JayDub

Brian, Mine is the same system. A two month old i4790K with a Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gamer 4GB on a Asus Z97 Sabertooth Mark 2. I had a "Professional" help me overclock to 4.6GHz. I suspect it was not done properly. The system ran fairly stable but was loud and operating temps ran much higher than I expected, mid 70s to a max of around 80C with a Corsair H100i liquid cooling system. I pulled the system back to operate at the 4.4 turbo boost and have seen no noticeable performance loss in FSX. The biggest gain was the drastic drop in operation temps. Now under full Load have never exceeded 58C and I sleep much better at night. The system now is extremely quiet. The i4790K/GTX 970 is a great combo for FSX. I run with all scenery sliders maxed with exception of water effects which is set at High 2.x. LOD set at 7.0. I have the FPS locked at 33 in FSX and I rarely see FPS below the mid to low 20s even in High density areas, stays at 33FPS 90 percent of the time. This performance is with all the Orbx FTX areas including Global, Global Vector and openLC Europe as well as Ultimate Traffic 2 set at 80 percent airline traffic and 30 percent GA............................ You will be very happy with that system at stock speeds, the cpu runs at a full 4.4GHz in FSX ..........................

Two Samsung 850 EVO SSDs added to my new i4790K/GTX970 system two months ago. One 250GB drive for the OS and the other a 500GB drive exclusively for Flight Simulator X. One of the best hardware upgrades I have ever made. Minimal performance improvement, but load times reduced by about 75 to 80 percent in FSX. That alone was worth the price of admission for me. My current FSX program tops out at just over 200GB so load times on a conventional drive could take up to 8 minutes in the past. Up and running now in around a max of 90 seconds. Go for the SSDs you will not regret it.............................

Purchased and installed both FTX Global Vector and FTX openLC Europe.......... Had a major elevation problem at Global KPSP that the vector configurator fixed on the first try, this with Megascenery X Southern California installed. Now both programs blend perfectly...... Programs truly transformed Flight Simulator X world wide...... FTX openLC is amazing, You have to see Switzerland now to believe it...... Well worth the investment in both programs...... JayDub

Looks like folks still having some problems with airport elevations after installing Global Vector. Appears no magic bullet to cure errors at all airports even after using the elevation tool. I may be very wrong in my assessment but I think I will hold off on the purchase for now. I have too much to lose if my airport elevations go wonky. Thanks,

Anyone still having airport elevation problems after installing FTX Global Vector or have the problems been solved. My FSX install is based on most of the Orbx FTX areas, 10 FTX airports plus FTX Global. I also have approximately 50 freeware PhotoReal airports from numerous sources. I am wondering if FTX Global Vector continues to have some negative impact on many airports such as elevation, terrain errors or sinking runways. All of my other Orbx softeware has installed flawlessly with no conflicts with any other scenery areas or airports. Not willing to take the chance of messing up most of my other airports. I will hold off ordering if problems still persist. If it's not in an Orbx area I am probably not flying there. Best FSX scenery ever produced as far as I am concerned. Any feedback appreciated, Thanks,

Through a break in the overcast the diety of Flight Simming has looked down on me and smiled...... After working with an older shader folder backup I was able to restore the water settings for low 2.x and above.... Low 2.x is about as much as my system can handle anyway.... Low 1.x, Med 1.x and Hi 1.x still corrupt the ground textures but I never used them so no loss..... The sim is now running extremely well with the new GTX card, a noticable improvement over the old Radion HD 4870..... I promise from now on to follow the golden rule of Flight Simming........ If you are happy with the way it is running, don't touch a thing just turn off the FPS counter, never open your .cfg file to try tweak it a little more.............. Just go flying............ Thanks for everyones help, JayDub

Now have lost all ground textures with no setting changes bringing them back..... FSX totally trashed at this time..... Have cleared shader cache several times and also let FSX rebuild the FSX.cfg file all with no luck....... Will disable all scenery in add-on folder as suggested, but have little faith in that as everything was working with 0 water effects priort to messing with the shader cache...... Looks like a total uninstall/reinstall of FSX if the disable scenery advise does not work....... In that case see you guys in a week or two..... Thanks for the suggestions......

Scenery installed All the Orbx FTX areas Oceana, North America and Europe. 11 of their custom airports plus FTX Global...... Ultimate Terrain USA and Canada.....Ultimate Traffic 2.... All the MegaScenery Areas, Southern California, Phoenix,Dallas Fort Worth, Hawaii, Las Vegas, Reno/Tahoe.... So, as you can see a total reinstall of FSX won't be fun but will do if necessary..... Power supply is a Cooler Master 750W unit........

No luck clearing FSX Shader Cache.... Result was all the ground textures going light blue with only the Auto Gen features showing.......... Signature has been removed......... Will edit profile later.....

Drivers and all ATI/AMD folders properly removed and cleaned with Display Driver Uninstaller V6.3........... Latest Nvidia 334.89 installed ...... No other issues with FSX or any other program, card performance outstaning in all other repects..... Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale, Overclocked to 3.80GHz Asus P5Q Deluxe Motherboard GigaByte GeForce GTX 660 2GB, Overclocked Version 8GB OCZ DDR2 Reaper RAM Vista 64bit Home Premium JayDub

Really a FSX textures issue so posting here rather than Hardware section....... I have just replaced my older ATI 4870 512MB with a new Nvidia GTX 660 OC 2Gb card. I have worked through most of the problems associated with the graphics card change over. Performance and visuals are now about what I would expect from my aging Core 2 Duo E8500 at 3.8GHz. The one problem I have been unable to resolve is that when ever any degree of water detail is selected I get very large light blue squares over most of the ground textures. The only way to avoid this is to have zero water effects. Did not have this issue with the ATI card, was able to use from zero to max water settings. What could I be doing wrong. Any help appreciated, Thanks, JayDub

Thanks, That makes sense to me....... The matched combo of E8500 and Radeon 4870 have really done a great job with FSX....... FPS locked at 31 and for the most part if I stay out of major cities the FPS will stay at a rate that will give a relatively smooth FSX experience...... This with all settings at max except for water at mid range and autogen at dense....... I fly almost exclusively in the Orbx sceneries with FTX Global also installed......... Guess I will hold off a while and do a total rebuild with new CPU/ GPU combo........ Won't be flying Prepar3D V2 any time in the near future...... Possibly everyone will have worked the bugs out of it by the time I am ready....... JayDub

A couple of days ago I upgraded my 6 year old Radeon 4870 512MB video card for a newer Radeon HD 7870 2GB OC version and see a slight loss of performance and visual quality in FSX....... How can this be..... Loaded the latest drivers and everything seems to be working ...... Have tried various settings and tweaks with minimal results...... I know the card is working as have seen a very noticeable improvement in visuals and FPS in other game applications...... It seems like a step backward in FSX however...... Any thoughts as to what I may be doing wrong..... I know FSX is CPU limited, but my 6 year old Intel E8500 overclocked to 3.8 has been keeping me in the game longer than I expected...... All things considered the combination of the old Radeon 4870 and Intel E8500 has run FSX very well over the years at near max settings.......Wondering if a switch to something like a GeForce 650TI would make a difference....... Only upgrading due to the new Prepar3D V2 will require at least a 1GB video card......... I also know I will have to upgrade my Vista 64bit OS to Windows 7 or 8 as well....... Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated....... JayDub

Tried it all .................... No luck so far.............. After three clean uninstalls and reinstalls problems still with me .......... Sometimes the menues work and sometimes they lock up ..... Most of the time they lock up..... Run as administrator each time but makes no difference..... Had problems prior to adding anything to the original Prepar3D program.....Also coninued crashes to desktop when in some of the Orbx scenery ares, used the Orbx migration tool and opject flow linker V1.4 ....... All drivers and windows updates current....... This system has been running a very complex FSX installation for years and it has a total of 193GB of program and addons...... Until now I have not seen the software yet that this system will not run....... After 5 days getting close to giving up..... Really a shame as when the program does run for me it has outstanding visuals and performance...... .......................Sapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB ...... Yes this card is enough ..... Runs FSX at very high settings smoothly JayDub

Yes, Prepar3D menus failing prior to any addons.......................... Seems P3D just does not like my system................ FSX installation running very well for years and it is very complex with a total of 193GB of program and addons........