Please help...High-end system low-end FPS. Advice neede

[Guest]

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Okay fellow simmers, I truly hope you can offer me some helpful advice! Here is my heart-wrenching dilemma (maybe not that dramatic, but I'm sure you know what I'm feeling), I have a fairly high-end system and my FPS are just CRAP. I'm getting about 7-10 FPS on the ground (external view) in Hawaii with nothing in the background. I have tried several different drivers for my card and I seem to averaging around 10 -15 FPS. I sometimes actually RARELYget to 25 FPS when I pan around the aircraft with nothing but sky in the background. Could you guys offer some tips or sites that may help me tweak my PC? I should be getting much better FPS, right? Anyway, here are my specs:P4 1.8aAsus P4T-e MBG4 Ti-4600512mb mushkin rambus memWin XP home edition (with a million background aps running,

[Guest dek]

Brad,I think you will have to give more info regarding you setup. For example, are you sure ur using AGP4X? Are all sliders maxed out? I don't know alot about Pentiums, so I don'think I can help out specifically. Latest drivers? Controllers?One way to find out what is needed in Xp is to set all of the choices in Computer Management to manual. Re-boot and all that have turned on are needed. The rest can be disabled unless needed.Hope this helps, dek

[Guest]

In the interests of giving us something to work with,Is this a default clean install of FS 2002? Are you running it with the default options of of the box? Have you customized your display driver externally to FS 2002? Is AGP enabled (ie: DirectX functioning properly)? Does your GF4 report as running 4x mode?Pick one of the default flights and start it up and note your frame rates in each view. Report 'emCan you download Mad Onion's 3D test program and report your results? (It will provide a great frame of reference of what your machine should be running at - completely independant of FS2002, and also tell us if something is seriously wrong)Ray

[Guest]

Okay, let's see if I can remember.AGP4x, yesMY bios is tweaked to the highest possible.Game settins are set at about mid to high. Water is detail only. AC is set to high (not massive). Screen res 1280x1024 @32 bits. A-Alaising is set at 4x (G4 SHOULD handle this well), AC and ground shadows off, Auto Gen is set at about Dense (not very dense). AI AC set to high. Visiblity at about 90. Terrian set to high, textures as well. Can't think of anything else.Thanks for the tip regarding XP load up, I'll give it a try.

[Guest]

I don't think the display setting is an issue here. With your computer, you should get 25 fps locked without a problem.Try to1) Go to guru3d.com. Download the latest Detonator drivers2) Defrag your harddrive (it MIGHT do the trick)3) Shut down ALL applications in the background4) Delete the fs2002.cfg file (FS will re-create it)Restart FS 2002If this doesn't work, you should re-install FS. How do other games run by the way?

[Guest]

Yeah it's a fresh default install. Nothing added yet. I'm gonna play around with it this weekend. Everything else runs maxed out extremely well, like Ghost Recon, IL2, Nascar 2002, etc. It seems that FS2k2 really needs to be pampered.I've run 3dMark (newest edition) and got a score of about 10100 so I believe the card is functioning properly.I'll keep tinkering............later though because I'm at work right now (on lunch break of course). :(

[Guest dek]

You may also want to go to someplace like www.tweakxp.com. There are a great number of tweaks available.Make sure your L2Cache is turned on in the registry. See a posting at the above site named IMPROVE YOUR CPU'S PERFORMANCE. In some cases it is not turned on.dek

[Guest]

BradI,ve just Upgraded to a Geforce 4 4400, great card and the higher levels of anisotropic filtering makes a HUGE difference to the image quality.As good as the AA performance is with these cards there is still a price to pay in FPS. I tried running fs2002 at the lowest level of AA , if I use 16 bit colour there is no difference in Frame rate but in 32bit i,m getting about a 20% hit.At 4x AA the performance takes a nose dive in my system.Just out of curiosity,try turning off AA and see what happens to the FPS. Let us know how you get on.all the best John1.4 Athlon512 cas2 133 RamAbit geforce 4 4400Sblive

[Guest SD Sim]

Hi Brad,Make sure you have your virus protection software disabled. This is a real frame rate killer. Also, at least on my system, ATC really kills performance. While it's nice to have, your performance may well be better without it. But I agree, with a P4/1.8 and Rambus RAM (and 3D score of over 10K :-eek) you should be getting better FS2K2 performance at the settings you've posted. Have you checked for IRQ sharing in the BIOS?

[StoneC0ld 5]

That's exactly how my system is......I have an HP Pavilion 9692C Pentium3 800MHz w/ 384MB RAM, with an ASUS V8200 geforce3 (not original to the system).The 3dmark test was about 3700 for the geforce3, as compared to the 500-600 that my old TNT2 gave me. However, according to the FS2002 performance, I would rate the geforce3 somewhere in the 100-200 range. Yes, I actually had better FS2002 performance out of my old TNT2 16MB card.I've given up on trying to tweak this crappy system for better FS2002 performance, *nothing* has worked........

[Guest]

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for taking the time to offer some very useful advice! I will by trying your tips this weekend and will see what I come up with. I will update you guys later in hopes that this could maybe help some others as well. Wish me luck.-Brad