Illegitimi non carborundum

Manny Process Explore is an excellent tool and you should also try VMMap from Sysinternals as this monitors the VAS wrt FSX and shows the degree of fragmentation and/or depletion in the address space, A great tool for showing how FSX VAS OOM errors occur but unfortunately not how to fix them!! Try and have a look at two videos by Mark Russinovich from Windows sysinternals shown at Alanta in 2011. The videos are labelled WCL-405HD.wmv and WCL406HD.wmv http://northamerica.msteched.com/speaker/details/Mark_Russinovich#fbid=xf8CMzqYTcH Remember Virtual memory aka 'paging file' is quite different to the Virtual (Process) Address Space (VAS). Regards pH

Things are being mixed up here. If as I say in my second post if the error is "Your computer has run out of available memory" error message when you start Flight Simulator then that has everything to do with Physical RAM, Paging File and HDD space. I was surprised to see the OP was talking about 3/500 Megabytes being left in free space on his HDD. Lets look at that every HDD needs 5 - 10% to carry out file maintenance and if it doesn't have that space then you will get this error irrespective of the OS 32 or 64 bit. Any conventional HDD with less than 40% free space will cause performance issues and less than 20% will start to throw up all sorts of errors including this one. (A SSD can take up to being 90%+ full) Now if this was the 'usual' OOM error for FSX then as many posters have said above it is a VAS error. The OP runs 32-bit OS and if he is running FSX+SP2 then the large address aware flag is set in FSX and it can now access 4GB VAS max. But in a 32-bit OS you can only utilise 2GB VAS (2GB for system/kernel) until he sets the /3GB switch in the Boot.ini or using bcedit Vista and Win 7. He can the access up to 3GB VAS leaving only 1GB for the system (Not to be used ina 64-bit OS which already has 4GB VAS for FSX and 8TB for the OS). We need to know which type of error the OP is experiencing as there are 2 very different solutions, but it does look like his HDD is the issue. From the MS link I give above: "When you start Microsoft Flight Simulator, you receive the following error message: Your computer has run out of available memory. Flight simulator will now exit. You may not have enough free space on your hard disk drive. Run disk cleanup to free up space, and then try running Flight Simulator again." So once we kmow which error we are dealing with we can help fix it. Regards pH

Buster I would be surprised if you were asked to re-activate windows following a BIOS update that would happen to all of us whether or not we had/use OEM or retail versions of Windows and I've never seen that happen. Reactivation is usually pretty easy and can be done via the internet. Regards pH

If this is the error: then this may help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892610. Did you make any changes to the paging file?Regards pH

Zach Apologies - I misunderstood!! :wub: Regards pH

Zach Its not a "kit" per se all modern RAM is dual, triple or quad but it is the way that the motherboard and cpu (memory controller) interpret what you install and how you install/position the RAM sticks. In an i7 960 there are usually 6 RAM slots if you use 3 or 6 you get Triple channel DDR3 use 2 or 4 slots and you get dual channel. My issue was how is that 16GB installed it is probably 4 x 4GB sticks in which case the memory (now installed in 4 slots) is not optimised for the mobo/memory controller etc, and was the memory installed in the correct RAM slots. {I don't thing that it would 3 x 4GB + 1 x 2GB + 2 x 1GB!! or any other combination to 16GB filling all 6 slots which still wouldn't function as triple channel RAM} Plus, to get real performance out of the i7 9xx series most experts tell you that RAM speed and timings can significantly affect performance in FSX. Me, I tend to agree that there would be little performance difference in real terms between dual and triple cannel, but if the system is unbalanced its not likely to perform as it should. But, there's always a but. The "E" series SB and IB (vastly different memory controllers to the i7 960) use quad channel RAM. FSX can't utilise quad channel RAM, (nor can many other apps) which was developed for high end servers, but look at the forum posts and simmers using these machines don't see any performance issues when compared to the plain vanilla SB/IB's which use dual channel DDR3RAM. So it could be all theoretical. Regards PeterH

Brown etc I'd be checking your RAM as I recall an i7-960 runs in DDR3 Triple channel RAM mode in modules of (3GB) 6GB, 12 GB (and 24 GB if the BIOS/mobo supports it). 16GB suggests that the RAM is possibly running in dual channel mode and may be well be "throttling" the cpu as it is no longer matched to the memory bus. Just a thought. PeterH

Boris If you have a Sandy or Ivy bridge PC - have you thought about using the onboard Intel 3000/4000 graphics for your instruments? On my rig you can run the onboard graphics and a discrete card at the same time and that way you can easily check any performance loss. Just a thought. PeterH

Hi Cory I loaded this 306.xx beta driver recently and very soon I was seeing black screens and long freezes when trying to run FSX - which eventually did run. It took me nearly 3 days to uninstall this driver even though I cleaned out the registry and the nvidia folders manually, In the end I clean installed the latest WHQL driver the 304.48 and everything is working again, but I had to install the latest PhysX driver before I could get the driver install and also load windows 7 at startup in Low video mode. Weird!! :lol: There seems to be an interaction on my system between the inbuilt Intel 3000 on board graphics as I was prompted to load drivers for this even though it is disabled in the BIOS, (this may give rise to the aero issue - I have aero switched off). This was not a good driver for me amd there are quite a few reports in the forums postulating that thre are issues with the driver. Hope you get it fixed. PeterH

ger I thought that the SB-E supports multi-threaded (quad channel) memory access, but FSX like most software does not support multi-threaded memory access, so a plain SB (IB) with dual channel DDR3 RAM will nearly always out perform the Quad channel variant. Iwould go for the fastest IB/SB cpu that runs on dual channel DDR3 RAM. Just an opinion. pH

Danny 128GB is quite small my FSX install is now nearing 100GB so that reaching the good working limit of my 120 GB SSD. You have to ask yourself the question - Why do you want the OS to fire up quickly? If there is no burning reason for that leave it where it is (otherwise you are facing a clean install or a disk cloneimage with specialist software). You can then decide what games to transfer to the SSD, but many will need a reinstall, FSX included unless again you use specialist software and the registry fix provided on these forums. FSX will not run faster only load quicker (including textures during a flight). Good luck pH

Turner Are you using the Saitek SST software (not the driver the programming software)? If so, You have to be careful that you do not have any duplicate assignment conflicts between SST and FSX (including the mouse and keyboard). FSX expects the sensitivites of all axes to be full right (100%) and all the null zones full left (0%) - once set up you can change these but they can give odd results. FSUIPC4 can help - but you should not run the SST software as well, and again there must be no duplicate assignments between FSX and FSUIPC (including the mouse and keyboard axis assignments). With FSUIPC you can mix ' match ie set some axes, buttons, keys, etc in FSX and some in FSUIPC4, or you can disable the FSX settingss and assign everything via FSUIPC4. Good Luck pH

Matthew AFAIK as you lower the RAM speed the voltage will drop accordingly ie they are rated at 2400 at 1.65 but probably at 1800 or 2100 the voltage will be lower, much nearer to the 1.5v. Hope this helps pH

Matthew It may depend on the mobo/bios settings which can automatically "down-set" the RAM to a lower speed. If not, in the BIOS you could manually set the speed to the "highest" shown which might be 1800 or 2100 - again depending on the mobo. There should be no major issues in doing that. the voltages should then be appropriate for the RAM speed. Often when I overclock I down-set the RAM to the default mobo speed (in may case 1333) and then once the overclock is stable I let the BIOS set the auto correct speed of 1600. Nice components by the way. pH

Is it worth checking the specs of your psu to make sure that it is supplying enough voltage to the various components, ie cpu, video card, making sure there are enough amps at the 12v rail? Something like speedfan or MB monitor or similar could help. I would also test with a "clean" fsx.cfg following a clean boot (google to see what this entails) to make sure a non-windows process is not affecting the slow down. Have you tweaked any RAM settings in the BIOS? Good luck with this one. PeterH

Daveo If you are running a 64-bit OS with say 8GB RAM, I don't think that MHM would offer any performance gain. My chipset does not support MHM so I can't run any tests to see if it helps. Something like Fancy Cache or similar might give equally as good results. Great question pH

Dazz Yes, you are correct I didn't describe the issue clearly . I was trying to highlight that the available RAM of around 1.4GB was very low on an 8GB system. Mine usually stays around the 3 - 4GB total when in FSX. Again the avaialble RAM shown is at a point in time, it could well have been lower when the Windows message appeared. Also it could be that FSX needed more than the available RAM at a particular point in time, but another app had used the available RAM not leaving enough for FSX to load into and hence the warning. I still believe something else is utilising the RAM and not leaving enough for FSX to operate in. It would be interesting to see if the available RAM is the same after a clean boot or after using something like game booster to free up resources. Yes, I would use VMMAP to see what was happening in the VAS that could be affecting high RAM usage. Thanks for your input. pH

Word Not Allowed This is not a typical VAS OOM issue , Manny is actually using all of his physical RAM for some reason. I haven't got a clue why that is happening but you are right ProcMon and Process Explorer (and even PERFMON - built in win 7) could tell you what is causing the issue. If it was a VAS OOM - FSX ONLY would crash but this is a System wide issue To start in Perfmon I would look at: PERFMON and Memory Leakage If you ran PERFMON with the following performance counters for the application ie FSX as above: Note: Perfmon is not the easiest of MS apps to run or interpret) Counter: Process/Private Bytes, Counter: .NET CLR Memory/# Bytes in All Heaps, and Counter: .NET CLR LocksAndThreads/# of current logical Threads. Performance Object: Memory Counter: Pool Non-paged Allocs Counter: Pool Non-paged Bytes Counter: Pool Paged Allocs Counter: Pool Paged Bytes In the case of a memory leak you would see: If an application's logical thread count is increasing unexpectedly, thread stacks are leaking. If Private Bytes is increasing, but # Bytes in All Heaps remains stable, unmanaged memory is leaking. If both counters are increasing, memory in the managed heaps is building up. If it is not due these then you would then have to look at other counters to see what is going on. Beyond that it is a steep learning curve to see what is actually going on and even with XPERF it is sometimes difficult to pin down the cause of an issue like this. I have written a small paper on how to use PERFMON and one day I'll get around to finishing it Regards pH

Manny These figures are not what is reported in Task manager, they relate to the Virtual Address space (VAS) set by Windows - which cannot be altered upwards in a 64-bit OS ie it is alreadty set at 4Gb. In a 32-bit OS using the /3G flag you can increase the VAS from 2GB to 3GB and these the MAXIMUM values and cannot be altered upwards. They are not related to any PHysical RAM installed or the size/location of the paging file. Free memory will always be a fairly low figure due to the way superfetch/prefetch operates in a Windows OS. The important one on your screenie above is the 'available' memory which was pretty low considering you have 8 Gb on board. That error message indicates that you are running low on Physical RAM due to some other processes -(bearing in mind that FSX can address a maximum of 4GB of Physical RAM). It does not indicate any issue with the VAS. It should be noted in a 64-bit OS windows 7 itself can access several terabytes of VAS and so is unlikely to interfere with the FSX VAS. So something running side by side with FSX - another exe/dll file(s) may be depleting the Physical RAM - the message tells you that the system is now probably accessing the paging file and needs you to turn something off or down in order to conserve physical RAM and performance. You may want to try a clean boot (google to see what I mean) and then see if the figures change when you run FSX. Regards pH

Pat I have never seen that issue in Win 7 64-bit, but as I said above there are always exceptions. Hope you get it sorted. pH

Taylor It may not be your oc. On mine (Gigabyte mobo) if the oc is unstable I usually get a black screen and then a double BIOS type boot and the find that the cpu multiplier has been set back to the default, ie no more overclock. It could be your psu so what is the spec for that? It could be RAM faulty, seating in slots, or the wrong timings set in the BIOS and any number of other things. I guess that the temps are Ok, cpu cooler, dust, thermal paste applied correctly, even the graphics card temps may be worth checking. Its going to be a process of elimination to find this one. Regards pH

Todd First off only consider the GTX560TI the plain 560 is not as 'powerful'. If you have a large monitor or several choose a 2 GIGABYTE card, if you have a monitor 24" or smaller then the 1GB card is fine. I always choose the card on special, and there are some good factory o/c bargains out there at present. I don't think that the number of cores will affect FSX performance in single monitor mode. Regards pH

Pat I have run FS9 and FSX in a 64-bit OS (Vista then Win 7) and I can't recall any issues with older add-ons in either. The way that a 64-bit Windows OS operates means that most 32-bit apps will run fine. There will always be exceptions. The main advantage of a 64-bit OS is that you can use the full 4GB of Physical RAM and you get all of the 4GB of Virtual (process address space - VAS). In a 32-bit OS you only get 2GB of VAS which you can increase to 3GB with the /3G switch (provided that the software has the large address aware flag set). In a 64-bit OS you may see far fewer Out of Memory issues (OOM's). Note the VAS is not anything to do with how much physical RAM is installed or how big your paging file is - these are different items. Windows 7 also handles graphics much better than Win Xp 32, but that may not affect you significantly. For good FSX performance your system is a little light in both the cpu and graphics card. But hey, it may be worth trying FSX just the same. Regards pH

Saab Excellent results nice to see such detailed results. Its good to see frame dwell times recorded as these are much more robust than fps in determining stutter type issues. We need cards that can display frame times of <20ms for 99.99% of the time. Did you consider using a program like process lasso which can allocate cores ie AM efficiently? Did you also consider using a command prompt for the affinity mask rather than setting it in the fsx.cfg file - in my case it resulted in better performance and I now use Process Lasso. I personally don't like task manager for monitoring the various processes and values and I tend to use Process Explorer, Process Monitor, XPERF and VMMAP, all developed for multi core multi threaded pC's, but that is a personal choice. I'm also not sure of the accuracy of FRAPS and I get worried when I get readings of 2560 when its loading FSX! Nice to see the tests all in one place. One las t thing I forgot nobody investigates the impact of the "replay" video option in FSX, I read somewhere that it hogs quite a bit of the available resources and it would be great to disable it to see if performance improves! Regards pH

Unfortunately most of the info here is incorrect. You rarely get OOM errors due to RAM or virtual memory (aka paging file). The vast bulk (99.99%) of OOM errors in FSX are due to problems with the Virtual (process) address space (VAS) which in a 64-bit OS running a 32-bit app like FSX with Large Address Aware Flag set is limited to a MAXIMUM of 4Gb. Increasing the RAM and or the paging file will not affect the VAS. The major problem is the number of complex add-ons that have to interract with FSX in its own VAS. ( Now that is not to say that other programs like REX which has its own exe file won't also use physical RAM, but the OP has oodles of RAM so that is not a problem.) In general: An issue with RAM and/or the PF will see a massive slow down in FSX, sometimes with an error asking you to turn down settings and eventually a total system crash the dreaded BSOD. An issue with FSX and its VAS will result in FSX only crashing (NOT the system) and an OOM error occurring. This may NOT be recorded by the event viewer as it may NOT be a Windows problem. The VAS can become fragmented or depleted by any number of occurrences and some settings in the fsx.cfg (even some BP settings can do it) may have an impact as well as add-ons that impact/interract in the FSX VAS. This is Phil Talor's take on the matter: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/06/15/fsx-and-win32-process-address-space.aspx In a 32-bit OS I have managed to solve a lot of OOM issues without using the /3G switch by using a Windows server hack ie altering the HeapDecommitFreeBlockThreshold, but I have had only mixed results in a 64-bit OS. So I need to research this a little more. We will never solve these OOM issues if we keep implicating the hardware when it is patently obvious that OOM's are caused by the way that Windows OS allocates Process address space MAX 4GB to 32-bit apps. You can adjust the hardware till you are blue in the face but exceed or fragment the VAS and you will get an OOM error as surely as night follows day. Regards PeterH VAS Deferens