Question Performance with i7 4790K

[charlie2508 0]

Hello everyone, 

I just got an my i7 4790K and I am pretty much not satisfied with the FPS I am getting.
20 - 25 with airbus aerosoft
15 - 22 with pmdg NGX

I tried to to tweak my CFG but it looks like nothing is really improving.

I added 

HIGHMEMFIX=1
Affinity mask set to 84
Bufferpool

 

I am using also steve dx10 fixer. Help guys I think i can get more than this FPS with 4ghz I7 processor.

Thank you,
 

[Jim Young 2,356]

Welcome to AVSIM Charlie,

 

I think many would be happy with your fps.  I remember soon after the release of FSX, many were struggling to get more than 15 fps and many of the experts were saying 15 fps was equal to watching a movie.  Members were really excited if they got 20-25 fps.  Now, most easily exceed 15 fps by 100% or more so yours are a bit low but not extraordinarily bad.  When you installed FSX, the installer set up a default fps for your system and you got well over 100 fps.  I personally got close to 300 fps with my settings set to the default and after installing GEX (which replaces the default textures with optimized textures).  Then I started adding eye-candy airports and nice aircraft from many great commercial add-on developers.  Of course I had to pump up my settings as I had one of the latest Dell XPS duo core computer systems with the latest NVidia video cards, a GeForce 8800GTX.  I heard FSX was developed with similar systems (definitely with the NVidia video cards as ATI/AMD did not update drivers for their cards because they did not like Vista, the OS that FSX was mostly built on).  I saw a lot of tweaks back in those days and the so-called computer experts who could come up with a tweak were the most popular guys and gals on the block!  I tried them but none really worked. 

 

But, the more addons I installed, the lower the fps went (man must have eye-candy and my credit card was out as soon as any new release was announced).  My Dell XPS and GeForce 8800GTX (which was better than the GT or GS) soon struggled to get 10, let alone 15 fps.  I then upgraded to the new Intel Sandy Bridge i7 systems and that's where I saw the greatest increases in fps and I was easily getting 40-60 fps with occasional drops to the teens depending on my view, aircraft, and scenery in the area I was flying.  I bought more addons but the fps started to struggle again and I found I had to manage/watch my fsx and display driver settings.  Tried some more tweaks.  None worked.  But I was happy as I could mostly get a solid 30fps on most flights with the fps limiter set to 30.  Images were crisp and clear but the computer still continued to struggle occasionally as even new eye-candy was released. 

 

Then I got my current Haswell system with the GTX780 video card and I was completely satisfied then (about two years ago) but the fps started suffering again and I saw myself raising my settings higher and higher again.

 

There is absolutely no system that can handle max fsx and display driver settings.  Sure, they will work occasionally and for many flights but you are eventually going to see stuttering and fps going up high and then low.  Now, because Microsoft only gives us 4GB's of virtual address space (VAS), we see many more occasions where we run out of memory (VAS) and that's mainly caused by high settings.  Individuals get these high powered systems like yours and think they can now crank it up to the max and, yes, they can but not for long as it will deplete the VAS much faster and eventually your system will begin to stutter, fps drop, and then the dreaded CTD.

 

I wish there was a magic tweak that would solve all of our woes with fps, stuttering, and freezes/crashes but there is none.  They are mostly placebo's that make us think they are working but they are not.  In fact, if not properly employed, they will do more harm to your enjoyment of the game as you will get unexplained freezes, massive stuttering, and crashes.  Tweaking my fsx.cfg settings and display driver settings provided the best renderings from my FSX w/DX10 Preview.  I really liked the LOD_Radius tweak to 9.0 (the default is 4.5) but that soon brought my computer to it's knees and I eventually lowered it to 5.5.  It is one of the tweaks that does the most damage to your fps if not properly employed.  Texture_Max_Load is great for eye-candy too if you raise it from default to 4096 but it hurts fps if you have your other settings set high or max too.

 

AVSIM has a basic FSX Configuration Guide with recommended settings (see the link in my signature).  I try to keep my FSX set at those settings but it is sometimes hard.  The problem with fsx is you'll have a fantastic high fps and non-stuttering flight from say, St Louis to Denver but, fps will suffer significantly if flying say, in FTX/Orbx scenery in the Pacific Northwest or California or you use photo scenery like that offered by MegaSceneryEarth or some of the FSDT/Flightbeam airport scenery offerings.  I think some of the fsx config settings in the guide are awfully high but they work most of the time and you get nice and clear graphics and that really is the ball game, clear graphics. 

 

There are many, many topics related to your comment that you think you can get better fps with your 4GHz i7 processor.  Just try playing with the fsx and display driver settings and try to get a happy medium.  Graphics are only as good as the eye of the beholder.  What looks bad for some may look great for others.

 

Welcome to the world of tweaking fsx settings and lousy fps!  It can be a very frustrating world.

 

Best regards,

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Welcome Charlie!

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

Jim,

 

Wonderfful summation of the fastest (magical tweaks) races to the bottom of performance satisfaction!

 

Except for variations of details it eloquently expresses the long-term reoccurring state of performance affairs for most of us in the FS community.

 

Well done!

 

Kindest regards,

[vc10man 732]

Brilliant write-up, Jim.

[fcisuperguy 0]

Hey there!

 

Assuming you are currently using hyperthreading, could you try an Affinity Mask setting of 80? I've found that it dumps the FSX load on the physical CPU cores (basically, disabling hyperthreading for FSX). It gave me a couple of extra frames, especially in laggy areas such as Heathrow.

 

What GPU are you using? No matter how CPU-heavy FSX can be, you still need a decent GPU to run it at high FPS. Assuming you're running a modern GPU such as the GTX9xx series, I'd recommend a bufferpool setting of 0 (basically, disabling bufferpools completely). GPUs nowadays can handle the loads in FSX without any sort of upper limit just fine.