fsx-se NewComputer +FSX-SE + Windows10 + stutters

[bobterri 13]

Just got a new computer.  I7-4790K, GTX 970, 8 gigs ram, SSD hard drive.  I've been on an I7 950, GTX 470 computer until the mobo fried.  FSX-SE ran smooth as can be on the old box with Aerosoft Airbus, IFly 737, with lots of add-on sceneries.

 

Installed FSX-SE on the new computer, installed Aerosoft Airbus, IFly 737, etc., and I get very noticeable stutters. I've tried every setting I came across on Google including Word Not Allowed's, NickN's, some from FSX-SE forums and others.  Nothing seems to help. 

 

I am at my wits end.  I've started with a new FSX.cfg 4 times, installed Nvidia Inspector and tried several different settings.  Same old thing.  I've turned down sliders in FSX...nothing.

 

Any suggestions?

[angeli662 43]

the GTX 470  get a better card.

[bobterri 13]

Oops! That's a gtx 970 not a 470 in the new computer.

[angeli662 43]

Oops! That's a gtx 970 not a 470 in the new computer.

Mutch better,  stutters could be anything from screen res to scenery etc. Have you OC  your  CPU?

[bobcat999 8,444]

I had this on my new I7, even overclocked to 4.6 GHz.  It was infuriating as you say.  I followed all of the guides, and they were a good pointer, but I found nobody was 100% right, and things move on with computer specs!

 

This was my solution, it might be something different for you, but this completely solved it for me and it is now silky smooth.  Note:  this only eradicated the stutters, you will still get 'pauses' now and then as FSX has to load in complex scenery of AI aircraft etc., but they are now very few and far between. Normally when approaching large airports.  My spec is nearly identical to yours - I7 at 4.6 GHZ water cooled, GTX 970 (no need to overclock), 8 GB RAM, FSX running from SSD, DX10 with Steves fixer (Superb).   I can assure you your spec is capable of running FSX fantastically well when tuned-in properly.

 

 

The main cause of stutters I found was:

 

1.  Having the FSX frame limiter set to unlimited with vsync on.  I do not advise unlimited, even though some do, as it causes the dreaded 'blurries' and the frame rate appears to 'stutter as it continually changes up and down whilst it grapples with different levels of complexity.

 

However, the main cause!..

 

2.  Having two frame limiters set, such as 30 frames per second in FSX, and also 30 in NV Inspector.  They clash!  Even though you have them set the same, they will fight each other, go out of synchronisation, and cause really bad skipping/stuttering.  It was a eureka moment when I found this out.  (Note it seemed logical to me at the time to set both frame limiters to 30 - this is not the case)

 

Note that setting vsync and frame limiters are different things.  Some people get confused.  It is perfectly fine to use a vsync setting in NV Inspector, just not the frame limiter.

 

 

The best silky smooth setting for me is the following:  

You must follow this exactly or it won't work if just one thing is out.

 

1.  Set your monitor to 60 Hz.

2.  In NV Inspector, do not set the frame limiter, set vsync to 1/2 (30 Hz), also, do not set pre-rendered frames or you will get input lag on your controls.

3.  Inside FSX, set the frame limiter to 31 (yes 31!) frames per second.  This really works better than 30 for some strange reason - try it and you will be amazed, it defies all logic I know.

 

You might not like being limited to 30 frames per second, but your spec will sustain that in 95% of cases, and it will be silky smooth.  30 frames if fine when smooth, believe me you won't go back!  Unfortunately 60 is out of the question with FSX and shouldn't be attempted, as it will stutter again when it cannot sustain it.

 

Give it a go!  Afterwards, for a real treat, in NV Inspector, set transparency AA to 4 x sparse grid super sampling, (the GTX 970 will cope with that).  Normal AA should be 4 x supersampling or 8 x CSAA. With this your image quality should be superb, especially if running DX10 with the fixer.

I also use SweetFX 2, which is compatible with FSX in DX10 mode now.  It doesn't add any frames, but it doesn't steal any either, however with HDR and sharpening added the graphics look better than in my P3D V3.1 now in my opinion.

 

Let me know how you get on - remember if one setting is set differently, it will not work, plus NV Inspector has to be set whilst FSX is not running, or FSX will not use the new settings.  It is a pain having to shut down FSX and restart it in between messing with the settings, but at least it loads fairly quickly from SSD now.

 

PS. The only other thing I know of that will cause bad stuttering is another program running in the background, such as a virus checker doing a scan of your hard disks etc.  You can use the windows task manager to check for this, also, do not use 'affinity mask' setting with your spec and FSX-SE.  The latest versions of FSX self optimise to use the right processor cores, and any meddling with affinity mask can actually make things worse now - I have the affinity mask setting turned off/deleted in mine and it is fine, superb actually.

 

When running FSX, once again you can 'alt-tab' or I recommend 'alt-enter' out of FSX and use windows process manager to check for this.   You will find without setting the affinity mask, it will default to core 1 for windows and other programs, core 2 for FSX calculations, and cores 3 and 4 for loading scenery.  This is exactly how it should be.  (Core 1 is sometimes called core 0, but I am sure you know what I mean).

 

Let us know how you get on.  

 

PPS.  Two settings in the FSX.cfg file that also really helped (in my spec anyway, so should be good for yours also):

 

[bUFFERPOOLS]

UsePools=0  //(and comment out or delete any bufferpools statements after that - I do not get flashing in DX10 with bufferpools 0).

 

[GRAPHICS]

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048  //(4096 is just a step too far for my gtx 780, 2048 still looks good).

 

[DISPLAY]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=160

 

[TERRAIN]

LOD_RADIUS=5.500000  //(do not set higher - can cause stutter or still cause out of VAS issues).

 

 

PPPS!..  I just noticed I deleted any 'fiber' setting in my config as well, and it runs great.  It is supposed not to work with multicore processors according to some.  I found it did, but lowering it from the default caused blurry scenery for the sake of a few extra frames per second on unlimited frame rate (which I don't use now of course).  I actually think messing with fibres is a waste of time now if setting frame rate to 31.  By default, FSX-SE doesn't add it to the config, but I believe the default setting is 0.33.

 

 

  

[SteveW 1,792]

FSX and FSX-SE:

 

You're right about the 1/2 vsync. In FSX this causes the card to aim for 30fps with a 60 Hz monitor (20fps with 1/3) and clashes with limiters.

 

Turn on Hyperthreading, and use a JOBSCHEDULER section and an Affinity Mask that allocates just 4 LPs, one per core. AM=85 on a 4 core, AM=1360 on 6 cores and up.

 

Your TBM setting is good for medium to high autogen.

 

 

Boxed FSX:

Bufferpools can be thought of like the carpark at a ferry crossing. The carpark needs to be able to handle the cars waiting for the next ferry. No parking at all or too much parking is inefficient for the ferry service. You need just a small buffer between 1000-2000.

 

[bufferpools]

UsePools=1

Poolsize=2000

 

 

Regards

[stevekr 4]

I've found that rebuilding the cfg file usually sorts out the stutters on my i7 2600k gtx 970 rig.

 

I've found that tweaking the fsx-se cfg file worsens performance as opposed to the fsx cfg file which didn't mind being changed so much.

 

Maybe Dovetail changed how the cfg file works as I don't even see an entry for Highmemfix=1 in there. 

 

I'm not using nvidia inspector either and have my  frames set to unlimited.

 

Water and shadows usually bring my computer to it's knees so I've turned them off and have a much smoother sim.

 

I'm running with Steve's DX10 fixer too. Aerosoft Airbus, openvfr Europe, HDMesh EU. FSXWX (excellent freeware) for weather injection and REX Soft Clouds.

 

UK2000 Heathrow, Ringway, John Lennon and Glasgow Airport sceneries. Aerosoft Dublin and Schiphol airports.

 

All settings in scenery to max apart from water and ground scenery shadows which are set to off.

 

Best wishes.

[bobcat999 8,444]

Boxed FSX:

Bufferpools can be thought of like the carpark at a ferry crossing. The carpark needs to be able to handle the cars waiting for the next ferry. No parking at all or too much parking is inefficient for the ferry service. You need just a small buffer between 1000-2000.

 

[bufferpools]

UsePools=1

Poolsize=2000

 

 

Regards

 

Interesting!  Certainly large bufferpools (like 10000000 etc.) seemed to do nothing for mine.  default or zero seems to be fine.  I might take the zero bufferpools setting out altogether.  

 

I believe default in FSX:SE now is 4000?  I might try going back to that, although I have no problems at the moment so I don't think I will see any effect or benefit.  One thing is for certain, the latest versions of FSX:SE seem to be fairly well sorted, and needs hardly any tweaking.

 

I forgot about the hyperthreading.  Mine didn't run well at all until I turned it back on in the bios.  Once again I took some dodgy advice off a forum that said 'hyperthreading should be disabled for best performance'.  That seems to be nonsense and certainly not the case with an I7.

I understand FSX doesn't use hyperthreading, but it seems to be better to allow windows and background processes to use hyperthreading on the first core, otherwise those programs seem to break into cycle times on the other cores and it disrupts FSX. 

 

All good stuff!  It took me about 5 months to try everything and get FSX just how I wanted.  Even today I have tweaked the SweetFX settings to get it to look more natural (more natural lighting effects).  Once again it needs very little.  The lumasharpen function in SweetFX2 is amazing, in really sharpens the distant scenery and text on the instruments etc without a frame rate penalty.  It makes 2560x1440 look like 4k!  I find with my settings I can run 4k at 30 FPS, but the card gets really hot and I have to have the fan up on the card to the point where it gets noisy, but the worst point is I cannot read the FSX menu text at 4k!  :rolleyes:

I've found that tweaking the fsx-se cfg file worsens performance as opposed to the fsx cfg file which didn't mind being changed so much.

 

Maybe Dovetail changed how the cfg file works as I don't even see an entry for Highmemfix=1 in there. 

 

 

This is very true.  It needs very little tweaking now in the cfg.  Dovetail have optimised most of the settings in the code.  You are right, the highmem fix is one of them.  It is now included in the core code of FSX, so the setting is not required in the config any more.  

 

Apparently the highmem fix got left out of the code by Microsoft; they simply forgot to activate it, but they found a quick way of getting it in the config for service pack 2.  Totally not needed now.  I know Dovetail have had a mixed reception for some reason, but they have done a pretty good job of optimising FSX.  I cannot remember the last time the program crashed or ran out of VAS. 

[VeryBumpy 272]

I have found that Window Defender causes major loading and Win10 slowness. I've turned it off via registry hack since MS won't let you in normal menus, made a big difference in PC performance. Just food for thought.

[bobterri 13]

Most of these tweaks that you all have suggested I have tried.  Some I have not, so I'll get back to you about results.  It will take a while with RW commitments.

 

By the way, I have an ancient 19 inch CRT monitor that has a refresh rate of 85mhz.  Also, my CPU is also overclocked to 4.6 GHZ and is Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT water cooled.

[bobcat999 8,444]

Also, my CPU is also overclocked to 4.6 GHZ and is Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT water cooled.

 

That is exactly the same as mine then.  I don't think it will be a windows 10 thing; most people are claiming the same or better performance with W10 compared to W7, and stutters don't seem to be reported as an issue in W10 as a W10 thing in itself, so hopefully it will just be a case of getting your FSX settings back to the way they were before the upgrade.  I would check the frame limiter isn't on in NV inspector first, as that was the cause for me - it was a simple as that.

[bobterri 13]

The frame limiter isn't on in NV inspector.  I tried it with it on and it didn't make a difference.

[Dazkent 113]

Very interesting topic, i have both boxed and steam editions, Was interested to hear about the AM setting as with SE and active sky next it has added this to my config, should i take it out?  (i5 4460 no hyperthreading) with GTX 970

[Bjoern 1,153]

I have found that Window Defender causes major loading and Win10 slowness. I've turned it off via registry hack since MS won't let you in normal menus, made a big difference in PC performance. Just food for thought.

 

This and mostly this. FSXSE runs like crap on my PC when Windows Defender is active.

 

 

 

 

You can just install Avira as an antivirus program and it will automatically disable WD.

http://www.avira.com/

[Slayer 190]

The reason 31 fps limit works better is due to a rounding error in FSX code (this was uncovered by LM and fixed in P3D) Not sure if it was fixed in SE but I bet not. Also running at exactly 30 more times than not will yeild slightly less causing drops to 15 FPS [vsync only of course)