Just got FSX today and have spent a few hours using it. Overall, I am pleased with it, although it is hard on the computer. I have a halfway decent system - AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800, nVidia 7800 GTX, 2 GB RAM - and average about 15 fps (occasional dips to 9 fps) in the Southern California Basin with settings on Medium High. I have played with the settings and there is not much affect. If I go to Low settings, then the frame rate will increase to the mid to high 20's. This seems to be because the sim is CPU bound. When I look at system performance, the CPU is running at 100%. Actually, one core of the CPU is running at 100%, the other core is twiddling its thumbs. This concerns me. In past versions of MSFS, we could expect the hardware to eventually catch up with the demands of the newest version. And eventually, the hardware always did catch up. I am concerned that this may not happen this time. AMD and Intel have pretty much abandoned pushing clock speeds higher. They are increasing CPU performance by adding additional CPU cores. So, we can expect that single core performance will not increase much in the near future. Since FSX seems to only use a single core, it would seem that we cannot expect much of a performance gain with the newer CPUs to come.Does anyone else share this fear? Would someone from the FSX team care to comment on this? Maybe I am looking at this all wrong.Chuck

This has been a hotly debated topic. Do a search and you should find some answers to your questions from simmers and the development team.Ian.

Check out a post in the Flight Simulator Tips and Tricks forum. There is a thread called: "Set Processor Affinity Permanently (Dual Core CPUs)"This may solve your problem. ;-)_______________________________________Nick Preston :-kewl http://www.eaglesoftdg.com/staff_Images/teamsig1.gif

this has been covered to death already (no offense). The ACES team also posted a long explanation. You're not going to see both cores used to 100%. The only real thing they offloaded to the 2nd core was IO/loading/decompressing textures.--2002cbr600f4i

You are right on. Your concerns are valid IMO. almost everyone here is kind of aware of what you just said... There are some workaround/compromises that seems to work for many. Search this forum/thread. You would find plenty of discussions and some answers.You are not alone. But its also a great flight sim... There are lots of goodies in there. The Missions thingi has great great potential. The mutiplayer is tons of fun. I would suggest, lower some of the 1. Autogen settings, The traffic and uncheck the "bloom" and then login into multiplayer and check that out. Manny

I think it's premature to say that Intel and AMD have abandoned increasing clock speeds. Yes it's taken a while but that's due to limits that have been reached with current CPU making techniques. The same thing happened with motherboards years ago, but eventually the hardware manufactures found a way to overcome that.I think it's very possible that we will see some dramatic improvements very soon, and that includes clock speeds as well.James

How soon? Six months, a year, two years??? I have an AMD 3700+ I figure that to run FSX well I will need a CPU with a single core speed at least twice the speed of my current system - is such a CPU anywhere on the horizon?Bruceb

nope, afraid not...speeds havent seem much gains in about 4 years now and not much difference expected too soon according to the road maps.Either MS knows something that we dont (like dx-10 will save us all?, i doubt it, lol) or the next carnation of this sim will have to have multi-core support which could mean a faster turn around between versions this time (which could also mean fsx will have a shortened life).The part that really concerns me about all this?...whats it going to mean to some of our beloved fs addon devs if dx-10 doesnt really provide the extra horsepower we need?...i would think some of them will indeed be hurting over the next 18 months trying to hang onto fs9 development funds for survival...or theyre going to offer less intensive versions of their work for fsx users im betting.Dave

I'm using Dual Core Intel 3.2 and I've got another system with 3.4 ghz. Both of my systems have 2GB or 4GB of DDR2 667mhz RAM in them and I've also got WD Raptor drives. It makes no difference. The sim still runs like arse unless I'm flying way up high.Here's my system specs:-----------------------------------------------------Intel P4 3.2 GHZ Dual CoreASUS motherboard (can't remember model)2GB NON ECC DDR2 RAM (1024 x 2)WD 36 GB 10k RPM RAPTOR DriveATI Radeon X1600 PCI Express with 512 MB RAM----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Intel P4 3.4 GHZ Dual CoreASUS motherboard (can't remember model)4GB NON ECC DDR2 RAM (1024 x 4)WD 36 GB 10k RPM RAPTOR DriveSuperTalent 8 GB FLASH IDE DriveATI Radeon X1900 XTX PCI Express with 512 MB RAM ($600 video card)-----------------------------------------------------I've also tried FSX on my sim computer:-----------------------------------------------------Intel P4 3.4 GHZABIT FATAL1TY Motherboard2GB NON ECC DDR2 RAM (512 x 4)WD 74 GB 10k RPM RAPTOR DrivePCI Express Geforce 6600 GT Video Card-----------------------------------------------------All of my systems run Windows XP PRO updated with all the latest drivers, etc. So, I've given 3 mean systems that should make FSX fly like a dream and guess what? It doesn't!I simply do not know what could. Perhaps I could try a Dual Dual Core Intel Dual Core Xeon setup, but why the heck would I want to spend $800 each on two processors plus the special motherboards I'd need and etc?I really don't get it. I'd like the FSX team to tell us what systems they based "good performance" on with all the settings maxed out. I almost bet you it was a Windows Vista computer. I think that if they optimized it for Windows Vista then that's absured. It should be optimized for Windows XP and those who run Vista would get the same performance, but I may just be nutts. All of the computers today that are in circulation, especially ones bought within the past two years are more than likely going to continue to run Windows XP. I personally have tried the Vista Beta releases and I don't see anything that makes me want to jump out and grab it right now. About the coolest thing I seen was the ALT-Tab effect, but you can get that from http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/ for much cheaper. I work and live computers every day, more specifically servers, but we are gamers in my company. We always stay up with the latest drivers and hardware, but wow... what can I say? What does MS want me to buy to make the sim run better?Sorry for my rant....

>nope, afraid not...speeds havent seem much gains in about 4>years now and not much difference expected too soon according>to the road maps.>>Either MS knows something that we dont (like dx-10 will save>us all?, i doubt it, lol) or the next carnation of this sim>will have to have multi-core support which could mean a faster>turn around between versions this time (which could also mean>fsx will have a shortened life).>>The part that really concerns me about all this?...whats it>going to mean to some of our beloved fs addon devs if dx-10>doesnt really provide the extra horsepower we need?...i would>think some of them will indeed be hurting over the next 18>months trying to hang onto fs9 development funds for>survival...or theyre going to offer less intensive versions of>their work for fsx users im betting.>>>DaveWhy are you so pessimistic about DX10????

Or we could hold the add-on developers to be very mindful of the performance their products have system-wise.You all (nobody in general, don't want to hurt feelings here...) complain about the frame rates in FSX, and call for the heads of the development team on a platter with apples in their mouths...But, let's look at some addons that the same people swear by...PMDG 747"High End PC = Still low frame rates!""Frame Rate Help Needed""2D cockpit kills my frame rate with 747 - but not with 737 - Why?""but there panel is to heavy for my framerates"PSS A340"A340 frame rates -why so bad?""A340 FPS""FS2004 slow frame rates""Please Help me PSS.......A340 stutters!!"PSS B757"Due to bad frame rates, I wish to revert to the no-VC model.""PSS 757 TOO SLOW""Loading times Sorry, but these are atrocious.""757 - Really great add-on ruined by Frame rates!""Frame rates with 757""757 Not quite there yet... (FPS issues...)""Crushing frame rates"PSS B777"Framerates for 777""We should be patient...""framerates is not good""777 Frame Rate Patch""Why does PSS avoid this question""FPS drop""Framerates - you may already know""Thanks but no thanks PSS.""Frame Rates extremely bad.""Frame rate problem with 777-300er"(An excerpt that just caught my eye)"I'm one of the pre-order customers for the (removed) and needless to say I've been eagerly awaiting the aircraft. Regretably, I have to say I'm dissappointed because even version 1.1 has completely unacceptable frame rates on my system. ...but right now it's going to remain in the hangar until it can fly smoother." - Look familiar? It was posted before the FSX stuff started coming out.It seems that the developers should make sure the performance of their product is acceptable in the design process, by making an efficient but high quality design. Onus is on the addon developers, they can no longer be sloppy in their design process.

>>Why are you so pessimistic about DX10????well, i dunno that im really feeling pessimistic (is this really the correct spelling?, hehe) about it...lets just call it optomistically challenged instead :-)for 2 reasons:even though i havent done alot of reading about it (or claim to know alot about how it works), from my limited readings around the net and this forum i get the feeling that dx-10 is supposed to help relieve some of the workload off the gpu, enabling video cards to handle even more intense graphic related renderings than they can without it. Thats nice and may be of good benefit for certain games, but as far as the flight sim is concerned there is still a ton of cpu cycles that need to be there regardless of the gpu offset. Im not certain but i dont believe dx-10 is supposed to offset the workload from the cpu...if im wrong then maybe id be a tinge more hopeful.The other reason is simply the fact that dx-10 is software right?...well, when was the last time you saw new state of the art software released that actually enabled you to get BETTER/IMROVED fps in games?....for me at least, the answer is never...in fact it pretty much goes against the entire business model which the entire gaming software/hardware industry is based upon to begin with., i.e....make games and applications improved, yet more and more demanding with each new version so that consumers will want to purchase new and improved hardware to go with it. So why should it change now?Dave

This is my point. Since improvements in processor performance, in the foreseeable future, are tied to multiple cores, if FSX does not fully utilize multiple cores, then I do not see improved performance from hardware upgrades in the foreseeable future.Intel's next processor release - quad core at 2.66 GHz. Fairly slow clock speed, many cores.Chuck

wouldnt it be nice of they invented a "smart processor"?...you know...one that would automatically spread out the workload of the application its running equally among all its cores without having to be told to do it by the apps coding?...heck if they could do that then Binladen's in the bag.Dave

I just feel that with the patch that they are working on for Vista/DX10 we will see a definite improvement. I can't find the link at the moment but I read somewhere from a ACES member blog that they are working on support for dual core processors too.We will have to wait and see how well they really patch this for full DX10 compatibility and also what they do for dual core processors. I have a lot of trust in MS. I really don't think they would leave us hanging at performance problems to this gratitude."So what are we doing about it you ask? Well we aren't having all-team meetings to discuss performance, but we are reading the forums and looking at what users are doing to try and improve performance. If there is a good solution out there we are going to look at what is going on "under the covers" and see what we can do to improve things. We are looking into improving multi-core processing, and of course working toward the DX10 update. I personally am not involved in any of this work, I just know that it's going on around me. I have great confidence in the team that we will be able to improve some things for some hardware configurations, but I'm not sure much can be done for older hardware, lack of ram, and sliders set beyond what their system is capable of. I should also say that the DX10 update is the only planned code update that I know of, so I have to assume that any perf gains we make internally will have to wait until that release. Any release is a non-trivial event in our studio, so it would be a big deal to release anything earlier than the DX10 update. But who knows, stranger things have happened..."- http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/default.aspx (performance anxiety)Nobody can say anything about what they are doing exactly for multi-core processing but we can only speculate. It's going to be a long winter...