I'm running an AMD 64 X2 4200 processor, ATI X1300 Pro PCIE 256M, & 2G RAM. I'd be interested in your cfg as that may provide some clues. I have tried all the cfg tweaks and the only real usefule ones for me thus far have been the Pool Size (I have mine at 10000000) and the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=.33 tweak. I currently have this a .20.ThanksJim

Hi Jim,Here you go!CFG Filehttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/fsxcfg.txtIn game settings:Graphics Settingshttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Graphics.jpgAircrafthttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Aircraft.jpgSceneryhttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Scenery.jpgWeatherhttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Weather.jpgTraffichttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Traffic.jpgAnd because you have an ATI card, here are my settings for that as well. One note is I now have vertical refresh turned off. I took those shots while I was still in tweaking mode.http://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/3D%20settings%20pt1.jpghttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/3D%20settings%20pt2.jpghttp://www.members.shaw.ca/madamo/Mem_Core_settings.jpg

Just did a quick test. Parked the 737 at KJFK at 9.00 am. FPS were around the 4-8 mark.Set CPU affinity to CPU1 and get around the 8-14 mark.Set priority to Below Normal and get 14-20.Need to do more testing (at work now :().

Thanks for posting that. You are running autogen & I have it off. I run less traffic than you also but otherwise I'm about the same settings. Also, what cersion of the CC are you using? I don't have the overclocking settings in mine.I'll experiment more later this evening.Thanks AgainJim

I'm running the latest Radeon 6.9 (right from AMD/ATI) drivers right now. I didn't want to test with 3rd party drivers at this point.M

Strange, I'm running the same exact driver. Maybe I need to d/l the CCC from there also.Jim

>Hi Cristian,>>>First, setting the priority to below normal should not have>>any impact- certainly not increasing your framerates!>>Just curious, why not? I know everything one reads online>relating to processor priority says to increase the priority>to help.>>Thanks,>>MikeHi Mike-Well, setting it to below normal is not increasing it, it's decreasing it! AboveNormal, High and Realtime are increasing it!Priority means how much processor time an application gets. Basically, if 5 programs are fighting for the CPU, it can handle the instructions like a traffic cop. If all are set to normal, each one will go one at a time- if one is set to above normal, it will execute more instructions before letting another program run (like letting 5 cars go, and then 1, and then 5 more). If set to realtime, it will execute intructions until it has a pause, and only then will other programs get to run. It sounds great, but remember with Windows that games really rely on the OS for certain functions- like message marshalling (the true core of any multi-tasking operating system). If messages are not processed, queues will back up, and bad things will happen. If FSX is pinning your processor at 50% now, then you'll probably experience degraded performance in realtime. Usually, you'll end up with an unresponsive UI, and maybe blue screens. If you want to really see what can happen, then try setting it to realtime - remember Direct X is part of the OS, not FSX. You can try above normal, or even high, and see if that helps.

>I tried this Mike but it made no difference for me. I'll>experiment more yet. Also, does your CPU usage only show 50%>or so because of the dual core? That's what I'm showing>through all these tests. One CPU seems maxed while the other>shows very little useage.>>JimYes, the CPU usage is always averaged for the processors. So in a quad-processor system, it would show 25%.

No change here, I have an E6600 overclocked to 2.7. Tested at Seattle, looking at the gauges I got about 18.5 no matter what I did (I have my settings set pretty high), if I looked down, up, left, or right I got 30 FPS. I'm starting to think that gauges are really hard on frames, either that or just looking forward. (Was in Cessna 172).Jeff

Mike, setting your texture resolution to 60cm will almost certainly degrade your performance as the sim tries to interpolate the textures - bring it back to 1m, which is the default resolution.I tried this on a Core Duo Dell Laptop at 2.17Ghz - Affinity to CPU1 and Priority at both Normal and Below Normal, and performance dropped considerably.As always with these tweaks, many are peculiar to specific systems and people's mileage will vary. Thanks for sharing though :)

Hi Mike:I don't have a multi-core CPU, but I noticed that in your video driver settings you are preventing FSX from controlling the video card, which I read needed to be allowed, in order for FSX to utilize Anti-Aliasing and Filtering.I do see that you have them both set in the ATI Catalyst Control Panel as we have to do in FS9.You might want to check into this further, and bear in mind that both of them running at the same time may degrade FSX performance with current videocards and drivers (I don't think this has been fixed in the latest driver releases, but SLI and Crossfire have had some improvements).There was a thread in this FSX forum in the last week which suggested that a particular combination of driver and FSX control was best for maximizing videocard peformance with FSX; sorry I don't have the link for you, but a little browsing or searching should reveal it to you.EDIT: found the link; it had to do with flickering reductionhttp://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...66000&mode=fullHope this helps; and thanks for sharing your discovery with us all!:-) GaryGB

Mike and all,Thanks for experimenting in this area. I had seen earlier comments somewhere that affinity settings may affect performance, but was too timid to pioneer with it, so I'm a follower here!Anyway, on my HP-Media Center 1450, with AMD 64x2 4200 and an nVidia 7600GS, 2G ram, here is some data from experimenting with the affinity and priority settings:At KBDL, high airport ground traffic, 75% airline traffic (imported from FS9-PAI aircraft), 110 mile 3-D clouds w/"fair weather", large detail radius, no autogen, no automobile traffic, in the A-321 VC, looking out towards parked traffic, mesh detail at 75% and textures at 1m, no water effects:These measures were not recorded, but from memory--Affinity Set Priority Level AVG FPS/3 minutes Range (flash peaks)0 & 1 Normal 15 11 to 180 Normal 11 9 to 181 Normal 19 17 to 20 No apparent changes with priority set higher, lower or to realtime.As above, but in "thunderstorm" pre-set weather in FSX, at 3,000 foot altitude, near cloud deck, looking due south from end of KBDL Rwy 24, no airport ground traffic.0 & 1 Normal 12 7 to 180 Normal 9 7 to 121 Normal 16 14 to 18No apparent changes with priority settings.So, from my rather quick look, if I set the affinity to any setting that involves "0", I get a larger range of flash-FPS movements. When I isolate to "1" only, I get a 15-20% FPS boost and the range of FPS is narrower.Having said this, I have not flown a jet under these "1 only" settings to see how it affects texture blurring, etc, which the multi-threads are set to work on.However, since I don't use autogen ever (I'm with Geofa, they detract from the flying experience with the new textures), and seek to have the most fluid flight experience in difficult weather, "the blurries" would be an acceptable trade-off for more fluid instruments on an ILS final.Of course, with FSX I'm coming to love good-weather flying in the GA-- and with no or little clouds, I can crank up the texture settings and others and enjoy...in this case I might want the "0 & 1" setting.The beauty is that we can re-configure FSX and affinity as needed to suite a particular flight, or portion of our flight.This is not a bad solution until we get our hardware to catch-up.I, for one, think FSX is brilliant and love it. I have lots of add ons with FS9, and fully-loaded, it doesn't immerse me as does FSX.My computer and card were about $1,100 combined...and it was well worth it. In a year or so, when DX-10 and Vista have proved themselves, I'll upgrade again if I can.In the meantime, my thanks to all the Avsim readers who are contributing to making FSX work more smoothly...to those critics I'd ask that you get Avsim to set-up a gripe forum so others don't have to weed through to get to the nuggets.BillKBDLwww.flyelectra.com