SP1 vs RAM/Disk Cache?

[Guest AirPierre]

Uninstalled FSX and cleaned up; Reinstalled FSX then applied SP1 to a clean install - result much better frame rates however ....Using (more or les) my previous FSX slider settings I have noticed much more HDD activity so much so that in certain ares of my 'test flight' there is so much that the sim stops completely for a minute or so then resumes.Is there an issue with SP1 and RAM/Disk caching which can cause this?If yes, is there a cure?!!MTIA for any help as this is the only thing now which is affecting the performance :)

[Guest thx1137]

I don't know about issues but some suggestions might be:1. More memory = larger disk cache2. faster drive - e.g. a SATA drive if yours isn't3. defragmenting 4. Having fsx in its own partition - if it is in a very large partition then some files may be at the start of the partition and others at the end, more disk head travel time- makes defragmenting faster too

[Guest AirPierre]

Thanks for the suggestions - I will certainly give them a try where I can (btw, updated my signature - my HDD is SATA).Cheers, again,

[tf51d 284]

>Uninstalled FSX and cleaned up; Reinstalled FSX then applied>SP1 to a clean install - result much better frame rates>however ....>>Using (more or les) my previous FSX slider settings I have>noticed much more HDD activity so much so that in certain ares>of my 'test flight' there is so much that the sim stops>completely for a minute or so then resumes.>>Is there an issue with SP1 and RAM/Disk caching which can>cause this?>>If yes, is there a cure?!!>>MTIA for any help as this is the only thing now which is>affecting the performance :)FSX most certainly uses more memory than did FS9, I've seen greater than 1GB on my 2GB system, so it will definitely swap out to virtual memory on a 1GB system like yours. The only way to prevent this, is to either reduce your scenery, so the sim uses less, or adding another 1GB memory to your system.

[yellowjack 28]

If you can, separate the FSX, System and Swapfile partitions onto different disk spindles.Many users forget that in a physical hard disk drive the head(s) can only do one read or write at a time. If you have FSX trying to get a texture and the operating system trying to page something in or out and both i/o requests are made in FSB time then head contention can occur which can slow down your i/o considerably and cause performance issues in FSX.John