SP1 On Low End System - Does Not work (in my case)

[nudata 10]

My system:2ghz AMD, 1gb ram, 128mb ATI 9800SEI fiddled with the SP1 update until today trying to rid my system of blurred textures. I was never able to produce what I believed was a visual performance equal to the original FSX. I tried all of the tweaks but this is almost a pure gamble since each is capable of reacting with another which is more true when resources are limited. I must say that the frame rates are improved with SP1. It is now possible to run Autogen at Dense along with normal structures and the detail set at medium. If I set the detail level to maximum at some point FSX/SP1 simply switches to a VERY blurred state which also affects the virtual cockpit (blurs).As a simple observation SP1 does display the distant textures ok but does not do well on nearby textures which are almost always blurred to their next to best level.The original install of SP1 was brute force. That is I simply installed it with no preparation of FSX.So, decided to try the recommended install process. I did an uninstall using the function on the FSX DVD. This is an unpleasant task that takes very long. Then I did a defrag. I downloaded SP1 from Microsoft which does not like Firefox. Defragged again. Then did an install of FSX from the DVDs. Defragged again. Started FSX before installing SP1 to refresh my recollection of its baseline performance. Absolutely no problems rendering the landclass textures that constantly blurred in SP1. If I slewed it blurred the landscape but it did recover clarity in a "reasonable" amount of time contrary to SP1 which took minutes. Load times were longer pre-SP1 and Autogen, at normal, caused a serious FPS hit. I then reinstalled SP1 and returned to bouts of blurred textures. Thus a decision point was reached.Having read the posts of those with DuoCore CPUs it certainly seemed possible to mitigate any shortcoming of SP1 "out of the box". However, in my circumstance the cost of getting to the next performance level (DuCore & faster RAM) was in the realm of $1000. I need a new case (air circulation), a new motherboard, and I will be forced to buy a new video card since a good recent vintage motherboard only offers PCIe card support. Therefore, I have just uninstalled FSX and have started a defrag prior to a clean install. FSX original ain't so bad that it is worth $1000 to make it better. Eventually I will be forced, by some technical circumstance or component failure, go for a new PC. Who needs a new roof with the planet warming...I had a few nasty comments saved up for Microsoft but that is a way to attract the ire of the censors. Suffice to say I am unhappy that we do not have a way to choose which elements (if possible) of SP1 we wish to use. All or nothing bundling, coupled with arcane interacting tweaking, has nothing to do with flight.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC-old, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[n4gix 4,947]

The one, single, most critical tweak I had to apply was simply forcing FSX to treat my aged P4 3.0GHz HT processor as a single-core processor.This easily doubled my frame rates with no other changes.AffinityMask=1For whatever reason, the detection altorithim ACES uses doesn't always identify single-core, hyper-threaded processors and set FSX to ignore the vcpu1 for spawned threads.

[Mace 1,909]

In addition to what was said, I think you also can get good results by messing with the FIBER_FRAME setting.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[nudata 10]

I have tried most, if not all, of the tweaks/adjustments. While there were some improvements the landclass tiles usually rendered at a resolution 1 level worse that 1m/pixel. If I waited in Slew mode long enough, or circled an area, the hi-res mip (or whatever it is being called now) showed up. The new structure seems to have a higher minimum PC need than the basic FSX. Therefore, while you may improve "A" "B" could suffer. With sufficient resources (there are several) you can "re-balance" the system to take advantage of the new code. If not it seems to be, in my individual case, a continual chase for the golden goose. I have now completed a reinstall of FSX and I am running a defrag. Good thing that I retained the fix for photo-scenery since it is not on the FSInsider pages.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[vollmey 0]

>The one, single, most critical tweak I had to apply was>simply forcing FSX to treat my aged P4 3.0GHz HT processor as>a single-core processor.>>This easily doubled my frame rates with no other changes.>>AffinityMask=1>>For whatever reason, the detection altorithim ACES uses>doesn't always identify single-core, hyper-threaded processors>and set FSX to ignore the vcpu1 for spawned threads.Bill,Stupid question, I 've searched and can't find a good answer. Where in the CFG file are you putting the "Affinitymask section". I don't have one. I'm very satisfied with FSX except for the blurries which I seem to getting a handle on. I would like to try you suggestion.

[W2DR 1,860]

Dave - Add a section called JOBSCHEDULER and put the AffinityMask=1 line there.Doug

[vollmey 0]

Thanks Doug.

[Guest philom]

I'm in the same situation you're in with a low end system that makes FSX disappointing. After your reinstalling and applying the affinity mask tweak, I'd be very curious to know the results.P4 2.66 GHz1 gig ramATI 1650

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I guess I'm in the same bucket with a P4-2.8, 1GB, 256M Video system.My observation is that once FSX-SP1 gets behind in it's texture loading, it does not catch up... or you have to wait for ever (20 seconds or more) in Pause mode. This is new to my SP1 experience.So, my advice is, do not overload FSX or it really lets you know !For starters, cut down on as many sliders as possible... 2m textures is still way more detailed than FS9 and looks great, scenery complexity no higher than "normal", autogen on "sparse", and traffic low or off. Cap the fps at 20. For a 128 Meg video card, maybe 5m textures are more appropriate.. try it and see.A simpe utility program like Memstatus can help you visualise how heavily you are taxing memory.. in my case, FS9 uses about 80 Meg on my video card and 800 Meg main memory. With FSX and 2m textures, it used 210 Meg on my video card and 1000 Meg main memory..So, start with low settings, and save 1m textures and other eye candy for that next high powered PC that you are going to get one of these days !

[Guest guz99]

My system specs are P4-2.55, 786MB, 9800pro(128) and the sim-experience is worse post sp1, just like yours. Blurries are back, major stutters unless you limit framerate (had no effect pre-sp1) and sometimes I get horrible blur all over the landscape. Very, very disappointing. Have tried some suggested tweaks but no, as expected, nothing works.Will uninstall and go back to the smooth, good looking vanilla FSX until I get around to buy a new machine.

[nudata 10]

I had affinity set to one during most of my attempts to mitigate the application of SP1. It was not a "magic bullet" for me.I never tried the 2 meter texture slider setting. I really hate to loose the 1m stuff since most of my "flying" is in the Cessna or Maule. I also have a larger amount of 1m, or better, photo-scenery for California and some other areas. 2 Meters would blur the airports where I no longer have to use the normal FSX runways & taxiways. The resolution is quite nice as you some into land on a "real" runway that actually slopes. I also have a small amount of 0.3 meter/pixel from Sea Island, Georgia. At 60 knots looking down on that from 200ft above the ground is nice. That stuff would probably be totally useless in SP1 on a low cost system (probably should use the more accurate "low cost/high cost terms).Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[FlyingsCool 3]

Number 1 upgrade!!! -- upgrade your system to 2 GB of ram.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[GaryGB 10]

Hi Dick:Sorry to hear about your less-than-desired results with FSX SP1 thus far.I have been a user of older ATI cards on a number of systems with FS for some time, and was curious if you have used the PCI Latency Tweak with your card... which I believe would likely be an AGP based video card?The PCI Latency Tweak alone makes a significant difference with AGP video cards (and often other add-in PCI cards in an AGP motheboard bus!) in any version of FS, and there are initial reports that the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= setting may also still make a difference at anywhere between 20 and 400 for some users in FSX-SP1.If you are not familiar with this, here is a link to some info about it:http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?...er=asc&start=30(see the 4th post from the bottom of the page)Hope this helps!:-) GaryGB

[GaryGB 10]

Hi Dick:Also, be sure the AGP Aperture is set to allow optimal bandwidth for your AGP motherboard and videocard throughput:"The AGP Aperture size can be set using the formula : maximum usable AGP memory size x 2 plus 12MB. That means that the actual usable AGP memory size is less than half of the AGP aperture size. That's because the system needs a write combined memory area equal to the amount of actual AGP memory (uncached) plus an additional 12MB for virtual addressing."see: http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demon...erture_Size.htmand:http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/43and:http://www.tweak3d.net/joomla/features/har...size-examined_3Hope this helps too (...there's still a lot of life left in AGP systems when tweaked adequately!):-) GaryGB

[Bray 1]

For what its worth I have a P4 HT 3.4 ghz which I know is quite old compared to the stuff today. I also have 2GB RAM and an ATI PCI express X700 pro which is also dated. The move to 2GB RAM when FSX was released made some improvement with load times and menu speed. Cant say I had any FPS benefitI also did the affinity=1 stuff and that has had absolutely no effect. Bottom line a newer multi-core system or FS9. Bill