Do you know if FSX will support dual core processors and/or 64bit feature?THX for resposes! :-)AQUI

I'm glad somone asked...I was about to post the same question: Will FSX support dual cores from AMD?David

I suspect the question is not "support" (which is really more of an operating system issue) but rather "opotimized for". It appears that many important tasks in FS are run as fibers within a single thread. That suggests to me it might be difficult to do a load-sharing on multiplke cores, because of scheduler issues.scott s..

I agree. "Support" got to be the most overused word. "Optimized" is much closer to its real meaning here. We now know for example there is no such thing as "SLI support".Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

>I suspect the question is not "support" (which is really more>of an operating system issue) but rather "opotimized for". It>appears that many important tasks in FS are run as fibers>within a single thread. That suggests to me it might be>difficult to do a load-sharing on multiplke cores, because of>scheduler issues.>>scott s.Scott is correct. As with SLI there's nothing the app has to do to "support" dual-core CPUs other than have more that one thread. The OS scheduler does the rest. FS2004, in fact, was multi-threaded. But as Scott also correctly points out it's up to the app to use multiple threads effectively.In something like FS, which consists of numerous interdependent systems, eventually some threads have to be suspended until the threads they are waiting on are ready. The programmer has to think careful about these interdependencies when they are designing the system. In the worst case there can be so much waiting that the end result looks more like a single threaded app.It gets real tricky. Still, here's what Task Manager showed recently on my Dell 370 with an Intel dual core chip:

Interesting Mike. I hadn't thought to test it out in TM, here is what I got with an X2 4800 (FSD Porter VC at TNCM real weather), wonder If I am missing having something enabled after looking at yours (time to go poke around in the Bios).Although I was excited to "finally" have all sliders maxed and ony 58% CPU usage for once, LOL.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir Internationalhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/139995.jpg

I read an interview with John Carmack a while ago where he said he was hoping that the compilers will do the job of optimising multi-threading one day. Wouldn't that be nice? Multi-threaded programming is the HORROR and I symphasise deeply with anyone who has to do it...Christian

The real trick with multi-threading is making sure your threads access shared memory properly.The apps that I write professionally are multi-threaded. The threads are event driven and react to drivers that are interfacing with specialized telecom boards. I use threads in order to take advantage of multi-cpu computers. Each thread has to access shared memory structures and objects (I write in that ancient language - c++) and if you do not manage with sempaphores and critical sections, you will definitely get bugs and crashes which can require a significant amount of time to debug.You also have to make sure your threads yield back to the CPU for other processes (and their threads).You also need to take care that you don't have threads getting into race conditions or deadlocking. Further, you don't want threads waiting too long for access to shared objects, since they will not be able to process events, in my case these events can be generated by the bucket load every millisecond.That being said, it is a challenging method to accomplish tasks, and quite rewarding too.

Oh ok. Optimization is the key, then. It does sound complex to do in FS. Thanks Scott and tdragger for the clarification.:) David

Maybe I misunderstood but tdragger is showing us FSX and your is FS9.

>I read an interview with John Carmack a while ago where he>said he was hoping that the compilers will do the job of>optimising multi-threading one day. Wouldn't that be nice? >>Multi-threaded programming is the HORROR and I symphasise>deeply with anyone who has to do it...>>Christian>Another mythical silver bullet. The compiler is not going to re-write your application. For instance, how will it know that it's okay to move texture load tasks to a background thread but that frame buffer setup needs to be on the foreground thread? Nope, developers are still gonna have to understand how it works.

Yes. The key step you're missing is: install FSX.

Yeah, I am not sure how compilers could help. I use compilers every day and these are fairly dumb programs that parse your source and create an executable. Compiler is not going to fix your bugs or optimize your code if it is already poorly written. Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

>Yes. The key step you're missing is: install FSX. I'd be happy to! LOLWell that gets me even more excited to check it out. Thanks for the info!Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

>It gets real tricky. Still, here's what Task Manager showed>recently on my Dell 370 with an Intel dual core chip:>The image shows that the FS9 process is bounced between the two cores with almost 58% total CPU usage. If you assign the FS9 process only to one core, the performances will be better because the bouncing process speed down overall performances. This is why you obtain 58% CPU usage instead of 50% usage of CPU. The remaining 8% CPU usage is for the bouncing process. Actually the best configuration to use FS2004 with dual core CPUs is to assign FS9 process to the first core and all other processes (antivirus, third party programs, etc) to the second core. I hope that FSX will optimize the processes to obtain a 100% dual core CPU usage without bouncing processes.Best RegardsAQUI