Snapping.

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

I just fired up FS9 and im getting the same snapping with that, Im thinking of buying a new hard drive for fsx/fs9 dedicated and having OS on the other drive. What you think?

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

Forgot to ask, what is the best, fastest hard drive out there SATA2 style...Samsung spinpoint with 32mb cache?

[Guest D17S]

Any modern 7200RPM SATA HD will do. Transfer rates are ~ 100MB/sec with access times of ~ 10ms. Their performance will be indistinguishable. I like the seagates because of their 5 year warranty. There's a very expensive 10,000 RPM drive, but its performance advantage is limited to bragging rights. It won't help FS. The 7200s provide more that enough performance capacity for in-game scenery loading. Those 1TB Seagates for $100 look amazing. Once you have a modern drive, the next trick is to properly defrag. I use Ultimate defrag. It lets me put the FSX directory on the outer edge of the hard drive's disk. Those performance numbers (above) are averages. Performance is better at the outer edge the disk, worse toward the center. You want your FS files on the outer edge. And yes, the Samsung has upper-par performance. Check out Hitachi too.

[Guest ziporama]

I recently read that one of the fastest drive out there for raw SATA (from about a month ago) was an 80Gb WD velociraptor 10K RPM drive, OEM edition. That probably has changed by now. The definition of fast is always a sure topic of discussion, as opinions vary as much as the number of available models, plus it varies from one day to the next. For example, the same drive in the 160Gb capacity is slower.The larger, slower rpm drives can easily make up actual performance by having more data in the high speed areas of the disk (the outside, because data reads/writes are faster are you get away from the center of the spindle).Speed comes in FSX when you are loading scenery (after the sim has loaded), especially if you fly a high speed bird like the F16. Fly a Sopwith and you can probably hand crank the disk and still get good FPS :)There are so many factors though, disk is usually the least of your concerns when it comes to FPS in FSX.Cheers,Etienne

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

Ok, so im really now considering getting a new hard drive. Ive dialled all the settings back in FSX and still the stutter appears. Even in FS9 with default aircraft! Its got to be teh hard drive. i have all services closed in vista 64. I wonder if getting a new hard drive and putting FSX and FS9 on it will eliminate this problem. All my other games seem to work fine and vista 64 flies on this drive though?I have it partitioned, so that C: is part 1 with everything on, and D: is part 2 with just FSX and FS9 on. What you guys think?

[Guest D17S]

What HDs are you using now? Services won't effect game play if adequate ram is available (2G+). Don't shut 'em down. It can cause problems. Partitioning won't help either, nor will putting programs on a separate drive. Actually, that partitioned game drive might be causing the problem. If everything is on a single drive/partition, the defrag program can use the entire physical disk to reposition data. FS directories need to be at the physical outside edge of the drive's disk. The partition may have the program locked onto the slower part of the HD. When defraging a partition, the defrag program may not be allowed full (physical) disk access to move directories out of a partitioned HD section. The best install is to simply put everything (op system, programs, the works) on a single (and single partitioned), modern 7200RPM drive. Then degrag the FS directory to the outside track. The transfer rate/access time of any single, modern 7200RPM harddrive is entirely adequate to fully support all aspects of FS in-gameplay.

[OldMaintChief 7]

I started getting "RAID Access Fail" messages at various times. I decided to follow NickN suggestions and get rid of RAID 0.I tried the last 2 NV drivers but had to go back to 169.25. Had tearing textures and vert black bars when external panning.FPS ~50 away and 23 at KSEA. Locked at 30 and everything is smooth. Sliders full right and water low 2X, DX9, Traffic 60% and others 20%. DX10 gives me >100 FPS away but has flashing textures and Non-FSX aircraft are all white, so I use DX9. Setup your video as NickN suggests. Uncheck AA in FSX (It must be checked for DX10). In driver: AF 16, AA 8xQ, Supersample, LOD Clamp, VSync Force On.I have one 160GB HD dedicated to (bare) install of Vista Prem. and FSX. This was recommended by NickN and works great for me. I have the other 160GB HD with XP for internet, MS Office, and older flight sims. Having no software on Vista that wants to communicate with the mother ship, and no AV, makes FSX run very smooth. If you only use Vista one HD is enough.Works for me!DaveSystem:Dell XPS 720 H2CIntel Quad Core Extreme QX6800 @ 3.73GHz2GB Corsair Dominator EPP 8500C5D 800MHz FSB 1066 MHz2x160GB 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: (SATA 0)Vista SP1 on D: (SATA 1) (Dual Boot)3DMark06: 17,018/6992/7123/5667

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

Ok, so I done a bare install of Vista 64, stopped all uneccessary services etc...Just installed FSX with Acceleration pack. NO CFG tweaks, sensible slider settings, Defragged by O&O name setiing. And still the same problem.....Now im on the verge of giving up!

[Guest D17S]

Install the latest Nvidia driver. Then delete the FSX.cfg. It will rebuild on the first FS restart. Now take Bloom/DX10 off. Don't use these ever. On the scenery tab, take water to low, and all right side sliders to off. Then all traffic off too. Do not stop services. That will get the frames up. Now bring water to 2xlow. Frame should survive this. Start bring up Complexity and SE, leave AG for last. The hopping is your system's slider-limit.

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

Ok so i moved all sliders to the far left and loaded the default flight but used the extra plane....the stutter is not as bad, BUT it is still there!? this snapping is really annoying...it must be a dodgy hard drive that I have? or is there something else causing this? I get no stutters in any other games? hmmmmm

[Guest D17S]

The scenery will redraw into higher resolutions as airplane passes over that scenery. That redraw event does not fade-in. It snaps into the next higher resolution. Even the highest end systems experience this scenery loading dynamic. This may be what you are seeing.However, the game should not stutter as this event occurs. The view will remain smooth as the scenery resolution in the airplane's vicinity snaps into (and out of) the next resolution. What drive are you using? If its a modern 7200RPM drive, there's something else going on. Generally, this function is CPU limited. This scenery loading function is what ACES were able to offload to multi-cores. A quad core Really helps this FS function.Run Task manager performance tab as the game is running. All 4 cores should be Really hoppin'.

[ulisses 1]

Adding my experience...I had 2gb, upgraded to 4gb 800mhz to avoid virtual memory.I had vista 32, did a clean install of vista 64.Installed FSX + Accelerator.Tried at default: stutters mainly in turns, locked at 30 FPS the sim was quite good but from time to time stutters appear, like you.Tweaked the fsx.cfg, added affinity mask, fiber channel, buffer pools, no luck, same stutters on turns.Looked like a disk access, maybe virtual memory... moved to another HD, same thing...FSX runs very smooth for a short period, then some stutters, then smooth again...Maybe it is a mobo / CPU / Graphic thing, but I can't spend more money trying to get FSX ok, so I installed FS9 and it runs locked at 60 FPS most of the time, very very smooth.What I see we have in commun ios the CPU, I have the Q6700. I think FSX code isn't so good, many people get the stutters from time to time.I did a test and downgraded my video board from 9800GTX+ to the 8600GT (both 512mb) and FSX ran better (more stable) in the old, less powerful video card.I don't know what to say, but I got tired trying to get a good FSX, exactly like your experience.Thanks,Ulisses

[ulisses 1]

Ian,Following some great Sam advices and extra tests, try what I did:- Set vsync to Off (I'm using nhancer)- Set antialias to something low (just for test, like 4x)- Set frames to UNLIMITEDI followed San bufferpool advice, the stutters on turns stopped, I had lots of jumps if setting frames to unlimited, but since I set Vsync to OFF the jumps stopped.It is not perfect, but it is better than before.Also reduce your autogen to normal or sparse.Try that.Ulisses