SpeedPilot

Well I one time upgraded from an i7-2600k / P67 to an i7-3930 / X79 and there was only about a 3% improvement in overall frame rate in tests I performed in FSX, maybe because of larger L3 cache and more memory bandwidth, not sure. There was also around a 25% reduction in load times and same went for texture loading. However, there was worse stuttering, like 2-second random pauses usually while taxing or on the runway, and I had to tweak the FSX .cfg file to make it acceptable on the X79 system. A few months later I downgraded to an i7-3820, still same micro-pausing without the tweaks in the FSX.cfg file. Then about 4 months later I upgraded my video card from a 1.5GB GTX 580 to a 4GB GTX 680 and this upgrade greatly reduced the stuttering in FSX and got rid of the micro-pausing that was happening in my system without even me tweaking my FSX.cfg file. So it could have been a combination of the SB-E / X79 interacting with the GTX 580 that was causing the micro-pausing or the e 4GB GTX 680 just a smoother performing card for FSX, not sure, but now it's runs well in my X79 system without tweaking the FSX.cfg file. Also when I downgraded from an i7-3930k to an i7-3820, texture loading times increase noticeably, and load times increased noticeably as well, but frame rate was basically the same, maybe because of the similar turbo boost clocks on both chips and how going past 2 cores does not seem to increase the frame rate in FSX. A SB-E will only offer a slight improvement in frame rates over a regular SB system but the 6-core SB-E makes textures and flights load much faster than a 4-core SB or 4-core SB-E system. 2 cores seems to be optimum as far as frame rates are concerned in FSX, the rest of the cores are scheduled to help with just texture loading and flight loading. I recommend an i7-3770k for FSX over a SB-E system. With at least 4 cores at 3 GHz or so, texture loading speed isn't really that bad in FSX and should be more than adequate in normal flight, but frame rates can always use improvements. You also get official PCI-E 3.0 support with Ivy Bridge CPU but not with SB-E or SB, sure there is a hack to enable PCI-E 3.0 for the GTX 600 series card in SB-E systems but it's not guaranteed to be stable since SB-E does not officially support PCI-E 3.0.

I currently have an i7-3820 and was wondering if the i7-3770 performs better in FSX than the i7 3820? Keep in mind that don't keep my system overclocked. Also the i7-3820 does not support officially PCI-E 3.0 and the i7-3770 does, so would the overall smoothness be better in FSX on the i7-3770 because it supports PCI-E 3.0?

I knew about making layers invisible that I don't want to use and merging and copying the visible layers only, but thanks anyways. That's the way I've been doing it but it's too much clicking and I have to remember to make the layers visible again that I made invisible if I'm continue to continue to work with the master texture fuselage files. Just too much work doing it that way and I was hoping that there is a way that I can leave the layers visible that I don't want to use and only merging and copying 2 layers of my choice that can automatically combine them into 1 layer on the image I'm pasting the layers to.

I have the Just Flight BAe 146-200 addon for FSX. I'm currently working on an Air BC paint job with the included paint kit. I'm using Photoshop CS5. When I want to transfer sections from the fuselage files to the texture files I want to copy the guides from the Guides layer and the paint job from my Paint layer at the same time. I linked these 2 layers but I can only copy and past the paint layer but not the guides from the Guides layer. Reason why I want to copy and past the guides is because the texture files have those same guides and I need to align them together so that the paint is perfectly lined up. How do I copy and paste 2 linked layers into another image?

Never mind, I figured out the problem. The performance mode setting was set to Adaptive and I had to change it to Maximum Performance in the video driver settings.

While playingg FSX with Precision X running in the background, Precision's OSD shows that my GTX 680's GPU is running at 324MHz and GPU usage between 40-50%. Is this because FSX is not a GPU intensive game? My video card is an EVGA GTX 680 4GB and it's GPU base clock is advertised as 1019MHz with a boost clock of 1084MHz. It runs at between 1079-1084 in the Unigine Heaven benchmark. Is my GTX 680 running as it should in FSX or do I have defective card?

Anyone here with an Asus P9X79 Pro. I noticed that when I load FSX (after loading Windows 7), there will be squealing coming from around the CPU area of my motherboard. The second time I load FSX, the squealing does not happen unless I restart my PC and reload FSX. It sounds like mice in my PC. Also when browsing the internet, randomly there will be the very same quiet squealing for a couple of seconds coming from my PC. I sometimes will even happen when Windows 7 loads up. Happens my SSD is getting accessed as I noticed. Running the HD-Tune transfer rate test gives a high pitched squealing with my SSD and my 2nd hard drive. The squealing is not bothersome to me except for when I was running HD-Tune. To get rid of the squealing I have to turn off all CPU power-saving options in the BIOS. Had a similar problem with a 2 Gigabyte X58 boards with an i7 960 that I used to have and it was worse on that one and had to get rid of the squealing in the same way. Also setting a manual CPU vcore gets rid of the noise if I want CPU power saving features turned on except when running one of the tests in CrystalDiskMark, and it's sounds more like the beeps in a hearing test than squealing and it comes from having C1E turned on. My Intel DP67BG makes that same sound as well in CrystalDiskMark with my SSD. I contacted the manufacturer of my P9X79 Pro and the tech guy thinks it's either my hard drive accessing data or the SATA cable.

Anyone with an i5 3570k or an i7 3770k, GTX 680 and a Z77 based motherboard test out FSX? Can someone here run GPU-z and tell me if the latest official drivers for the GTX 680 from Nvidia support PCIe 3.0 on Ivy Bridge processors? I read that the latest official drivers for the GTX 680 don't support PCIe 3.0 on SB-E and I want to know if this also true for Ivy Bridge as well? Note: I don't have a GTX 680 but might consider it if PCIe 3.0 will be supported on SB-E processors since I have an i7 3930k and if it makes a noticeable difference in FSX.

I would like to know if it would be worth it to downgrade to an i7 3770k from my i7 3930k if I can sell my i7 3930k for $400 after ebay fees, shipping fees, and paypal fees. I most likely will get very little for my motherboard or maybe won't be able to sell the motherboard because of a minor issue I'm having with it but it does not effect the functionaliy of the board, so I might end up just keeping what I have. I know that I will lose out in load times and texture rendering performance in FSX if I downgrade to 4 cores but will the increased IPC of the Ivy Bridge make up for it and give me a better frame rate than my i7 3930k? I already have a motherboard that I'm not using that supports Ivy Bridge but it's one with the P67 chipset, so that means no PCIe 3.0. So if I downgrade to an i7 3770k from an i7 3930k then I lose 2 cores, lose PCIe 3.0 unless I buy a Z77 series motherboard, lose memory bandwidth, increased single threaded performance, might not get noticeable frame rate difference, end up with a little money on top.

Actually, if I could turn back the clock, I would have kept my i7 960 / X58 system and not upgrade to the i7 2600k since the i7 2600k was only a little faster for me in FSX, a little worse suttering I saw than my i7 960 I used to have, and I lost too much money in the process of selling my i7 960 and motherboard at the time when I upgraded to the i7 2600k / P67 system.

I upgraded from an i7 2600k / P67 to an i7 3930k / X79 and got worse stuttering in FSX despite the slightly higher frame rates and faster load times and faster texture loading. I had to resort to tweaking my FSX.cfg file with bufferpools set to 20000000 to get ride of most of the stuttering and now it's pretty much running smoothly on my 3930k. Sometimes though, I get a quick black flash in virtual cockpit mode out the front window with this tweak but it happens rarely and I think it worth the trade-off for the terrible stuttering I've been experiencing in my 3930k before that tweak. If I could turn back the clock, I wouldn't have upgraded to socket 2011 and kept with my i7 2600k. I had stutters in my 2600k as well but not as bad and I wonder that maybe the bufferpools at the 20000000 would run FSX even smoother my the 2600k I used to have than it does right now on my 3930k. At least I have something that should last me a long time and hopefully a game comes out that can really benefit from more than 4 cores. Why don't you wait for the i7 3770k and get a Z77 motherboard with it? If you aren't going to run 3 or more high-end video card, Ivy Bridge with a Z77 should a great choice for gaming.

Do you have a second computer to use while stablity testing your overclocks? I personally could not test for stability of overclocks for 24 hours straight on my 1 and only computer and one of the reasons why I don't keep my system permanently overclocked is because I just don't have the time and patience to keep my computer tied up for stability testing. I use my PC for work and internet besides gaming and FSX.

In FSX you could pan diagonaly with the joystick's hatswitch, but in XPX I can only pan horizontal or vertical. There is not button settings for panning diagonaly with the hatswith in the joystick buttons menu in XPX nor is there a general panning option, like FSX has. This makes panning with the hatswitch even more cumbersome. Also is there as way to stop the panning right away after centering the hatswitch on my joystick in XPX? There is still a bit of panning going on even if I stop panning when using the quick pan button settings in the joystick button menu, and using the normal panning button settings is just too slow for me.

An i5 2500k is what I suggest for FSX for getting the most for your $, and is only slightly slower than the much more expensive i7 2700k in FSX as hyperthreading doesn't really do anything in FSX. Overclocking is the luck of the draw on any CPU you buy. You might end up with one that can't do 4GHz stable or you might end up with one that can do 4.6GHz stable, so I don't recommend having the mindset of overclocking when buying a CPU. However, at stock speeds, an i5 2500k should be like a night and day difference coming from a Q6600, again at stock speeds, for FSX. More than 4 cores in FSX does speed up loading of flights and makes textures sharpen up faster but does not increase the frame rate. When I upgraded from an i7 2600k to an i7 3930k, I got a little faster load times and textures seemed to sharpen up quicker (but then I was slewing around very quickly from one place to another), but if actually flying in this game you most likely won't see a difference in terms of texture sharpening past 4 cores and 4 cores is enough for texture sharpening during flight. For motherboard, I recommend one with the new Z77 chipset. They support the upcoming Ivy Bridge and PCI-E 3.0 out of the box. For RAM, 8GB is more than enough for an FSX computer. FSX can only address up to 4GB RAM because it's a 32-bit application, so if you are at the point where FSX is nearly using 4GB RAM, you still have enough RAM for Windows background operations, and/or running a 2nd application while running FSX. For the video card, if you plan to get a brand new GTX 580 1.5GB, you might as will get a GTX 680. The GTX 580 1.5GB is not much cheaper, but the GTX 680 is a much faster card and has more VRAM than the GTX 580 1.5GB. You really don't need a dedicated sound card with today's onboard audio quality, IMO. I have a SB X-Fi Titanium that I bought about a year ago, and the onboard Realtek sounds almost just as good as my SB XF-i Titanium to my ears. Maybe slightly purer sounding to my ears than the onboard audio on my motherboard but not really a big deal for gaming. An SSD will help out in FSX for load times, especially if you have so much addon aircraft and addon photo sceneries installed. I did comparing with my 1TB 7200 rpm hard drive and my 240GB SSD. When I had MegasceneryX on my 7200 rpm hard drive and FSX on my SSD, FSX would have lots of lag when accessing the hard drive just after opening up the application and the initial load times for flights in areas with the MegasceneryX were much longer too.

That worked. Thanks.