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David Roch

Recommended performance tweaks

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Hi,So...I finally upgraded both my FS rig, the OS as well as FS so now I'm running:Hardware- Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 3,6 GHz- 4 GB Corsair Dominator RAM- eVGA 8800 GT SSC EditionSoftware- Vista- FSX- Level-D 767 for FSX- Active Sky X / X GraphicsWhat are the most important and recommended tweaks in FSX to make best use of my new hardware to have the best possible performance but still good looking graphics?Thanks in advance for any recommendations!Best,


Richard Åsberg

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With your setup, you really shouldn't need to do a lot of tweaking, except making sure that all your drivers are up-to-date and that Vista is reasonably optimized. After SP2, I am not sure, if there are a lot of recommended and "community-approved" tweaks anymore.I think the most important tweak would be to use nHancer (www.nhancer.com) to set AA and AF via the driver and not only on FSX.A few good starting points for Vista optimizations can be found here:http://ops.precisionmanuals.com/wiki/PMDG_Windows_Vista_FAQhttp://ops.precisionmanuals.com/wiki/PMDG_...Frame_Rates_FAQand here (very good general tweaking guide):http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.htmlOther than that, your setup should work just fine to handle FSX with complex add-ons.Good luck!Pat

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Hi Pat and thanks for the links, I'll have a look at them!The two primarily things I thought about was what's best, to set the AA and AF on the driver level or within FSX since I read somewhere that for GeForce cards it's better to leave these settings to the application where on ATI it's better handled on driver level.Next thing is to have FSX make best use of the 4 cores but maybe I'll find some info on this checking out those links.My current performance in FSX is not bad but honestly I was hoping for some more...have Aircraft set to Ultra High, Scenery Medium High, Weather Ultra High and Traffic Medium High and that leaves me at a FPS of approx 15-20 flying a cloudy day and at approx 25 when flying with clear skies and that is with filtering set to Bilinear in FSX and AA enabled - not sure if that should be considered as good...? Personally I was hoping I should be able to at least keep the FPS above 20 all the time with my new hardware setup.Well...guess I'll just have to jumpt into the tweak swamp again ;) Haven't been in it for a while running FS9 with good performance the last couple of years...amazing how it's always the same thing when a new version of FS is released :-lol


Richard Åsberg

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Whoa, with your setup you shout get frame rates of at least(!) 40fps with stock airplanes, because I can squeeze out about 20 fps with the default Cessna, about 15 fps with Cessna/King with G1000, about the same with the default heavies and about 10fps with the Wilco/Feelthere A320. Granted this is with about 40% traffic (generated by MyTraffic) and similar settings compared to yours.Something doesn't seem right. I have the 8800 GTS and I exclusively use nHancer with (4xS AA, 16xAF), which made all my blurries go away (not so with FSX-only AA/AF) and also my performance went (strangely) up. Also, I have noticed that you might want to try to set your display setting to the maximum resolution of your monitor for best results. In some instances, which are not yet fully clear to me, I get better fps on higher resolutions than I do with lower ones.I have also heard that the drivers for the 8800 GT are not yet completely matured (same goes for my 8800 GTS), so it could be also a driver issue.And, hey, in the worst case, go back to FS9 for a while and be greeted be prepared for a lot of Ooohs and Aaah, when it comes to performance. ;)Pat

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I do get FPS in the range you mention with the stock airplanes, the numbers in my last post was when flying the Level-D 767.Just start looking through the TGTC Tweak Guide for Vista and in a word...WOW...someone really put some time and work into that one! When time permits I'll do some more reading. I will also try this nHancer and see if that makes any difference.Again, big thanks for your tips!


Richard Åsberg

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Oh yea, with the Level-D you should consider yourself blessed to get those kind of fps. I am sure you'll be able to squeeze out some more. I don't think that's a bad rate at all. If anything that I run in FSX would run at 20fps, I would be jumping for joy. And, remember, 15fps was something that was almost unreachable with a highly modded FS9 and a $900 Athlon FX CPU just about a year ago. ;)The tweaking guide is very extensive indeed, but it is absolutely worth reading. I'm sure you'll learn a lot about your hardware and OS.Good luck!!Pat

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Thanks for the encouraging words, and yes...will read through that Vista tweaking guide, try out the nHancer program and also try to see if I can find some tweaks for FSX in particular and then I hope to reach the best possible framrate for FSX using my current hardware.All the best and see you in the virtual skies Pat!


Richard Åsberg

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>I do get FPS in the range you mention with the stock>airplanes, the numbers in my last post was when flying the>Level-D 767.>>Just start looking through the TGTC Tweak Guide for Vista and>in a word...WOW...someone really put some time and work into>that one! His name is probably Khoroush Ghazi (at least he used to do the TGTC Guides) and he knows his stuff.Regarding your 15-20 fps in cloudy wx with the Level-D. I think you can get a little more out of it with your hardware; speaking off-the-cuff probably in the 20-25 range in those wx conditions, as long as you are reasonable with your AI settings.Probably rather than use the "pre-sets" of Medium High, Ultra High, etc. I would go for a custom slider approach. Many times the presets are strange to say the least, for example setting terrain texture res to 7cm when there is no earthly need to do so.Autogen: Probably with the Level-D going, autogen at Normal would be do-able with your machine. I think any higher on that particular slider with lvl-D--even with your hardware--you'd be hamstringing yourself. On the other hand, I think you can do better than sparse.Water: I'd hope you could do 2.x low with your hardware and the Lvl-D, but if not, 1.x high would surely do it. Some things about the Shader 1 water I actually like better, but some things about the Shader 2 water I like, too...AI: I don't know what AI you run. If you run stocker AI, your normal setting need be no higher than 80%. With the Level-D, I would run less (50%) to make up a few frames. In FSX, the AI are a big fps killer as I'm sure you know.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 mojo777

Hi,I've just purchased almost identical hardware to you. My question is how stable is you pc at 3.6 ghz? I presume originally it's 2.4 ghz right?Also I was wondering, does FSX use 4GB of RAM?

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Guest ianrivaldosmith

My system is almost identical to that, I run at 3.4GHZ, otherthan that its pretty much the same. I run water at high 2 as I was advised to do this, would dropping it to 2 low really make a big difference? Looks wise and performance wise?

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>Hi,>>I've just purchased almost identical hardware to you. My>question is how stable is you pc at 3.6 ghz? I presume>originally it's 2.4 ghz right?>>Also I was wondering, does FSX use 4GB of RAM?Yes, the CPU is running at 2.4 GHz at stock speed. Started using aircooling with help from a Thermalright Ultra120 Extreme and running the CPU at 1,42V but after some strange random reboots etc from time to time and quite high temps I decided to switch over to watercooling to be able to increase the voltage even some more but still lower the temps.So...now my rig is rocksolid running at 1,5V with idle CPU temp at 30 C and full load 55 C (a drop of approx 20-25 C compared to aircooling) so if you want to go really fast but still 100% stable I really recommend watercooling!I'm using a Corsair Nautilus 500 with waterblocks for the CPU but also the Nortbridge which used to get very hot and I'm currently waiting for a very nice waterblock for my 8800GT as well that will cool both the GPU, memory and volt regulators - here's a link to it for anyone interested since there are not many waterblocks for the 8800 GT cards around so far -> http://www.aqua-computer-systeme.de/shop-i...roducts_id=1851As for FSX's ability to use RAM I'm not sure but I belive first of all you need to run the 64-bit version of Vista to take full advantage of 4 GB or more. I tried the 64-bit version but after having problems with a couple of drivers/programs I decided to go for the "normal" 32-bit version even though that will leave me with some unused RAM.


Richard Åsberg

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Rhett,Thanks for your tips, I'll try to play with the settings in FSX a bit and see what works best for me looks/performance wise.Best,


Richard Åsberg

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Guest PowderBlue

Read Phils Blog I remember seeing somethign in there about the ram issue. It will only show like 3.75 for 4 gigs but is actually using it all.

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I know you can use a switch in Windows Server OSes called /PAE that you add to the boot.ini file and that will make the server find all 4 GB of RAM, not sure if something similar can be done in Vista maybe...


Richard Åsberg

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Hi Pat,You use the AA and AF on in FSX AND forced on through nhancer as well?Glenn

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