FSX SP1:Intel news

[Guest YukonPete]

PMDG will always get my business. Look at there past projects. Have they ever failed to deliver? NO! We always get the highest quality from them. So what if it takes ages for them to develop each release. isn't quality worth waiting for?

[Guest MauiHawk]

I'm not questioning the quality of PMDG products. I was a very happy PMDG737/737NG customer.But at the same time Dreamfleet and Reality XP don't exactly have a history of putting out crappy products. I own Dreamfleet's A36-- while admittedly it doesn't approach the complexity of PMDG products, it also doesn't give me much reason to question their potential to put out a good A320 product.Assuming the AirlinerXP A320 does turn out well, I'm not going to pass it up to wait a year for PMDG's 737 or A320. And when PMDG's products do finally come out, I'm sure they'll be fabulous, but if the Airliner XP A320 is good enough in its own right I can certainly imagine myself simply sticking with the AirlinerXP plane. That doesn't mean that's definetly what I'll end up doing, but I'm also not going to go out buying PMDG's plane just for the sake of supporting PMDG.

[tasmanet 0]

>Speaking of FSX and video cards can someone point me to a>hardware test >site that actually uses FSX or FS9 in video card tests?There is one out there somewhereThe attachment is from that site .But I can not find the URL.>For the life of me I'll never understand why hardware testers>ignore a huge selling game like FS9 or FSX in their tests.The problem is that the Video Card is not all that important.Think processor, memory etc. I think this is why they don'tbother testing FS9.

[Taildragger 2]

Here are the few I remembered to save:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2059176,00.asphttp://www.simhq.com/_technology2/technology_093a.htmlhttp://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/642John

[Guest robains]

Good work, looking forward to seeing SP1.Multiple cores really do help -- my 4 core MacPro really does some impressive real time video/audio processing, but has been known to use up almost all of my 8GB RAM. I'm thinking of upgrading to 8 core MacPro because H.264 compression is a big time consumer, just as rending under Shake 4.Can you provide more info on RAM usage with SP1?Is SLI still pretty much a dead end for SP1? Other than AA benefits.Thanks, Rob.

[Guest robains]

20% is about what I expected, but I still have my money on DX10 providing closer to 80-100% improvement. But you'll be able to leverage both improvements as one is CPU bound and the other GPU bound.Unfortunately even a 20% increase of 5 fps ends up being 6 fps -- so I'll be looking forward to the DX10 version more than SP1.But if SP1 actually fixes many of the more obvious bugs, I'll fire up FSX again (has been a long time).Rob.

[PhilTaylor 45]

RAM usage should be the same, maybe slightly larger in an edge case. We took a change in the panel system, as a prelude to DX10, that means we need to allocate a slightly larger texture in the Matrox TripleHead2Go scenario for 2D panels.Its our hope that the 30% reduction in Draw and SetTexture calls will reduce how bound we are in the graphics driver on the CPU. If the driver has fewer packets queued up, it should be able to chew through them faster. And perhaps SLI will show more benefits.

[Guest BOPrey]

You are right. 20% increase of 5 fps is 6 fps, and 100% increase of nothing is still nothing. Even with DX10, if ACES does not change the fs architecture, it will only deliver marginal increase in performance as DX10 only deals with the graphics department. Real performance comes when ACES changes the architecture of FS.

[dokelly07 0]

agreed (with above)I would rather have FSX optimized and then "eye candied", rather than the other way around.

[Guest robains]

Folks stop it, why do you invite confrontation? The fact SP1 exists is pretty clear there was a problem so nobody needs to beat this topic to death -- it has already gone thru the ringer.Like I said 5 fps to 6 fps isn't going to make much of a difference. The CPU threading will help in the future. DX10 version will probably provide the most benefit assume one doesn't increase the detail level.Being optimistic has nothing to do with anything. Don't be religious about this, it's just code emulating a flight simulation. It ain't a cure for cancer nor the answer to life the universe and everything.Rob.

[Guest robains]

1280 x 960 -- that pretty much defines why your 3 yr old system is working OK with FSX?Don't ignore framerates, they are there to help you with tradeoffs, not hurt your "look and feel".Bump that up to 1920 x 1200 or higher with high AA and AF and I think you'll see what others are talking about.Not suggesting there is anything wrong wiht 1280 x 960, if that works for you then that is all that matters, but making comparisons to other at much higher settings isn't really meaningful.Rob.

[maxter 0]

>1280 x 960 -- that pretty much defines why your 3 yr old>system is working OK with FSX?>>Don't ignore framerates, they are there to help you with>tradeoffs, not hurt your "look and feel".>>Bump that up to 1920 x 1200 or higher with high AA and AF and>I think you'll see what others are talking about.>>Not suggesting there is anything wrong wiht 1280 x 960, if>that works for you then that is all that matters, but making>comparisons to other at much higher settings isn't really>meaningful.>>Rob.A couple of things, the 1280 x 960 selection was with me using my old 17" LCD monitor. I now use the 22" WS at 1600 x 1024 which provides me with as much clarity as I require. Yes a personal observation. The comparisons are very much valid/meaningful as I doubt that there would be too many average flightsimmers out there who would attempt to run it at 1900 x 1200. And expecting the sim to run at those rates with today's hardware don't seem too smart or realistic to me anyway....Which begs the question, why run it with 1900 x 1200 when IMHO 1600 x 1024 appears pin sharp, but as you say above if 1920 x 1200 is what floats your boat, then I can understand why you're disappointed. Re: frame rates, I don't need them to help with tradeoffs as I don't believe that frame rates as displayed by FSX are meaningful in terms of the experience of flight. I think Larry Adamson calls it suspension of disbelief or something similar. The fluidity of FSX at certain frame rates is much greater than FS2004 at the same rate (for me anyway) and the same occurred between FS200 and 2002... I have learnt to ignore what I think is a superfluous set of numbers.Anyhow, it's all horses for courses. The diversity of expectation is what makes this hobby great and spurs development.Cheers and thanks for your comments.Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern AustraliaPentium IV 3.0GHz (800FSB) Socket 478 pins CPU w/Hyper-Thread Technology MSI 875P NEO FIS2R, AGP 8X, i875P ICH5R Chipset with Gigiabit Lan2GB PC3200 Double Data Rate (DDR) RAM CAS-2.5- 400MHz RatedNvidia 6800GS 256MbASUS MW221u 21" Wide Screen LCDWestern Digital Raptor 36.0GB HDD IDE, for OS WD 40Gig HD for dataWD 200Gig HD for FSXHercules Game Theater XP, 6.1 speakers Dolby

[Guest robains]

Chris,You seem to believe that we should NOT progress in resolution and clarity? Not sure why you believe this, but for myself I consider 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080 (HD resolution) standard. The cost point for monitors at those resolutions is very affordable today.Where I didn't expect FSX to perform well was at 2560 x 1600 (30" LCD). Every other application/game I have works well at 1920 x 1200 with an average of about 60 fps (that includes other flight sims). My goal is min 40 fps, but I start to visually notice anything less than about 22-24 fps.Whether you choose to ignore or use the fps counter is up to you, but it's there to help your experience not hurt it. You can decide what trade offs you do and don't want using the fps counter.But if folks like myself and others didn't speak up about the issues with FSX, there never would have been an SP1, there never would have been additional effort put into multi-CPU support. Having low expectations doesn't make for a good product.I applaud Phil Taylor and the Ace's crew for trying and for their commitment to making FSX a better product. So I'm sure those of you that did NOT complain about FSX will obviously not install SP1 as FSX is already perfect on your system -- right??Rob.

[Klinn 0]

>Speaking of FSX and video cards can someone point me to a>hardware test site that actually uses FSX or FS9 in video card tests?>>For the life of me I'll never understand why hardware testers>ignore a huge selling game like FS9 or FSX in their tests.>>FaxCap>The site 'Hardocp' frequently uses FSX when testing video cards. For example, their latest review of the BFG 8800 GTX OC2:http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...W50aHVzaWFzdA==Be aware that their testing approach is different from the usual "max FPS" you see at most sites. Instead they decide what is a "reasonable" FPS needed to play a particular game, then adjust settings as needed to reach that level. If that requires turning down some of FSX's sliders, so be it, and they then compare the gameplay advantages of one video card over another.They also show min, max, and average FPS, which can be handy to highight a game whose performance varies widely.

[Guest]

I dont know about you guys but i get pretty much the same performance at 1280x1024 as i do at 3840x1024 using the triplehead. Fsx is cpu driven, not gpu driven so it really shouldnt matter too much what rez you run at after a certain point. One of the first things i tried was lowering my rez but it made no difference so i just moved it back.Rob, i saw your post in the tdu forums as well. Have you really been unable to run that game? It runs like a top on my box and i have been driving around the island like a madman from day one with very good frame rates at 3072x768 and hdr on. I average around 23fps in this setting which is very playable and smooth. Now that game is gpu driven and if i lower my rez to 2400x600 i get almost double the frame rate. There is a huge decrease in frame rate on tdu above 2400x600. They are releasing a patch for it next month so i am hoping that it will push me to 30fps at 3072x768. Awesome game imo. ________________________________________________________________________________________________Intel D975XBX2 'Bad Axe 2' | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.20Ghz | 2 GB Super Talent DDR2 800 | Big Typhoon VX | eVGA 8800GTS @ 565/900 | Seagate 2x320GB SATA RAID-0 | OCZ GameXStream 700W | Creative X-Fi | Silverstone TJ-09BW | Matrox Triplehead Setup