanks for the various suggestions.  I've downloaded Adam's guide, and will look over the codelegend.com recommendations as well.  Just one question, though...would those affect the FPS of DX10, or just its visual quality?  Most of what I'm seeing there involves setting things like AA and AF.  Now, I can understand how vital they are to having FSX look good, but would they also affect the framerate positively?  Forgive me if this is a completely screwed-up assumption, but, even if I hadn't tweaked the settings at all, shouldn't the framerate not drop just by switching to DX10 at all?  I mean, if didn't even use DX10 Fixer, but just invoked the "Use DX10 Preview Mode" within FSX without changing anything else, would there be a reason for the FPS to drop by something drastic like 50%?  Maybe, if I didn't use the Fixer or change Inspector settings, the anti-aliasing would look awful, and there'd be all sorts of visual glitches, but I would think that the framerate wouldn't drop drastically just because I'd made the switch.  Or is there something I'm not taking into account?

Supersampling and AA operations reduce performance. Yes, for a given image quality DX10 is faster than DX9 every day.

Well, to answer my own question:  I did some more experimentation, and found that the FPS drop is entirely due to the NI settings from Mutley (or, perhaps, my own screwing them up when inputting them? -- not sure yet).  With keeping the exact same NI settings as DX9 (and even using the same FSX.cfg file I was having problems with before), there's no FPS drop in DX10, and maybe even a couple of frames improvement.  The minute I import the saved "DX10 profile settings" into NI...bam!  FPS drops from 60 to 30.

 

For the moment, I've rolled everything back to DX9, and will try reconfiguring the DX10 Fixer and NI settings according to the material others here have suggested...but not tonight, since it's half-past-one already!

 

And, to answer KingAir_Fan's post, I would prefer to stay with DX9 for the simplicity of the matter, except that I've found that DX10 gives me about about another half-gigabyte of VAS overhead over DX9, due to using video card memory.  Even though FSX-SE apparently does a better job of memory management than the boxed version, I've found that, if I try even a semi-torture-test flight with full scenery, add-ons, and NGX (by which I mean a flight through Orbx PNW scenery from KSEA to CYVR, overflying KBFI, KPAE, and CYYJ on the way), by the time I land, I'm down to about 370,000 VAS with reasonable settings -- and, if I go with sliders hard right, I OOM while passing KPAE.  Even at my current settings, which allow me to complete the flight, I worry about trying to do longer flights; the extra VAS space saved by DX10 would seem to offer a lot better margin of error.

My FSX with DX10 with same NI settings runs slower, has more stutters and has worse AA.

Yes, that's true for some, but as James found out it is a problem of setup knowledge, not DX10.

 

James, if you select for example; 1/2 refresh rate, that will attempt to limit your fps to 30fps if your monitor is 60Hz.

 

Make sure when checking performance to use all vsync modes set to off, and set unlimited fps in the sim. Once you have the performance set up best, choose locked fps in the sim and set the corresponding vsync mode in NI. I get from around 50-240fps in FSX-SE, and I have a 60Hz monitor, therefore I set vsync to 1/3 (1/3 of 60 = 20), and set 20fps fixed in the sim.

 

With locked fps in the sim, we can also run NVidia control panel and experiment with less look ahead frames 1, or 2, default is three.

have you checked this? 

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=359111682

 

PS you need the paid steve dx10 fixer otherwise some airports dont have correct night textures

No offense, sparkle66, but, if you had read my OP, you would have noticed that I was using DX10 Fixer -- a fact I mentioned in my replies as well.

 

SteveW, if I set the VSync to 1/2 refresh rate in NI, but have it unlimited in FSX itself, the "downstream" nVidia drivers will force the actual display rate to 30 FPS -- but the sim itself will show the unlimited count via Shift-Z, even if the video card is limiting it, right? Also, if you're getting a framerate of 50-240, why aren't you choosing 1/2 refresh rate and 30 FPS instead?

shows the visual frame rate

With locked fps we need around double the minimum Unlimited performance, since we have the overhead of the pre-rendered frames.

My comment is less helpfull than an observation. I switched to DX10 almost by accident; I had OOM issues that I thought DX10 would fix; it didn't - it was another issue altogether. But my switch to DX10 was otherwise painless and easy, and after identifying the issue that caused me to switch, I preferred the look of FSX in DX10. It is better - but not Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally better. I think that's probably true across the board - one can chase flight simulator Nirvana, be it through tweaks, upgrading hardware, changing platforms, but I think most of the changes are inremental as opposed to revolutionary. I reached that point a few years ago - consistent frame rates over 30; that makes me drool, with my 2500k at 4.5 and 560 TI. But I enjoy my sim, and enjoy spending my time adding airports and scenery enhancements, sitting down, and taking off. Maybe in two years I'll upgrade everything, do the clean install, maybe change platforms. But for now maybe ignorance is bliss. Not really advice, but if you're happy with DX9 and have consistent performancce, that's probably good enough.