Here is a series of screenshots of FS9 "Stock" versus FSX "Stock"...What is instructive is to note the total memory usage, which is reported as a percentage of both "system" and "video". Notice how much more memory is consumed by FSX!!!Note the frame rate, along with "average fps" and "volubility" percentage.First here's FS9 set with all "sliders maxed," with 100% AI.http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/7682/fs...s9000001cx8.jpgHere is FSX set with all "sliders Normal or 50%" with 100% AI.http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/8623/fs...s9000005ln3.jpgNow, let's increase FSX for ~80% Sliders and show the lovely trees...http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3932/fs...s9000006vl2.jpgLet's use the Eaglesoft Beechjet 400A for a change...http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/9985/fs...s9000008ho6.jpgLet's now throw caution to the winds and crank FSX up to FULL DETAILS!http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7651/fs...s9000009nx8.jpgThe main point I'm trying to make is that FSX can literally SWAMP your memory. In actual flight even with my 50% settings, on occasion the video card will max out at 100% usage, and even then a lot of the video is getting "dumped" in to the bit bucket.Another point is this: my ATI Radeon X700 Pro PCIe card only HAS 256MB of onboard memory. The remaining memory "allocated" to the "video" is "borrowed system memory," since FSX requires MORE than 256MB. Whenever more than 256MB is required by the sim, the "borrowed system memory" is used instead for the overflow, hence dragging frame rates even lower...

Very interesting, Bill. What resolution do you use for FSX? Have you tried stepping the resolution down to see what impact that has on video memory usage and/or performance?

>Very interesting, Bill. What resolution do you use for FSX? >Have you tried stepping the resolution down to see what impact>that has on video memory usage and/or performance?Rats... I should have listed that: 1280x960... I cropped the images to 800x516 for the forum though.I quite deliberately left the resolution and all video settings (4xAA, etc.) alone for this series of tests.I actually run FSX with the configuration used in the second picture, which is "roughly equivalent" to my FS9 settings, although still with 10 times the amount of autogen, 100% road traffic, leisure boat, cruiseships and AI.What I hoped to convey is that FSX is - even with comparable settings - throwing almost TWICE as much data on one's system!BTW, the tool used is MemStatus v1.5 available FREE here:http://www.nuclearplayground.com/NuclearPl...ound/MemStatus/What this tells me is that my system would benefit a LOT from another MB of memory, and a video card with at LEAST 512MB memory!!! :)

Hey great little utility there Bill. Thanks for the link.

Bill,I downloaded that handy little tool, I have a 2gig system with a 256 7800gt.Sitting on the deck at KSEA, FSX is using almost a full gig (909K). Peak total is 1486mb. Video mem peaks at max of course.FSX I suggest has overflowed your main memory as well, having to read from your hard drive. That will slow things down to boot.Thats funny, reading the box in my hand it says you only need 256md with XP to RUN the game. Of course Playing it is a different story ...Regards'Garett

Very Interesting.When I was trying to select a Video card for my system (A segway until the time I have to buy a DX10 Card), I was looking at the nVidia 7600GT 256MB vs 7600GT 512MB The 7600GT had a 256MB memory but was very fast..(Thats what the numbers said) The 7600GS had a 512MB memory but was not very fast.They both cost almost the same... I went with the GT. I think, I should have gone with the GS and 512G memory. FSX would have benefited more from the memory than with the speed.Manny

>Bill,>FSX I suggest has overflowed your main memory as well, having>to read from your hard drive. That will slow things down to>boot.That's probably why I wrote:"Another point is this: my ATI Radeon X700 Pro PCIe card only HAS 256MB of onboard memory. The remaining memory "allocated" to the "video" is "borrowed system memory," since FSX requires MORE than 256MB. Whenever more than 256MB is required by the sim, the "borrowed system memory" is used instead for the overflow, hence dragging frame rates even lower..."Anytime FSX needs more than the available video memory it will allocate some system memory to make up the deficit, up to a point...BTW, aside from the MemStatus utility, no other programs are running on my flightsim computer (well, the normal clutter of WinXP crap is loaded of course!).The first time I ran MemStatus in FSX, my peak main memory was 99%, and my video memory peaked at 96%

Oh I dunno - more video ram just enables the vid card to handle big pretty textures without as much help from main ram - me I'd still have gotten the GT, then get the reduced texture tweaks if necessary. regards,Markhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpgXPHomeSP2/FS9.1/3.2HT/1024mb/X700pro256

Hmmm, and that's expected, in fact, your FS9 pics are really stock though, looks like some sort of addon traffic there, that would take a little too, either way, you'd still get much more perf out of FS9, and I get your point too...Good comparision

>Hmmm, and that's expected, in fact, your FS9 pics are really>stock though, looks like some sort of addon traffic there,>that would take a little too, either way, you'd still get much>more perf out of FS9, and I get your point too...>>Good comparisionFS9 itself is bog stock. I do have a LOT of custom AI flying around though, such as the Cirrus SR22 and Lionheart's Cruiseaire that are visible in the scene.I wanted to try to present as close to "stock" vs. "stock" as possible.With my typical settings, I get a fairly consistent 20 fps while flying, dropping to 9-15 fps while on the ground, depending on my location.

Yeah I didn't mean to turn the thread in a different direction, and I know what you accomplished by the pics, I jsut thought I'd point that out....Oh I miss my FS9 traffic, i had it install but after the last PC screwup i decided I like getting 20+ FPS anywhere and everywhere I flew with any payware plane :)

But FSX shot has clouds, FS9 doesn't. One point for FSX..lol

cool! someone with a near equivalent system to mine! Is your's a laptop? I'm guessing desktop, because i dont think they make an x700pro for laptop... but i could be wrong...Using any tweaks? I'm trying to optimize my demo2... I've done about all the tweaks and am getting around 30FPS @ princess juliannamind posting all your settings that you have set to get 20-30FPS?

It's kind of difficult to tell from those pics, but I think most people would agree that the light sourcing on FSX is better, so it's hardly surprising that it's using more memory.I suspect that knocking back some of the lighting effects which FSX has to offer would be a fairer comparison in terms of whether the coding and other stuff such as texture resolution is having a detrimental effect.Personally, I'm finding that my pci-x card is doing a good job of handling stuff (X800GT).

Bill,Great analysis - thanks!So, it's quite apparent that FSX needs more RAM compared to FS9.In my case, I have a P4, 3.6GHZ with 3GB of RAM. I'm good in the memory area.What I'd like to know, based on your screenshots, is if moving from a 256MB to a 512MB video card would help? By help, I mean a boost in FPS and by how much?It looks like in all the screenshots above that FSX is using about 245MB of video memory (and FS9 much less with 69MB). Is this the memory used by the video card, or the _extra_ memory taken from the RAM to help the video card?JerryG