abandoned account

Even though you have physical connectors left on the cards, you can't use them for additional monitors when activating SLI/Surround mode. There is a chart somewhere on Nvidia's site describing this for all the different GPUs. The solution is simple though (if there are slots left on your motherboard). Just install any cheap graphics card and connect your additional monitor(s) to it. It will not affect the performance. I use surround mode on 2x580 and display 2d panels on a 4th screen and it works very well.

Perhaps it wasn't clear, but my response was directed towards the original poster's question (hence the ATI vs Nvidia note as well).

The biggest issue I see with that system is the lack of an SSD. It would be a real pity to build such a nice system and then completely ruin the performance by using only regular harddisks. I'd say go for a new generation SATA3 SSD. You won't get an improved frame rate but the loading times will be reduced drastically and it might even reduce some stuttering caused by slow disk access. If you have a large amount of sceneries that will not fit on a 300GB (or whatever) SSD, use a regular harddisk for the sceneries you don't use very often.And I'll try not to start yet another ATI vs. Nvidia fight, but make sure that you're fully aware of the issues of using an ATI card in FSX. (search the hardware forum if you don't know what I'm talking about).

It's a game where you fly around collecting coins using a flying car, and your biggest concern is whether the ATC is better than in FSX? Really?

A lot of people seem happy about the recent MS announcement about Flight, because those people can now point fingers and say "Told you so!!". I've learned that this is really what flight simulation is all about.

This was semi-true for basic 2d graphics software maybe 15 years ago but it's completely false now, especially with regards to FSX.Also, "computed by the CPU, and then displayed by the GPU" is very inaccurate (it's a Graphics Processing Unit, not a Graphics Display Unit).After the basic overhead calculations have been performed by FSX, increasing the resolution and even expanding the field of view doesn't really affect the performance that much unless you're really pushing the hardware to begin with. Calculations for the flight dynamics, playing sounds, performing wind calculations, and so on, is not going to be any different. Creating additional Views however, will cause most of the overhead to have to be calculated yet again, which will definitely affect performance severely (even if the new window is tiny).Regarding the numbers in the original question, there is no easy answer to that since there are so many variables.Personally I see pretty much no difference in FPS between 1920x1024 (single screen) and 5760x1024 (3 screens, surround mode) because almost all of the additional work is performed by the graphics cards, which are usually not exactly the bottleneck when using FSX. I'd say go for the 1920 x 1200.

You can, of course, run multiple monitors off of one PC running FSX (I currently use four of them). What you can't do is having another Windows desktop available for external applications while in FSX fullscreen. The reason for the blackout of the other screens is because FSX makes all of them go fullscreen (but empty by default), which is usually a good thing since they're available for extra views and 2d panels and stuff. If you want to display an external application (outside of FSX) such as a moving map, you need to run in windowed mode (which is usually a bad thing), or better, get a second PC and connect using FSUIPC or simconnect. This can be any old piece of hardware really. Running such applications on a networked PC is also a good thing for the performance since the FSX PC doesn't have to waste CPU cycles on all the 3rd party applications.As for the vsync in windowed mode if you really want to go that way, see if http://forum.avsim.net/topic/283143-fsx-vsync-fix/ works (skip the fullscreen parts).

My biggest critisism would be the low frame rate and the extreme microstutters. It really makes the videos unbearable to watch.If it's because of the video recorder and/or youtube, consider other alternatives. Otherwise you have some fun FSX tweaking to do :)

The vsync setting is obviously not doing its job. If you only force vsync using the Nvidia control panel or Inspector etc, it will only work in fullscreen (which you're not using on the screenshot). Does it happen in fullscreen as well? Have you tried the fixes from http://forum.avsim.net/topic/283143-fsx-vsync-fix/? The issue has nothing to do with ezdok, although the effects from it (and TrackIR) will usually make the issue more obvious.

I'm not following you here....Permastream said "But you don't think that the 285 will degrade the 580?"NGX, your response was "Only if connecting through SLI".And then you stated that you never said anything about SLI'ing the 285 and 580?And when clum (correctly) said "It's not possible to SLI two different types of GPU...", your response was "that's wrong".I can recommend that you read Nvidia's SLI FAQ.

NGX, sorry for being a bit frustrated but every other day or so someone asks a hardware question about something that I've spent hundreds of hours on myself (especially many, many Crossfire/SLI and multi-monitor setups for various flight simulators), and there is always a short, quick answer from you that says "that does not work" or "it will not make any difference" and other strange "facts".Anyway, for people who are actually interested in the OP's question and SLI/multimonitor or 32 vs 64 bit etc, I'd recommend the hardware forum since these issues have been discussed extensively there many times and it's not really specific to the 737NGX.A good thread comparing graphics card performance in FSX is http://forum.avsim.net/topic/320755-480-gtx-vs-580-gtx/. It's from someone who has actually taken the time to test a lot of stuff himself and present solid numbers. How about that.

Yes, please do. Hardware advice from someone who has first hand experience is always more useful.

I know that this is your latest favorite quote from MS and every time I visit this forum you have somehow been able to squeeze it into some random thread. I'm still puzzled how you could interpret "built from the ground up" as being "using the same engine". If you think that "keeping what they see fit from FSX" is a bad idea, you have obviously never developed software. Throwing years of research and experience away is the worst thing you could do. Yes, FSX has lots of flaws, but I can assure you that the developers at MS are much better than you and I at deciding which parts of the FSX engine to keep. In fact, "keeping what they see fit" really shows that they're well aware of their previous mistakes and that they're willing to learn from them. I can't possibly see why you're repeating that like it's a bad thing.

Did anyone with multiple monitors get it to run on the main screen instead of only the extended ones?I'm not too keen in having my FMC touchscreen use some cool bloom effects and stuff It's the same with ENB.

It's not uncommon that a non-optimized FSX installation gives you that kind of performance but you should definitely be able to improve that given your hardware. Give it some time and follow the excellent guides that are out there, but do not be afraid to experiment instead of following them blindly. Some poeple will say that the best tweak is to not tweak at all. I really, really beg to differ, but there is no need to repeat this here as it is commonly discussed in various other forums. *******' automatic tweaking tool is a good starting point if you haven't done this manually before. In my opinion uninstalling everything is is a terrible advice that does not help anyone.

The fact that people report these kind of issues is probably the best proof that the 737NGX is a success

All of the high-end Nvidia cards are great and of course everyone might not think that the 580 is worth the price. If your experience is that there is a "1 or 2 FPS" difference between a 470 and a 580, I'll have to say that your experience is very different than mine though. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/320755-480-gtx-vs-580-gtx/ is still a good read in case anyone missed it.

Serious issue or not... this is something I've noticed now and then in FSX for years. Sometimes it's fixed by (or occurs when) leaving/entering fullscreen or the menu bar. My guess is that it's some kind of memory management bug within FSX. The reason you haven't seen it before could be that the 737NGX really needs a lot of memory/resources and that this causes the bug to be triggered (just guessing here). Anyway I really doubt that PMDG is able to fix the root cause of this issue.

If we're only talking single-GPU GTX cards, the 580 is currently the fastest (and most expensive) one so it would be hard to argue that anything else than an overclocked 580 is the best one. Inspector will not by itself slow down FSX, it all depends how you configure it. Higher settings means a higher performance impact. You will have to find the right balance you're most happy with. You can always simply change back the settings so don't be afraid to experiment. Search the forums and you will find many guides for inspector/FSX, e.g. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/324786-nvidia-configuration-guide-inspector-2xxxx-drivers-version-20-explanations-of-all-settings/ and http://www.simforums.com/forums/nhancer-settings-for-new-drivers-updated-v1932_topic36586.html.

TH2Go digital and DP can handle 3x1920x1024.http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/resolution/resolutions.html

Every time there is a new graphics card driver released some people will try it for about 5 seconds and then post that it did miracles for their performance or that it cut their FPS in half. It's highly unrealistic to think that a new driver version by itself would cause that kind of change. More often it's because the AA/AF and other settings are automatically modified during the installation. Recommendations regarding "the best driver version" can usually safely be ignored as they're almost always based on one or a few people's personal opinion. Such opinions tend to be repeated and presented as facts by people of haven't even tried the driver themselves though. It's not hard to upgrade or downgrade a graphics driver so the best thing is to simply try yourself and settle with the one you're most happy with. For what it's worth, no problem with the most recent Nvidia driver and 737ngx here.

When people say that SLI is "not supported" or "doesn't work" in FSX they usually mean that FSX doesn't gain any performance boost from it.Since FSX is an old piece of software this is basically true - you can not just put a bunch of extra graphics cards in your machine and expect your FPS to increase. To use Nvidia surround mode, SLI is a however a requirement. The good thing is that in this scenario it doesn't matter that FSX doesn't have any SLI support since the surround mode is handled by the operating system, not the application (FSX). So when using Nvidia surround mode, FSX does indeed benefit from SLI.

You don't have to get/buy surround mode as a separate thing, it's simply a configuration mode you can set when you have the required hardware.Of course your cards must be connected with an SLI cable first (please ignore the comments like "fsx sli don't work").Open the Nvidia control panel and set "Span displays with surround", and configure the screens and bezel management etc (seehttp://www.pcper.com...-and-Configurat for an example) Then you're good to go. Open FSX and you will see that you can now select a resolution like 5760x1200 or whatever your monitors support. The Nvidia site has all the info you need if you run into problems.

What kind of touchscreen support are you talking about in Flight that you cannot already do today with FSX? As already stated there is no need to for a special touchscreen support hardware-wise. They have worked with FSX or any other software since the day Windows started supported them (in like Windows 95?). If you would like to improve the software interface there are some really nice addons that enables you to control the entire a/c using just simple touchscreen buttons.

This question is asked about once every week, search the forums and you will find the answer.(You need to resize your 2d panels, see e.g. http://forum.avsim.n...ickering-mouse/)