I've had a stable rig for a year now, 3.8 Overclocked, GTX 760 card, running three screens on Nvidia Surround. Now, I don't know if its my 'imagination' but I seem to be hitting real fps low points. I use Scenery settings to suit my flight, rarely pushing the sliders past 75% and in Orbx England with UK2000 airports, I pull them back to 50%.

 

In the air I can enjoy fps of 40-50, but on the ground or over cities the fps drops dramatically at times, down to 18, 15, even 10. It makes taxing a real pain. Once in the air, things are great. The airports are not huge Extreme ones either, even small regional airports.

 

I can't remember such low drops before, and I've been through a complete battery of tests, interestingly, lowering Global Scenery, Radius to Medium and pulling autogen back to Normal or even sparse, doesn't have a dramatic effect. Only very sparse stops the drops into the teens.

 

I feel I am missing something, or this is the result of a long two years of tweaks, addons, uninstalls, reinstalls etc. I am considering reinstalling FSX, a big task since I have a decent amount, plus lots of utilities to keep track of.

 

I'm terrified that I will spend a week reinstalling and bug chasing and end up in the same place!!!

 

What do I do??

If you had good fps before and just had drops recently, then I suggest you concentrate your tests on products or latest installations you purchased or acquired. Deactivate (or uninstall) them one by one to see if you can identify the culprit. That way you can save yourself the trouble of uninstalling and reinstalling everything. Oh, and simply reducing autogen or lowering global radius won't fix the low fps hits. 

Recent culprits might include Water Configurator for DX10 and REX Soft Clouds (which I have already uninstalled ... To the best of my knowledge). I do keep a diary of everything I add or delete on my PC, so I will go through it with a fine toothcomb.

 

I hope I'm not imaginging it though, but I just can't remember flying past almost any city and getting under 15 fps before. Strange.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Toktok.

maybe double check that your traffic settings are where you want them to be? or toggle them off to see if theres a difference. that is one of the more fps-hungry things that is sort of dynamic and could be amplifed around the ground and cities which seems to match your description..

 

and maybe some of the other basics like defrag the drive, etc..

 

good luck

cheers

-andy crosby

Check ORBX Vector - recently i found out that switching off all roads, tunnels, bridges, power poles etc. is bringing higher fps and stutters are gone.

 

Also check ur AI - have u recently been fiddling with ur AI traffic ?