Is it just my system?

[Guest bobthegoalie]

Howdy all...you know that sinking feeling when your car's in the shop and the mechanic says "boy, I've never encountered any problem like this before"? I am starting to feel like this about my new computer and FSX.In a nutshell, I do indeed like the eye candy especially around airports. But, I like to have flyable FPS' too. With this new system I can run ANY game with SPECTACULAR results and FPS intensive games run as smooth as silk. FSX is another beast all together, and I was wondering if someone could provide a little insight into WHY FSX (and only FSX) is such a bear to run.Specs are below, but if I max every slider obviously I get about 1 or 2 FPS sitting at O'Hare, or any large airport. With sliders sitting in the middle, I get about 6 FPS at O'Hare. "Scenery Complexity" seems to be the worst to decrease performance, but I LIKE having airports look the way they should (like FlyTampa in FS9). Autogen, scenery complextity, aircraft, light bloom...all kill my system and make the game unflyable in denser areas. Bush flying is great and I get 20 FPS, but the second I get around a busy area...WHAM...5 FPS. I was thinking perhaps there was an aiport texture, hangar, or something eating up performance as when I slide down Scenery Complexity, my FPS rise a bit.SO - and sorry to be long winded - I read about members maxxing every slider and still getting 15 FPS. HOW???? I called Dell XPS numerous times (and Alienware, and anyone who will listen) and they said I should not be having issues. Why is it that FSX (and its predecessors) releases something almost unflyable in certain areas...why not adopt another method of producing graphics and start from scratch?Or, is it just "my system"? : )Specs - Dell XPS 410, 4 megs of ram, Intel Core 2 - 6600@240 GHz, Nvidia 8800 GTX Geforce (768) w/latest drivers, Creative SB Xfi, plenty of hard drive space, Vista 32, etc.I know Dell has lots of memory-intensive programs pre-running eating up memory (this system is out of the box and pre-loaded software has not been touched or removed) BUT should this be happening?Thanks for reading...and allowing me to vent a bit! ; )Bob in Chicago

[Paul J 349]

A lot of folks will sympathize with you, Bob; you've some work to do to get those higher frames.The first thing is to overclock that proc: it will easily do 3.2 without additional cooling - and I've seen 3.4 and higher quoted. Second: put the flight sim on a different drive to the operating system. Third: get yourself a good defrag tool and a good registry cleaning tool: Fourth; find Ken Salter's "FS Autostart" - (fsasv1111.zip in the Avsim Microsoft Simulators library).For me - SP1 is necessary - it has cured many of my issues.Next comes the FS optimization part: There is a ton of info to be found here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...esg_id=25&page=There are some "texture size reduction batch files" somewhere on this site, authored by Matt Fox, and these were paramount in achieving smoothness and higher frame rates on my machine: these will need some digging to find, and some work to implement - but they're worth it. If you can't find them - I have them at home, and will gladly send or post them if you pm me. Most other tweaks are suggested there, and are easily followed. You can also do a few searches on this site here, for "blurries", stuttering", etc.. If my machine can deliver acceptable performance - yours ought to, also. Start with overclocking to 3 or 3.2 and take it from there. :-)

[Guest bobthegoalie]

Thanks much...I guess the next question is, how to overclock. Is it a simple process? Thanks much for your reply!Bob

[FlyingsCool 3]

I'm one who's been able to overclock to 3.35 GHz (E6600) with just a Zalman 9700 cooler (and I put a small fan on my northbridge heat sink, too).I can get into the 40's and 50's (and maybe higher, I haven't tried) in rural areas, and around 12-17 in Boston and NYC. Most of the time I lock at 30 so I can keep the sliders higher and still get good frames. Most of my sliders are far to the right, and I keep bloom off, shadows off, and water at 2 low or 1 high, 80% air and 35% ground traffic, autogen trees and buildings are 6000 and 3500 respectively, terrain radius is 6.5 (or whatever is higher than the slider puts it), and Ultimate Terrain/X is installed.I haven't done any optimization of textures and recommend against it, since, when the next update is released, unless you keep good backup procedures and are able to return all the replaced textures to the originals, you'll have to uninstall and reinstall FSX before each update.Definately uninstall all the Dell junk. You'll note they don't sell machines that way anymore because of the support headache it caused them.And turn off your anti-virus when you run FSX or totally get rid of it. I don't use any anti-virus (which many other people have found to cause big blurries problems for them with Ultimate Terrain/X installed), and I've never been attacked in 20 years of having a home computer. The best thing you can do to avoid viruses is be careful of where you go and what email you open, and make sure all updates are installed.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

[Mace 1,904]

Your system can do much, much better. My 2 year old rig (and it was not even the latest and greatest then) can do 12-13 fps at O'Hare with 80 AI aircraft around. So yours should easily be able to do high teens to 20-25 in the same heavy environment.First of all I would stop all of the extra programs that are eating up memory. That means anti-virus and the whole 9 yards. Look at the pinned thread in the hardware forum for tips and advice on this.That should net you some fps right there.Now, there is a lot more to it than that. Read the thread referenced in the link mentioned in this thread. And Search search search these forums.Have you done the Intel update for the Core2's? You probably have not heard about it. You see, there are many many things that can be done.None of your other entertainment titles are as finicky as FS. You will find that to be the case.Overclocking will help a lot too as was mentioned.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

[slashed2 53]

I have the same exact system, dell xps 410, 4gig ram, 8800 gtx, etc....Try running smartclose (google it) prior to running fsx to eliminate uneeded processes and services.If you haven't already, as stated above, update to FSX SP1.I turned down my settings to the below specs after getting bad blurries with the 8800, I've found system overloads with this card caused the texture resolution to go to the minimal level. Haven't had the blurries since lowering the settings.I get fairly good fps, using the Seattle area as a test bed I can fly around with the Real Air SF260 at 25 fps (locked at 25) with the following settings:Gloabal max.Detail radius..mediumMesh complexity..100Terrain res..1mwater 2xlowScenery Complexity at DenseAutogen at sparseclouds at 90mileseverything else weather wise is maxed.....Airline traffic at 20-30GA at 2cars at 12 and boats both at 11I have mytrafficX, ASX, Ultimate Terrain 1.1 and Radar Contact running as well.Default aircraft run pretty much the same except a bit of hit with the glass cockpit aircraft although still staying aroun 20-25 in Seattle downtown.The feelthere 737Pic runs at 10-12 in this area so I drop the settings down a bit including Scenery complexity to normal and Airline traffic to 10-15. Ups me to 15-20 fps with this aircraft.I just added the bufferpools tweak and upped it to 5 million (default being 4 million) and have not noticed much of a difference.I also have treesx running with the low res tree textures, not sure if it makes a difference as I haven't run default trees with FSX SP1.Overall, FSX is a hog on today's hardware and it's easy for it to overwhelm any system. The key is to find that sweetspot which satisfies the eye and maintains smooth fps.From my experience FSX smoothness level are such-10-12, minimum acceptable FPS, somewhat choppy and on the verge of unflyable.13-16, fairly smooth and flyable17-21, very good, smooth and very flyable22+ is optimal with 25 and upward being nirvana.I don't fly near New York, although haven't tried with the 8800. I'll have to try out the SF260 there but I know the 737Pic will die in that airspace. Ian.

[Guest bobthegoalie]

Thanks all - I have done a couple of tweaks and am already seeing a rise in FPS. THANKS TO ALL.B