Cause of stutters in FSX found and greatly reduced

[OldMaintChief 7]

I run FS9 on XP. I have a bare Vista installed on D drive and run FSX ACCEL + GEX on it's qwn partition (E). I don't use DX10 because of skin textures on imported aircraft. All sliders full right except Mesh Res 10 and Water Low 2x, and traffic 50%.IMO AA has a large effect on Nvidia as well as ATI. I use most of Master NickN's tweeks. I found if I set AF to Program Controlled and AA to 8XQ Override in the driver, and set FSX to ANSIO and uncheck the AA box, my frames went up from 20 to 30 (locked). My stutters also went away. When I run FSX from XP, with the same settings, the video seems smoother.DaveDell XPS 720 H2CIntel Quad Core Extreme QX6800 @ 3.73GHz4GB Corsair Dominator EPP 8500C5D 800MHz FSB 1066 MHzNV Raid 0 2x160GB WD SATA Raptors, Sound Blaster X-FiNvidia 2x8800GTX 768MB SLI, Dell 2407WFP PanelXP driver: 169.21, Vista driver: 169.25Logitech Z680 5.1 Speakers, G5 Mouse, Saitek X52WinXP Media Edition SP2 on C:Vista SP1 on D: (Dual Boot)3DMark06: 17,018/6992/7123/5667

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

>You'll be hard pushed to find any card that offers a>stutter-free performance. There are just too many variables to>consider. An occasional stutter will always be present. That's>been the case since FS went to a Windows platform and had to>share resources.>>I'm not sure what you wanted to point me to in a 4 page>dialogue started 18 months ago. Graphics cards have changed a>lot since then as has hardware generally. If you google>"stutters" and "FSX" you'll find numerous hits and all>different setups.>>The point of my original post was to point people's attention>to the AA setting and that if set too high may introduce>stutters. I never claimed my or any card would give>stutter-free performance.>>nVidia cards will probably stutter too and they have driver>issues which the ATI doesn't. The image quality of my 3870X2>is excellent and should certainly be on your shortlist>assuming you'll be running at 1920*1200 otherwise a 3870 may>sufice.Ray, you had posted a response to a post I made about a month ago on completing a system. I have an E8400 also with 2 gig of Corsair RAM PC8500 at 1066 and an EVGA 8800GTS 512. I am running FSX on XP SP2 with FSX using the SP2 update. Now, I am only running one monitor, but I am not getting an stutters or blurries at all and this is with %%100 AI and scenery and weather settings at full bore. So something must be set up wrong the card settings. If you saw my other post the other day I had my FSX set up FS-GS and I have no issues with performance. Your card I believe has twice the memory of mine, so it must be the settings or something in some .cfg tweaks you used. I haven't done anything to my FSX.cfg.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,931]

Hi,<>I too am running on a single monitor. However, I think we need to be more specific about stutters. I get very few once airborne but when taxiing depending on the airport and Ai they will still occur. Are you telling me you get none even when taxiing at major airports? Everything is smooth with absolutely no pauses or stutters even when you turn the aircraft?<>Yes, there was. AA was set too high. Reducing it to 4X had improved things a lot. That was why I posted my findings in this thread. You don't say what AA and AF you have set. I'm curious.<>Sorry, what's FS-GS?<>There is far more to a card than the amount of memory. Phil Taylor's blog listed the important features and the 3870X2 certainly falls into the top category although unfortunately he wrote that before it came out.Mike Swannick posted some pictures taken with both a 8800GTS and a 3870X2. In one of the screenshots the frame rate with the 3870X2 was 30% higher than that of the 8800GTS. Other shots showed the same fps because he'd locked it at 30. Some cards will be better at some things than others. Mike dumpred his nVidia card because he was so fed up with the drivers.<>I've applied all the recommended tweaks to mine. Can't remmeber the source.Cheers,

[Guest Grahame Myers]

Just a thought..I had stutter problems in FSX till I remembered an old tool that I used to use in FS9: PCILatencyTool which you can find all over the place, just Google to find it.It can also be set from within ATI TrayToolsI'm not sure if it works with PCI-E cards: I can't test it as I'm still using AGP.It's certainly worth a try: Normally the PCI Latency is set impossibly high, mine was set at a default 255, I reduced it first to 64, and finally to 32. result? Fast texture loading, and no stutters.Maybe somebody with a PCI-E card can check it out..It could be the magic bullet you've been searching for..regardsGrahame

[Ray Proudfoot 8,931]

<>It doesn't. It's for AGP cards only.I've found my magic bullet - reducing AA when running at very high resolutions. Removing it completely results in a shimmering effect hence why it's set to 4X.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,931]

Hi Dave,<>But what level of AF was set by FSX? That's the problem of using the options in the program. A card such as yours should be able to run AF at 16X without any performance hit.The AA settings for nVidia and ATI produce different results so it's not possible to draw direct comparisons for a given setting.

[Guest Grahame Myers]

Thanks for the info Ray. My next system will of course have a PCI-E card, good to know what works and what not.regardsGrahame

[OldMaintChief 7]

Hi Ray,I agree on your point and I don't know what what level FSX will set when left to it's own devices. I have heard that AF controlled ny the program is more efficient. I have tried it both ways and not noticed much difference in video quality or performance.Setting AA in the driver, and not FSX, made a big difference gor me. I agree with you setting a level low enough to find the sweet spot for your machine gets it running smooth. Where I set it was also a big key with me.Dave

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Hi,<>I too am running on a single monitor. However, I think we need to be more specific about stutters. I get very few once airborne but when taxiing depending on the airport and Ai they will still occur. Are you telling me you get none even when taxiing at major airports? Everything is smooth with absolutely no pauses or stutters even when you turn the aircraft?<>Yes, there was. AA was set too high. Reducing it to 4X had improved things a lot. That was why I posted my findings in this thread. You don't say what AA and AF you have set. I'm curious.<>Sorry, what's FS-GS?<>There is far more to a card than the amount of memory. Phil Taylor's blog listed the important features and the 3870X2 certainly falls into the top category although unfortunately he wrote that before it came out.Mike Swannick posted some pictures taken with both a 8800GTS and a 3870X2. In one of the screenshots the frame rate with the 3870X2 was 30% higher than that of the 8800GTS. Other shots showed the same fps because he'd locked it at 30. Some cards will be better at some things than others. Mike dumpred his nVidia card because he was so fed up with the drivers.<>I've applied all the recommended tweaks to mine. Can't remmeber the source.Cheers,Ray Proudfoot3 miles east of EGCC. Home to Concorde G-BOAC.System OneAntec P182, Asus P5K-E mobo, E8400 3GHz, 2Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-8500 RAM, Asus HD3870 X2 1Gb, Dell 2407 24" TFT at 1920*1200, 2 Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb HD, GoFlight T8*2/P8/166*2/LGT, Aerosoft 747MCP/EICAS, CH Yoke, Pedals, Pro Throttle, Windows XP.System TwoP4 3.0, 3Gb RAM, nVidia FX5700 128Mb AGP,2x 17" LG TFT,40Gb HD, Project Magenta Boeing Suite, Radar Contact, Windows XP.System ThreeIntel Core2 Duo T7200 Notebook, 1Gb RAM, ActiveSky6/ASX, FS FlightKeeper, FSEarth, Windows XP Pro.Ray, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. First, yes I have no stutters or pauses at major airports and it makes no difference if the weather is really bad with cloud draw to 100 miles. What AI are you using? I had tried Ultimate traffic for FSX but since the aircraft were calling for the gates it was taking to much resource. I deleted UT and installed all the World of AI packages, then mip mapped the textures to DX3 since they were originally built for FS9. Also I am using the stock drivers from the nVidia website with Win XP SP2. The FS-GS service I used is a company call Flight Simulator Graphic Solutions, FS-GS for short. Their website is www.fs-gs.com. They do a complete set up taylored to your equipment. Now I am reaping the rewards of flying FSX basically maxed out in dense area with no probs. Well worth the money. Just goes to show that there is nothing wrong with the nVidia drivers when everything else is setup correctly. Talk to the fellow over at least it free and he can tell you how he can help you. Regards -Sean

[Ray Proudfoot 8,931]

Hi Sean,I'm using the default Ai aircraft set at 40%. I will set it to 0% to judge whether it has a adverse affect on performance. I am considering MyTraffic X as it is specifically designed for FSX with the latest textures - less hungry that other Ai packages apparently. It sounds like you have tailored World of Ai to reap maximum graphical benefit.That service has been discussed before. It had its fans and detractors. I use Ken Salter's Alacrity which allows you to close down all non-essential programs and services. My system probably could be improved but by how much I'm not sure.Without giving too much away what areas did they concentrate on when they tailored your system? Unnecessary programs and services? Settings in FSX.CFG? I don't expect you to give away all the secrets for a service you've paid for but a general pointer would allow me to judge whether it's something that is outside my expertise or not. After all, tweaks to FSX.CFG are in the public domain.Finally, details of your system would help me gauge our respective systems and how close they are.Cheers,

[jwenham 1]

After reading this thread I decided to try a few things and see what happens. I Have a 8600 GT SSC (super super clocked) with a Pentium D805 oc to 3.48. I Set AA to multi sample 4x (also tried 8q with no effects on perf) set AF to app control (all set using nhancer). In FSX I unchecked AA and set filtering to ANSIO in FSX. I noticed a improvement with stutters in turns and a overall extra smootheness durring TO and Landings and Taxi. Please note that these improvements were not blow you away type improvements but they were enough for me to keep the tweek. We should put that on a T-shirt (KEEP the TWEEK):-lol I am using the lastest NVIDIA drivers (not beta) and my resolution is 1280 x 1024.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Hi Ray. Well first you got to get rid of the default AI. It will kill your performance since they activate the jetways. Not only am I using the WOAI packages, but I have also brought some AI packages over from FS9. Just make sure if you bring over FS9 traffic files, you use the FS9 to FSX traffic file converter.As far as my system its below:Antec Nine Hundred caseE8400 at 3.0gh2 GB Corsair Dominator PC8500 at 1066mhz not OC'dAsus Formula Maximus moboEVGA 8800gts 512 not OC'd500 GB Western Dig HD w/16mb cache320 GB Wes Dig HD for backupsPC Power and Cooling 750w power supplySamsung SyncMaster 931bfPretty close to your system. I know that all my AA and AS settings are maxed. I can't really tell you about all the tweaks we used, not just because it's part of the agreement, but because when you go through them it goes by so fast and into so many parts of the computer I haven't seen before that I don't really recall all of them. But I can say that it's not the normal stuff you read about here. And, like I said before, it's not defraging and tweaking the cfg. In fact we didn't open the cfg file. I am also just using the default Windows defrager. I wouldn't take to much stock in thinking that using all these after market defrager are going to help you that much unless perhaps you have loads of stuff on your HD. BTW, my FSX is on the default C: drive, not on it's own drive. I can tell you this Ray, if you had the expertise that this fellow has, you wouldn't be posting on here and trying to figure it out. I know that a service like this is hard for people to get an idea about because it's kind of like going to a hypnotist that promises that he will get you to quit smoking. Since its not a product that you can see, per say, it makes it hard to decide if you should buy, They will not charge you until you are satisfied, so it's pretty safe. Since you have pretty much the same equipment I have I am sure they could get yours running really well. Mine runs so great that I don't think I am going to even bother putting FS9 back on my HD. There is really no need for it, except for 1 or 2 sceneries that I really miss. But, FSX has such good default major airport that I don't think I need my old FS9 stuff. Now I just wish someone would come out with a good 737 like the PMDG had on FS9. That about the only plane I miss.Talk to you later Ray, good luck.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,931]

Hi Sean,Thanks for your reply. Yes, our sytems are pretty close with the exception of the graphics card. You know, if I could really get excited about FSX then that service is something I might well consider. It seems that nothing is written down during the consultation so in the event of a crash or a change of OS from XP to Vista how is the status quo restored? I'd feel a lot happier if you were given a report that you could refer to if a rebuild was required. From what you say it sounds as though most of it is Registry tweaks.I'm old enough to know that you don't get more fps from defragging but it still makes sense to me to keep FS separate from the OS. I'm surprised to hear your FSX.CFG wasn't tweaked because that can make a substantial difference to performance.But as I said, I'm really struggling to warm to FSX. Because I fly the PMDG737 (no panel as I use Project Magenta) most of the time I'm up at FL350 and the FSX world looks pretty bland from up there. I have issues with visibility and cloud layers so there's a lot about FSX I'm not really happy with and that's not even including the DX10 debacle!On the odd occasion I take a hop in a Cessna or Baron there's no doubt that the autogen and moving traffic makes FSX look impressive but I only see that in a 737 in the first and last couple of thousand feet and even then I'm generally busy flying the aircraft.By comparison my FS9 install with FSGlobal, Ultimate Terrain (US/Europe) and Ground Environment makes for a much more realistic view at altitude. I have Ultimate Traffic at 100% and many 3rd party airports so that also enhances the ground realism. And the final killer point is that the fps never drops below 30 even at Heathrow. The FS9 clouds (whilst slightly inferior to FSX's) are by no means unacceptable especially when using Active Sky 6.5.I've just ordered Mega Airport Heathrow (FSX and FS9) and whilst I'm confident it will run just fine on FS9 I have serious doubts as to whether my system is fast enough to do justice to the FSX version and that's before I install any Ai package.I know the discussion has slightly changed from my original post. For low and slow pilots FSX is probably a big improvement but for us airline pilots I'm sceptical that it's the big leap forward Microsoft would have us believe. And if you still miss elements of FS9 do you regret deleting it? Have you added much to the basic FSX? I appreciate the airports do look a lot better than FS9's but with it being so demanding of hardware do we have the capacity to add 3rd party products? And you have to say that after 18 months there isn't exactly a lot to choose from!PS. I've just read your post on the tweak service. Quite informative - thanks.Cheers,