I recently bought Call of Duty 2 and noticed a patch to take advantage of HT, if you have it, which I do. Installed it and it made a significant difference in performance. Very thoughful of the developers.Of course, the question is if FS9 takes advantage of HT. If not, why has there not been a patch for same?

It does already... FSX will be even more robust in that regard.

It does heh? Ok thanks Bill.

The last 3 computers i bought all have H/T and i dont see a difference in performance whether its on or off with FS9 or any other applications. With my next pc however i will see much better performance in FS9, its called AMD :).

Many of us have found that FS9 performance is actually better with HT disabled. Others have found the opposite to be true. My advice is try it both ways and use whatever works best for you.DougEdited because I can't spel

Bill are you sure? I didn't think FS9 was multi-threaded... FSX has already been confirmed to be though.

Is there anything that FS 9 actually DOES support? I've read that it doesn't even take advantage of 2 graphic cards run in sli mode. I'd really like to read an honest assessment of the FS graphics engine. Look at the Source engine, the Doom 3 engine, or the Crytek engine (the one that powered Far Cry) and the graphics those engines deliver.I wonder whether the FS engine isn't just an old car that Microsoft keeps slapping new paintjobs on. ricardo

Hi,A few questions:Was SLI around 4 years ago?Was hyperthreading?Was dual core?So how was the FS graphics engine going to be programmed for all this?If you search one of the bloogers he will explain how SLI really works and how any program will use SLI, even FS04.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development TeamActive Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter

>Hi,>>A few questions:>>Was SLI around 4 years ago?Nope>Was hyperthreading?Nope>Was dual core?Yes of course it was - as two independent CPUs. Just because someone stuff them on the same chip doesn't make it an amazing new invention. My good old P-II 266mhz had two CPUs, nothing fancy in that.

Hi,And did the average Joes, for whom FS is designed for and marketed to, have this in their machines? We all tend to forget that FS is an entertainment title, designed for the average computer user out there, not the hard core pilot with the latest and greatest technology!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development TeamActive Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter

There is no such thing as "taking advantage of SLI" - it is completely a fucntion of the driver and cards. I know several people running SLI rigs with FS and you can run really insane AA levels etc. The reason you don't see a massive FPS boost from SLI is because FS is a CPU limited engine, not a GPU/fill rate limited one like Source, Crytek, Doom 3 etc. The only way FSX will be any different is if it offloads a lot more stuff to the GPU than FS9 does.

As indicated in the terrain engine paper, a design decision was made to run most of the terrain stuff in the CPU. To prevent the terrain from starving other tasks, most tasks were designed as fibers running in a single thread.FSX, esp with the Vista driver model, should provide better use of GPU(s) and this in turn should make multi-thread (and hence dual cores)more useful.scott s..

>Hi,>>And did the average Joes, for whom FS is designed for and>marketed to, have this in their machines?Nope, but this was not in any way mentioned as a requirement in your original statement. You just asked if it was around - and it was. Just like SLI is around now, but now in the average machine.I still fail to see why it was not common (it boost so much extra life into a computer), but it seems the producers of games simply did not want it to happen, hence did not support it. It might be the increased development cost (debugging that stuff can be painfull) - you know as long as the competition is not doing it we do not need to do it, then we can keep the profit margin up. Consumers get bad performance due to this, but they do not know so it is not a problem when the game is priced.

FS9 is multi-threaded, and will function on a multi-CPU setup. In an HT processor, there are not two physical CPUs on the chip, but rather a couple sets of registers that share the CPU circuitry and are triggered on opposite edges of the clock cycle. But one problem with HT is that the multiple virtual CPUs are still sharing a common cache, which quite often creates bottlenecks that deny any performance increase. Even if FS9 were programmed to make "good" use of multi-CPU multi-threading, once you start throwing in external add-ons that run outside FS (like ActiveSky, Radar Contact, FS Passengers etc) then you have more thread management issues that lie outside the control of the MSFS programming team. And worse, if you have any application that needs to call in the 16-bit subsystem (ntvdm), like the RealityXP Garmin nav units as a good example, then you can really see performance tank as ntvdm does not necessarily play well with other processes in a multithreaded environment.I have an HT CPU...but for FS9 I have written a permanent CPU affinity processor mask (with imagecfg.exe) into the FS9.exe executable that confines FS9 to run on one specific virtual CPU.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

>FS9 is multi-threaded,No it is not.> and will function on a multi-CPU setup.Yes it will - as anything will unless it contains one or another really freaky bug.> In an HT processor, there are not two physical CPUs on>the chip, but rather a couple sets of registers that share the>CPU circuitry and are triggered on opposite edges of the clock>cycle.It is not quite that simple. They share the same execution core. As a single thread can't keep the entire execution core filled allowing a second thread to use remaining time slots in the execution core can give a higher performace (or less, depending on the two treads). > But one problem with HT is that the multiple virtual>CPUs are still sharing a common cache, which quite often>creates bottlenecks that deny any performance increase.Not to mention - they share the entire CPU core.>>Even if FS9 were programmed to make "good" use of multi-CPU>multi-threading, once you start throwing in external add-ons>that run outside FS (like ActiveSky, Radar Contact, FS>Passengers etc) then you have more thread management issues>that lie outside the control of the MSFS programming team. Yes, but in general these are external processes, so unless you goof up the interprocess comunication (which is unfortunately easy to do) this is where you would really see a performance gain.>And worse, if you have any application that needs to call in>the 16-bit subsystem (ntvdm), like the RealityXP Garmin nav>units as a good example, then you can really see performance>tank as ntvdm does not necessarily play well with other>processes in a multithreaded environment.Obviously outdated technoligy will not perform optimal. You have to be pretty stupid to do anything in 16 bit these days.