jackcnd

Follow up to my post...To get the best out of a 8800 for fsx and fs9, I found I needed to use the nHancer application to set AA, and add the mipbias=6 to fsx.cfg. With mipbias set the image flying is much crisper, but not quite as smooth in fast pans.Even more important is to use nHancer in XP where it makes a night and day difference as AA does not work at all without it with the latest 8800 drivers.See this post for setup: http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t38921.html

It does make things look crisper flying, but I notice with fast pans it causes a shimmering effect. I seen a tip to turn a clamp setting on but the latest 8800 driver already has that set.Anyone else notice the shimmering?

eVGA 8800GTS 640MB here, seems great.

>What settings are you running at?>If it's not too much trouble, could you see how many fps you get at >KBOI? :DSure, tested 62 fps using unlimited. Normally, I use the recommended Vancouver+ scenery settings for the most part and lock the fps at 25. You can dl the vancouver+ fsx manual if you want to see them all listed.Here's what I have setup now:LOD: LargeMesh: 100Mesh Res: 19Texture Res: 1Water: Low 1.x , Low 2.x is fine too, but I dont like it.Scenery Complex: DenseAutogen: Normal or Dense25 fps looks fine to me, its smooth and I run FSX Google Earth Tracker on the 2nd monitor with Google Earth tracking the flight.Someone suggested putting MipBias=6 in the fsx.cfg, I found it did indeed make the textures sharper, but it seemed to make fast pans, not as smooth.Last couple of days, I tried increasing a few settings and 25 still holds everywhere but really big cities like New York.

>Did you get a G0 (SLACR) or B3 stepping quad?>I myself will probably end up going with the E6750, if I bump>that up to 3.0 GHz, I got an E6850 basically.I've got the e6750 and its more than fine for FSX at 3.2, but if I was buying again , I'd get the e6850. Its multipler is 9 instead of 8, so you'll have a better chance to get 9x400 = 3.6 out of it.My 6750 / P5K combo seems limited to a FSB of 400, so its the multipier than holds the CPU speed back.When it comes down to it, 3.2 and 3.6 difference seems little probably about 2 fps, but a airports like JFK flying around NY city, that can bump you up just high enough to make the flight more enjoyable. For 95% of other areas it will make no visable difference.Another bonus of the 6850, is just in case you get a cpu that doesnt want to o/c at least your guaranteed 3Ghz.

You mentioned now 2 things I've seen:1) Reset issues, but power down fine2) Keyboard issues, a couple times my kb was not detected on boot.What Power Supply are you using, I have a Phantom 500, it has 2 12V 18A rails but I'm wondering if I need to go to a 3-4 rail PSU, I think o/c these chips with a 8800 video card really taxes the system?

If FSX is your main concern, it runs fine on either. With Vista you get many new features and a few annoyances, with XP you get a familar dated OS with less overhead and more compatibility.For building a new duo or quad system I'd pick Vista, but dont upgrade existing FSX XP installs for it.

Nice write up.I think 3.1 on a quad is plenty! They run very very hot, did you take any temp reading under load. I bet your close to 65-70C?The reset problem is interesting, I have the same on a GO 6750, I can power down but I can't reset it just hangs instead of posting. Even if I Ctrl-Alt-Del in the bios same issue. How about yours?I got my 6750 to 3.2Ghz, 400x8, thats the limit, but its plenty fast. Have fun with your quad.

Spent time reading the posts about this project, amazing...My stock FSX Vista 32 setup is running so well now, I've been holding off installing addons. This one is hard to hold off any more :)Couple of questions:1) Looks like you have to install to see the manual?2) I see beta 5 includes a uninstaller, does it fully clean up the files generated and get you back to where you started?3) Can you turn tile proxy on / off as needed before flying?4) I seen thousands of files get generated, do they stay on the HD, can they be deleted easily?Maybe others too are reading this thread wanting to jump in but just not sure, any comments would be great...

>The duo's are said to overclock better anyway,...The 6750 o/c is limited by its low multipler of 6-8x, best I can do is 8x400 for 3.2. I'm sure a 6850 would hit 9x400 3.6 without problem.The quad 6700 on the other hand goes from 6-10x with a lower base FSB so offers more headroom. I had it at 10x320 out of the box, I'm sure it would have done more, but heat generated in the room, even at stock speeds was too high for my liking in the summer. It was like having a space heater turned up full. :)

>If you read and understand the guidance I gave about SP1 and>how it uses the cores, that makes perfect sense.>>Initially, the terrain texture synthesis will use all>available cores. as the terrain textures load, the usage will>drop. As they load, usage will go up. What forces a load? As>you turn, climb/drop, or fly straight - you cross tile>boundaries and force a load. Then the cores are used again.>Same for Autogen batches. >>Nothing mysterious, nothing unusual, all expected.Phil - the unexpected was better in flight performance on a Core 2 Duo, than on the quad at the same speed? It was clear to see, the loading of autogen on the quad was not as smooth, and graphics issues were clear. Those Q6700's run very very hot in a P5K, up to 70C+. I hoped a quad may outperform the duo, but it disappointed in my 3-4 hours of testing. The only difference in the setups were the CPU's and with the quad I used the newer 8800 video driver.No worries here, the new core 2 duo system with FSX is amazing.

Buck interesting, if you leave task manager open to watch the cores does it always use about 85% ?With the Intel quad, it would go up to 100% loading but then flying would be jumping from usually around 25% to 80% or so, with performance issues. It just lacked the smoothness I get with the core 2 duo that always stays up near 100%.That was a 6700 Quad on a Asus P5K Deluxe.

>Someone posted a while back, that they didn't get the>performance they were expecting with the quad until they>adjusted the AffinityMask settings to use only 3 cores. I>believe they set it to use cores 2,3, and 4 which would be I>believe that's AffinityMask=13 Which translates to 1110 in>binary. This leaves core 1 alone to handle system functions. Wish we had of tried that. I'm sure I must of had something amiss, also was using the just released 8800 driver that my explain the graphics issues, as in my duo setup Im using a older version.In the end, I'm very happy with my duo 6750 @ 3.2GHz, it runs very cool about 20C less than the quad did, and performs great in FSX with SP1 and the memory fix.Think I'll sit out this round of quads, and wait for Penryns or the next advancement after those. The Penryns on 45nm may run a fair bit cooler too.

See my post in the hardware sub forum. I didn't have any crashes using 4 cores, but I found better performance with my 2 core CPU, 6750.I didn't get a chance to try limiting FSX to 2 or 3 cpus.I dont know if its the OS or the game, but it didnt seem quite ready for 4 cores when I tried it. I'm sure some here will post success stories soon..

This topic has been moved by the moderator of this forum. It can be found at:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...&topic_id=27797

Yesterday, I helped build a new FSX system:Q6700 CPU @ 3.2gHz, 320 FSBP5K Deluxe MB, bios 4.04eVGA 8800 GTS 640MB, new driverAntec P182 CaseOCZ 600W P/S2 x 1GB Crucial Balistix RamFSX SP1Vista 32It's a screamer system on paper with those 4 CPU's at 3.2GHz.I'm disappointed to report the Q6700 runs VERY HOT in the p5K, it idles at 50-55C even with speedstep on, the under load it hits well over 60C ,close to 70C at times. It was a very not day too that didnt help.Those temps even in the 3 fan P182 case quickly drive up temps and soon all fans are running full out and loud, even at stock clocks similar heat generated.OK, so you will take the heat and noise for the performance...Well, FSX does NOT seem to handle the quad chip very well. My duo system runs smoother and much quieter. With the duo, the CPU hits 75-100 most of the time, and its runs smooth.With the Quad, its was not smooth. I seen graphic glitches when panning up/down a rolling bar, and the CPU did not balance the load well, it often ran at just +/- 25% then would jump to 33% -90% and then back to 25%. 25% indicates using just 1 cpu and most of the time thats where it stayed.If it performed well at 25 then great, but it did not, you could see delays in scenery loading, and the graphic problems mentioned. Combine that with the noise and heat and I cant recommend a quad system for FSX, unless someone has some suggestions to solve these concerns. Otherwise, it looks like the Q6700 system is going back for a smooth cool quiet e6750 or E6850.Note I ran benchmarks the system was indeed running at 3.2Ghz and just flew running concurrent apps. The Q6700 uses the new G0 stepping and is supposed to run cooler. It did o/c well as many expect. I could run 4 concurrent x64 emulators at 9500%!, compared to just 2 at 8500% on the duo chips. So the quad seems faster at the same clock speed as the duo in that case.

>How can I view on Vista my 2 core graphs or details of>what's happening?>Cheers,>Peter Sydney AustraliaRt Click on the taskbar , task manager / performance.

>My experience going from a dual to a quad is that the 3rd and>4th cores do almost nothing except when loading textures etc.>>personally, I would buy a faster dual core over the Q6600 if I>was purchasing specifically for FSX (I do alot of other stuff>on my machine that utilises the quad fully so for me it was a>good buy).>>AndrewI'd be interested in hearing more about this, when flying with the E6750 I can see both cores working fully 100% most of the time, using task manager since installing FSX SP1. With the quad your saying its clear that the 3rd and 4th core are sitting almost idle while cores 1 and 2 are maxed out? What if you run another processor intensive application while running FSX, will it use the 3rd and 4th cores fully without slowing down FSX or does software have to be written specifically to use those cores? Despite loving my e6750 setup, I'm really tempted to exchange it for a quad that the store just got in stock. Not so much for FSX but for photo and video apps, and I was hoping to be able to run FSX along side other CPU hungry apps with it fully.A simple little test is to run the Commodore 64 EMU VICE. It runs single threaded. Using x64 in warp mode (alt-w) Here's my results on the 6750:1 Vice x64 running ... 8900%2 Vice x64 running ... 8500% 8500%3 Vice x64 running ... appx 5300% for each (not balanced)4 Vice x64 running ... 2500% 2500% 2500% 8500% (Strange) You see 2 concurrent apps run balanced at almost full single app speed, but when running 3 or 4 concurrent apps, performace drops and the OS does not balance the cpu power very well.I'd love to hear how a quad does with this test....

Here's a link to the Vista memory command to solve out of memory errors:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...99256&mode=full

>Can someone tell me what the Vista>memory command is?>Thanks>Peter Sydney AustraliaSure see here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...99256&mode=full

>Well, as if you all need anymore toys to make things rock and>roll, have any of you tried using all that nice power as I>have and let a Matrox TripleHead2Go splitter port your FSX>onto three 19" LCD monitors?....>Randy Jura, KPDXRandy - sounds great having 3 monitors running and keeping your framerate up must be great to use!Just discovered the new instant on from sleep state. The PC seems to shut down fully, no lights, no fans, etc, but just a mouse press and its fires back up where I left off with no delay.

Another Update:Hooked up a 2nd monitor to the 8800 tonight, and more nice surprises!The 2nd monitor offers accelerated graphics too, I was able to run Google Earth full screen on the second monitor and FSX on the main monitor, and my locked 25 fps held up fine. I used FSXget to track my flight live in Google Earth as I flew in FSX.I also added an extra 2GB of ram, more for my video work than FSX but it worked fine with the sim. I applied the Vista memory command to make use of the ram in FSX. No out of memory errors and flew for over an hour tonight, with Google Earth open at the same time.Without a doubt this has been the best PC upgrade yet.

Try FSXGet works well. It's an open source program that seems further in development than YSGET.http://www.codeplex.com/fsxget

Tracking not working here, file is not being updated, the data on the screen updates but not the position in GE, just the 1st position is correct ?

>Congraduation to you!!!>>I think 25fps may be a bit slow to your new system. Especially>without many addon added into it yet. I think you can make it>40-60 with reasonable nice graphic setting.>>Alkit>Right now, 25 looks fine, and its nice to see it locked there 99% of the time. I installed Vancouver+ FSX and it's the first time I seen the rates drop below 25, they added so many neat things around Vancouver it drops to the mid teens at times.Anyhow, looks good so far. The store just got the Q6600 and Q6700's in, offered an upgrade since they were OOS last time. Hard choice, if I could hit 3.2Ghz with a quad I'd upgrade, not so much for FSX but I do a lot of video and photo work where tests indicate quads run a fair bit faster.