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Cruachan

I need to set the record straight

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Guest mz-cd

In a post entitled "SP2 and Acceleration a BIG disapponitment" [5th Nov.] I said my piece about this subject.I also posted on the 8th Nov.entitled F18 catapult.As a result of the replies to my F18 post I am now delighted to report that FSX with SP2 and Acceleration is now working fine.The one tweak which I had NOT done was to let the sim build a new cfg. file.This I did and low and behold all is now well.I was going to report that I have since made NO alterations to the cfg. file but I have in fact made one and that is to reduce the texture bandwidth to 5 from the default 40. [This as a result of reading another post this morning]Scenery pop up is virtually eliminated.The greying out of the aircraft when changing views has gone.There is only the merest suggestion of blurries.Loading time is now down to between 60 and 80 seconds [depending on the location]I am now able to have full GA aircraft and airlines set to 10%.Ships and ferries etc set to max.Frames rates are between 30 and 50 [i run frames UNLIMITED as that works best for me]Not all sliders are to the right but what I have is good.I run Horizon Gen X scenery [uK] and that is sharp and clear.All aircraft "behave" as they should and are delight to fly.HOWEVER two things which have not been rectified are the Piper Seminole prop textures and addon scenery trees which still appear flat. But I guess you can't have it all.So maybe the lesson here is " a tweak to far"I have become obsessed with teaking but going back and letting the sim build a new cfg. file has obviously worked and I sincerely hope I have seen the end of it.ASUS A8N-E MotherboardAND Athlon 64 4200 dual core [overclocked by 10% in the Bios]Ati RX800 TD256E Graphics Card3 GB of Ram [2 x 1GB sticks and 2 x 512MB sticks, matched pairs]ATI TraytoolsRegardsRichard

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Guest fsxmissionguy

Richard,I'm glad you've worked out your issues. And I think you've provided the community with a good lesson. Too often it seems like we in the community are quick to bash Microsoft or ACES when the problem may lie elsewhere.Whenever someone posts a "rant piece" (which was how I perceived your original post) I look at the post carefully to see what third-party apps they might have installed ... what tweaks they may have made early on in an attempt to get acceptable frame rates but may now be inappropriate since there has been 2 service pack releases, or whether they have so many add-ons that maybe RAM is now at a premium on their system.My experience throughout the FSX release cycle has gotten progressively better (and I have to say I was disappointed with the performance of the original RTM version on my substantial hardware). I don't want all my sliders to the right, primarily because I think that reduces the realism for me (personal opinion). But, because I was developing and distributing missions (and then went on to develop missions for the release of Acceleration), I felt it was critical that I had a pristine system (no add-ons, no tweaks, no third-party tree enhancements,, no great new water textures, etc.).So, it was easy for me to see the performance improvements offered by SP1 and SP2 (Acceleration) to an unmodified system.I'm not bashing third-party software, mind you. Much of it is top-notch. But adding to the original software can sometimes affect its performance negatively and it's important to keep that in mind before we set loose our attack dogs on the ACES team.Trust me, they use this software every single day. They want it to perform well and they've put a lot of thought into how that can happen.At any rate, glad you've found the key to performance for yourself. I'm sure it's different for everyone, but going back and "resetting things" seems to be key for many.

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I'm glad you got your issues sorted out as well but I think its worth noting that when SP1 came along I had no addons and was not using any tweaks.It was SP1 that forced me to find tweaks so that I was able to run FSX in any reasonable way.There are changes that have been made that affect some of us in negative ways. I'm not sure why the effect is negative. Its probably as hard to explain as why older systems ran FSX better than newer ones pre SP1.


|   Dave   |    I've been around for most of my life.

There's always a sunset happening somewhere in the world that somebody is enjoying.

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Guest fsxmissionguy

Sightseer,Do me a favor. Reboot your system. Then, before starting FSX, open the Task Manager to the Performance tab. Tell me what the following settings show:Average CPU Usage % (over say 3 or 4 minutes):Total number of Proceses:Physical Memory Available:Page Fiel Usage History:Then, start FSX, pause a free flight (any free flight) and record the same 4 metrics. Reply to me with the data in this thread.I suspect that you don't have enough RAM, and this is causing FSX to make use of the page file while you are flying (thus, destroying your performance.)Cheers,Kevin

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Kevin - I appreciate your attempt to help.I already know that I have too many processes running but the number of processes and my pagefile size and location have been consistent.I got a decrease in performance with SP1 (for whatever reason). I found tweaks that actually made my system run better than pre SP1 and so, for me, SP1 plus tweaks has been the best. SP2 has changed things again and I'm hoping to have more tweaks.The only change that has been made is the addition of Acceleration /SP2 and suddenly things are not as good. I'm only looking for the answer as to why.Like I said in another post, it is conceivable to me that the taxiway texture fix and the lines that now appear around all the water bodies and the new runway textures may be just enough to push my system over the edge.Personally, I'm probably going to uninstall SP2 and chalk it up to'things change, life goes on...I'm fine with what I had'in short "I dont need this :) "have a good day and thanks for trying to be helpful.


|   Dave   |    I've been around for most of my life.

There's always a sunset happening somewhere in the world that somebody is enjoying.

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Guest fsxmissionguy

Dave,Snip: "The only change that has been made is the addition of Acceleration /SP2 and suddenly things are not as good. I'm only looking for the answer as to why."I hope you'll reconsider, and post the data for the larger community to take a look at. It may not help you specifically since you've decided to uninstall, but it may help others significantly.I noticed in something in your system specs, and thought I spotted a problem with your RAM setup. It looks to me like you don't have enough RAM, and you have an odd amount of RAM (1.5mb ... rather than 1MB or 2MB). So, I'd be interested to hear about that.It would only take a few minutes to gather that data. What do you say? It would maybe help some others to understand how they could improve their performance!Cheers,Kevin

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Guest mz-cd

This question of RAM and Page File is interesting.I ran for some time with my page file turned OFF untill I read somewhere that that was not the thing to do.Even with it turned off the task manager showed page file being used.I went into the system to change it back and noticed that the recommended size had changed from 3500 [approx] to 4606 so I set it at 4606 using the custom setup.I run FreeRAM XP Pro and that shows 2047MB [i actually have 3GB]and as the sim loads that comes down to something less. I have seen it as low as 1350.Whatever I am running there is always some page file being used.Although at the moment it is quite low.By the way I also use Memstatus which again only shows 2047MB but also shows that I have 757MB of video memory but I only have a 256 card???These tools are great but unless you understnad what they are telling you and you are able to make the rquired corrections they mean nothing.RegardsRichard

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>Even with it turned off the task manager showed page file>being used.That's because it's been reported that Win will make a small page file on the root of the system drive for you, even if you turn off the page file.>Whatever I am running there is always some page file being>used....which, as you found out, is why you always need a page file, no matter what. That's the way WindowsXP memory management was set up--it always pages some data to the file, even if there is plenty of physical RAM available.>By the way I also use Memstatus which again only shows 2047MB>but also shows that I have 757MB of video memory but I only>have a 256 card???MemStatus is notoriously inaccurate. :)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


Rhett

7800X3D ♣ 32 GB G.Skill TridentZ  Gigabyte 4090  Crucial P5 Plus 2TB 

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Guest n99wb

Nice of you to set the record straight. Now, when are you gonna startmunching on your smelly socks? Are you gonna post pics of this event?"If Microsoft were to do something POSITIVE I will eat my smelly socks"Bon Appetite!

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Guest fsxmissionguy

MZ,If you're interested, here's what my Performance monitoring shows prior to launching FSX, compared to flying the F-18 in free flight off a carrier.I get anywhere from 16-22 FPS doing this (which is plenty for me to successfully trap the carrier 98% of the time - 2% bolters due to the guage being slightly misaligned. ;) (Yes, that must be it!)I interpret this data this way: I have plenty of RAM available to run FSX, and because of this, my page file hashing is minimized.Cheers,KevinCPU = Intel Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz running in multi-threaded mode.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/180251.jpg

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Guest mz-cd

I had them last night with new potatoes and asparagus tips.The pots and asparagus tips were veeeeeery nice.

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Guest TempNZ

When I installed Acceleration I didnt delete my cfg file. I had notorious problems with the game crashing every time i Alt-Tab, the tooltips constantly garbled and if I clicked a menu item it would lock up my entire system, requiring a hard reboot.Even when I uninstalled Acceleration I still got some of the lockups, which I never had before.Needless to say I completely uninstalled FSX, and started again. I am now at FSX+SP1 with very very minimal tweaks, and it runs super. But I have the shiney Acceleration disk always looking me in the eye, pleading to be installed :(Did you have any of the problems I do? Did the cfg file delete fix it?

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After installing Accelleration I was rather unhappy with my performance. Seems I had more stutters and lower fram rates. I decided to remove FSX entirely from my HD and reinstall RTM & then Acceleration ontop of it. In my default RTM flight I noted that with a clean install I had an average of 26 FPS with sliders set to my preference. I then installed Accelleration/SP2 and in the same default flight gained 9 FPS. That tells me all the tweaks in my config were actually hurting after SP2. I'm now quite happy with perf and am adding more autogen & clouds as a result of th eFPS increase. My FSX is now completly stock as from MS and it performs rather well. Jim

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Guest JIMJAM

I am also in a predicament.After accel I was getting menu ctds,random hard freezes ect.Then some patches started coming out such as UTX,some planes.So now, when I uninstalled Accel, it left behind the "patched" programs.I spent all day yesterday reinstalling FSX/SP1 addons.The only addon I skipped this time was Mytrafficx. HUGE Bloated program that slowed my FSX start up to a craaaawl.And YES, its tempting to fire up Accel again but Im going to need some other Nvidia users with simular problems to convince me there is a cure before I go through this mess again.

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