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Hello, First and formost, I love flight simulation and FSX. I consider it my favorite hobby and even 7 years after this old software came out its still enjoyable today as it was in 2006! I also consider this post to be a cry for help in bettering my sim quality! I appreciate everyone who wants to help and gladly apreciate it if you do. If your a negative person with a poor attitude and plan on giving non-productive advice than do me a favor and please quit reading this and continue what you were doing before you stumbled upon this topic! If you can relate or have had similar issues I would love to hear about those as well! Sorry for the length of this thread but i felt it was the best way to explain what ive tried and what hasn't been done for the reader to better assist in a solution or fix. Im having issues with of course; the main problem with FSX- "Frame Rates" Ive had my system now for about a year and I use it strictly for flight sim so i dont know how it would act towards other software but I can't seem to figure out why it just doesn't like FSX! My main hardware is listed below: CPU: i7 2700k @ 4.5 MOBO: ASUS sabertooth z77 RAM: corsair vengeance 16gb @ 1866 GPU: EVGA GTX 680 PSU: corsair AX1200 COOLER: corsair h100 Also I will note that I am running FSX acceleration on Windows 7 64bit basic home premium and all updates installed and I use nvidia inspector. I have an SSD for FSX itself, an SSD for the OS, and a 1tb WD harddrive for other programs and where I keep the scenery files for FSX. I figured with these components i should be getting fairly good frame rates out of FSX...shouldn't i? but i don't! first i will start by saying that what I consider "good" frame rates is 20-30 at all times. Im getting an average of 10-14 FPS in the captain sim 777 with aerosofts chicago with alot of the sliders to the left with GEX, REX, scenery-tech, accu-feel, and ENB series. Ive configured my ENB to where it has no performance hit and ive tested regular "raw" FSX with no addons except the captain sim 777 and i get around around 18-20 with the default chicago and 24 fps with the PMDG 737. Also im using FRAPS to record and fraps loves to bite off half of the fps with 1080p. So if i wanted to record i would be left with usually 7 to 8 fps to work with! Why it does this I don't know, maybe you do?!? So after countless fresh FSX installations, a couple of OS re-installs, a million new cfgs and tweaks(useless), TONS of trial and error, Money wasted on parts, and sleepless nights ive come to think that maybe I simply have bad luck! Ive pondered buying a 3970x or 3960x processor thinking that one of those would help but after researching i think that would be a waste of a perfectly good $1000 seeing that those processor's only pros over the 2600/2700k is that they have a bigger cache, and more cores(which are useless for fsx). Not too mention I would probley cry after handing over $1000 dollars to intel for a processor that would only give me slightly better performance in the sim. That being said, i didn't spend this much money to keep spending money looking for a solution to one sim. I really love simming and all the addons and i can't even imagine not doing it, but the performance issues really take the excitement out of it and I spend 95% of the time testing and tweaking rather than flying! I don't want to give up FSX even after 7 years but even tell this day there is no way to enjoy the game with my beautiful addons! I test the captain sim 777 at aerosoft chicago like i stated earlier in windowed mode with task manager showing performance and even with affinity mask set at 14 its still running in all cores. Also changing anything in my cfg does not do anything to the sim! I can change any number or setting in my cfg and ill always get the same results except if you change the physical things like resolution or frame rate limit which I keep at 30 by the way! Also, in task manager it shows FSX is using 100% of my cpu, i know its a cpu dependent game so i figure thats normal, but i wonder if anyone doesn't get that with huge addons? I have also tried different downloads of the aircraft and addons to ensure there is not a corrupt installation. When it comes to the overclocking side of things ive tried different clocks and tested each one with NO DIFFERENCE to the sim! Overclocking for me did nothing, maybe 1 or 2 fps at the most, and ive managed to get my processor as high as 5.0! my cpu doesnt seem any faster and there is no way to tell because i get the same scores on benchmarks as i would with the base clock! These scores are usually lower than average too so its frustrating. FSX depends alot on processor speed and even today the 2700k/2600k get the best overclock over anything and the best temps for that overclock so when it comes to buying a new processor there really isn't anything significantly better thats worth the money! So what im thinking is...Is it possible since ive seen other users get great performance with this processor and the 2600k could maybe mine be a lemon? The 2600k/2700k are the first processors that pop up when you think FSX so why am i not getting exceptional performance like ive seen in other users? I would like to know would it be worth maybe buying a new 2600k or 2700k to see if the performance is different with another one or could there just be a bottleneck in my system somewhere preventing my processor of using all of its potential? I am desperate now and I can't see putting the sim away even after 7 years but this is a frustrating problem not worth investing tons of money and time in to achieve the same results! You can't tell me ALL of these users who have these nice lifelike youtube videos with no stutters and no lag and maxed out settings really get only 10-15 fps in this aircraft and have FANTASTIC video editing skills!! Is there anyway of knowing if my processor is bogging down? Also just a thought but ive noticed alot of people still use the outdated i7 920 and see great fsx results with that even though the highest speed you can achieve with one of those is 4.2, and thats only with the most special cherry picked 920s in the batch! I wonder what the population's thoughts are on these processors even today? I've also been curious about Haswell. Ive heard mixed reviews about the 4770k. Some people say yay, some nay. Some say performance couldnt get any better and the frame rates are amazing with fsx and others say its nothing special and has crappy overclocking ability and worst than ivy-bridge temperatures when overclocked! Does anyone have an honest opinion on that one? My last thought was maybe i should wait tell tax season and purchase the mysterious 4970x that "should" be out this september! its rumored to have 10% better performance than the 3970 which isnt much but its gotta be better than the performance im getting! If so, there goes 1000 of my hard earned tax dollars all over again.

I was going to finish next week my PC for FSX, but new stuff show up on the market :( 1. I allready bought in good price gigabyte gtx 670 GV-N670OC-2GD and I can easy and very stable OC it from 980 to 1083mhz. 2. I ordered 3770K with asus z77 sabertooth motherboard but because of rare incompatibility between each of the items they still are at the shoop and im waiting for new 3770K Because new haswell, and gtx770 show up on the market I talk to my friend in shoop and he let me choose what i want to do. 1. I can switch from gigabyte 670 to gigabyte 770 and It will cost me extra about 100-120$ 2. I can cancel without a problem my order 3770K + Z77 motherboard and wait a little more for 4770K + Z87 motherboard which i think is more perspective (Broadwell) with 1150 socket than 1155 on Z77? What you think I shoudl do. I will be grateful for your advice