FSX-MS Which Add-ons should I get to "Pro-A-Fi" my FSX

[ols500 43]

Plus In the Case a OOM does happen, handy FSUIPC saves it! (for the PMDG 777 at least -long haul)

[scianoir 610]

2 hours ago, ols500 said:

Now, here is a question that might get out of hand, any tweaks you guys recommend? (I have already read through the Avsim guide )

One of the most useful pieces of advice I found for FSX was to avoid tweaks if at all possible!

Bill

[ols500 43]

 ok Bill! 

[Jim Young 2,356]

4 hours ago, ols500 said:

handy FSUIPC saves it! (for the PMDG 777 at least -long haul)

The autosave feature of FSUIPC is known to cause CTD's and not recommended - https://forum.simflight.com/topic/83768-fsx-freeze-when-using-fsuipc-autosave/

Based on this, I included the recommendation to not use the autosave function in the AVSIM CTD Guide.

[MDFlier 2,031]

On 4/13/2018 at 3:53 PM, ols500 said:

For anyone who is running Orbx Global+vector+Trees and has an i5 8600 (or similar):

Can you tell me your scenery settings, to balance performance and display?

I'm running an 8600K. It's a fantastic processor for FSX. I'm also running a GTX1060 6Gb, which is all the GPU you will ever need for FSX.

I've got LOD radius set to medium (driven by personal preference, not FPS), Water effects at High 2.0 (I haven't tried Max 2.0 yet), and autogen at Dense. All of the others are set to the far right.  100% Mesh, 1m mesh res, and 7cm texture res. For traffic, I have Airline traffic set to 71% (I use WoAI with over 150 liveries), and GA set to 26% Ships and leisure boats are both at 16%. Global texture resolution set to the far right. Bloom enabled, flare disabled.

I have Orbx Global, Vector, Trees, NCA, SCA, and PNW installed. I also have Taxi2Gate's KMCO (my absolute favorite add-on - well... right after GSX) and Flightbeam KIAD. I'm running GSX and AS2016 as well.

I get 27 FPS+ nearly all the time. I have a saved flight that starts up in an A-321 on a short final to Rwy 4L at Newark Liberty (KEWR) that I call flight "FPS test". The NYC skyline is visible in the distance, and the level of autogen gets borderline ridiculous in that area. It still drops my system to 20-24FPS, but I only get a 1 or 2 second blip of time where I see a little stuttering. I can now do a normal landing, rollout, and taxi without seeing a slide show. Outside of that are, and a handful of others like it, I'm getting 29-70FPS nearly all the time. I've actually stopped using the FPS counter because aFSX runs so smoothly now that I really don't care what the FPS is. It is "good enough" and that is all I need. 

The even better news for you is that your new CPU will go from it's stock 3.6Ghz to 4.8Ghz without breaking a sweat. All you have to do is change 2 or 3 BIOS settings, and then keep an eye on the temps for a few flights just to make sure that your fan(s) are are doing their job. I've run mine at 5.0Ghz for a couple of months, My temps have been as high as the mid 60s (C), which is no problem for the chip. I had turbo mode turned off and all of the cores locked to 5.0Ghz. It worked great. Recently, I lowered the core clocks to 4.8 and re-enabled turbo mode. Now it runs 4.8Ghz most of the time I am using the computer, but it will bump one or all of the cores to 5.0Ghz when needed. They all stay at 5 when I'm using FSX. Doing that dropped the temps by a couple of degrees.

Tweaks were mentioned, so I'll address that as well. I only use the visual tweaks like the runway light scaler settings and to turn off things like window title and brake messages. The two "tweaks" that do seem to make FSX run smoother for me is AffinityMask, which I have set to 62, and FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION, which I have set to .10

You're going to enjoy running FSX on that system. In my experience, The Gen 8 Intel CPUs are the first ones that truly have the horsepower to run FSX the way that it MS designed it. The Gen 6s and 7s were close, but the 8s just do it.  

Edited April 15, 2018 by MDFlier

[MDFlier 2,031]

Jim,

Apologies for the double post. Please delete.

Thank you.

Edited April 15, 2018 by MDFlier
Double post

[ols500 43]

@MdFlier

What an excellent post! It's nice to know, someone has the same specs as I do, as I can get a really good baseline at what i'm expecting in FSX. And with overclocking, what tutorial did you follow?

Also, do you have the Aerosoft Airbus, if so does it run nice and smooth?

 

-Ollie

[MDFlier 2,031]

54 minutes ago, ols500 said:

@MdFlier

What an excellent post! It's nice to know, someone has the same specs as I do, as I can get a really good baseline at what i'm expecting in FSX. And with overclocking, what tutorial did you follow?

Also, do you have the Aerosoft Airbus, if so does it run nice and smooth?

 

-Ollie

I can't speak to the Aerosoft Airbus as I do not own it. That flight was saved with the default A321. I don't have any commercial airliners, only freeware. Most of the time, I fly the default 737. I never even thought about doing that until I got this system built because I had fears of poor performance. I suspect that you will be fine. If you get your CPU even close to 4.8 or 4.9Ghz you should be very happy. I really think Intel was far too conservative on their base clocking. I don't do the benckmarking or stress testing that most overclockers do, I apply my settings and get right to using the computer. I have't experienced a single problem with any application.

I have a BSEE degree, so I simply went to Intel and downloaded both volumes of the datasheet and read about the features, options, and electrical specs. Then, I just applied what I read. Most of the OC guides that I read online come pretty darn close to what I have. There's no great secret. All you need to do is set vCore (main CPU voltage) to the lowest voltage you can and still maintain stability. Set it to a lowish (1.28v-1.29v), value and work your way up .05v at a time. Test by running FSX and pushing it as hard as you can. If it crashes, increase vCore and try again. Repeat until it is stable. Make sure that you have your MB set up to use the memory's XMP profile. Change the base clock from 36 to 48. Change the turbo clocks (one for each core) to 50. Set AVX offset to 2. This lowers the CPU core clocks by 200Mhz whenever the CPU is using the AVX instruction set extensions. Those instructions use the hardware in a manner that uses a lot of CPU power (FSX doesn't use them), and you need to let the system throttle it back a little to prevent overheating. I also upped the unicore frequency from 3.6 to 4.0. I haven't been able to get it to 4.5 yet (the symptom for that are BSODs for DPC watchdog violations, which indicates issues interacting with the systems' drivers correctly), but I still need to download the specs for the Z370 chipset to figure out what I need to do about that. I'll let you know once I figure it out. I'm sure it just needs a little more voltage to get it to 4.5 where I want it.

This OC guide is pretty good, but it is specific to Gigabyte motherboards. https://overclocking.guide/gigabyte-z370-overclocking-coffee-lake/. It should work for other brands of motherboards, but you'll need to translate some of the setting names from whatever Gigabyte called them to whatever they are called in the Intel BIOS .

Edited April 15, 2018 by MDFlier

[ols500 43]

Roger that, Thanks for the explanation 

-Ollie