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I switched to P3D from FSX since almost one year, when I decided to buy a new desktop completely dedicated to flightsim. I was used to run P3D from an HDD (Seagate Barracuda 2TB 64MB Cache 7200rpm SATA3) and I was pretty satisfied with the performances of the sim: I could flight my PMDGs at 35-40 fps average in cloudy weather but…I was tormented by microstutters (really micro, fractions of sec) especially on the ground, in payware airports with GSX services enabled (i.e. when parking distance meter kicked-in), during ASN/AS16 wx updates, sometimes in final before touchdown. I use to live with them since FSX and at the very end, I simply quit the struggle of having the sim 100% fluid. Last week, out of curiosity I decided to make the move: I got myself a new SSD (Samsung 850 Evo 1TB), cloned my HDD on it, changed drive letter and…O-M-G! Not only loading times practically zeroed, but also my nasty microstutters were gone. I was even used to have 1-2 sec black textures on the vehicle demo window in P3D scenario setting…gone for good. There’s also visible speed-up in the way the sim loads UTX terrain textures underneath, during flight at jet’s cruise levels. Not placebo here I’m afraid: completed several long flights without a single stutter, and sim’s smooth like silk, can’t believe it, eventually I made it, at least til next new addon install . My recommendation is, if you’re “one of the few” like I was, to run P3D from an HDD, before getting crazy with AM tweaks and Process Lasso settings, do yourself a big favor: clone your P3D drive on an SSD and maybe like me, you won’t be disappointed. Maybe everything above is obvious for the most, but I believe’s worth sharing it. Happy flying!

Hello pilots,I was wondering if you can help me. I bought a Crucial M500 2.5" SSD 480GB and I want to setup FSX. I'm currently running FSX on my Win 7 Pc with 2 x 1TB Hard Drives RAID 0. I'm planning to run FSX and ADDONS on SSD and leave the OS on the HDD. 1.What are the steps and procedures, is there a step by step tutorial on how to config and setup? 2.Is it just a matter of plug and play since I don't intend to move OS or I need to go through BIOS Config in order for me to transfer FSX from HDD to SSD. 3.What would work best OS+FSX on SSD or separate them. Thanks in advance.. Best Regards LdeeFSx247

Call me mad (?) but now that I have FSX running sweetly under DX10 I was thinking that it's time to remove FSX from my old 1TB HDD and put it on my brand new 240GB solid state drive! I already have a 60GB SSD for the Windows 7 OS but there's not enough room for FSX on there and would rather keep FSX away from the OS and program file folder/s. As far as I'm aware SSD's are significantly faster than an older HD? It certainly boots my OS much more quickly than previously. Are many of you running FSX from an SSD? Did you see much of an performance improvement? Any tips what/what not to do? Cheers Adam

PLease excuse me if this has been discussed before: I was just reading about the differences between the SLC and the MLC versions of the SSD drives and was just curious if anyone is running FSX on the much faster SLC drive?. I read that the the SLC uses a single cell to store data and in which case is able to access data much faster. The MLC uses multi level cells and looks at all the cells in order to access information, making it a bit slower than SLC's. Comparative differences are SLC are 10x faster; 3x faster sequential write and 30% more expensive than MLC. Either way, Im curious to know of any improved performances in FSX with this drive type or with any other high intensive software applications. I am currently running FSX on a dedicated more traditional MLC drive and have noticed improved performances over the standard HDD. Would love to get some info on the SLC drive type...Thanks in advance Troy

I have finally gone and built up my new rig, fired it up...and can't wait to get all the goodies from Open Cockpits and Throttle Tek set up and running. But I am coming up on a slight problem. I have two Samsung 840 pro SSDs.... and I think I may have buggered up the install ... So ...before I go and install PMDG and all the ORBX and related stuff, I figured I'd stop here and find out why the second drive is not showing up in Windows? The system recognizes it in the hardware profile. and the Bios shows it. But I can't figure out how to access it to store files etc. Anyone have any idea where I am going wrong? Cheers JT

I cloned my HDD with FSX to a new SSD. When I booted from the SSD everything seemed to work fine except FSX. Even P3D worked fine. FSX would put up the splash screen and then say that an error had occurred and stop. The event log didn't help much as no specific module was identified. I followed the recommendations in the CTD Guide and renamed my fsx.cfg. FSX launched and I could run the stock aircraft and a few I had installed. However, planes from Caranado, A2A, etc caused crashes. I have quite a bit of add on software and tweaks in my cfg. So now I've gotta figure out why my cfg won't run. Anyone have any idea why a cloned drive would have a problem like this? Thanks

Hi all, This is my first post here mainly because I've become so frustrated with trying to figure out what to do with my system. I'm nowhere near being a techie, i know the basics, but I dont understand all the little details of upgrading GPU, memory, CPU, dedicated graphics, etc. I have an old system, the Dell Dimension 8400: WindowsXP, 1GB RAM, Pentium4 3.4ghz, 145GB HDD, and im pretty sure no dedicated hard drive. About 2 years ago, FSX was running decently, with a mediocre frame rate when the settings were relatively low. then about a year ago i got a virus and it completely screwed up the file system of my computer and FSX has been a 10fps stuttering/gliching mess; along with the rest of the computer. :( I'v finally decided to do something about it, but i dont really know where to start. I'm pretty sure that the virus is still in the computer, only because the computer gets worse and worse. I do know that i will have to completely wipe the HDD and reinstall XP. While im at it, I'm wondering if it would be worth it to install a SSD in order to increase fps? Also, would adding another 1GB RAM be a reccomended upgrade? Im a little low on funds, under $200 (except for getting XP), so would a SSD and a bit more RAM make sense, or is there something else that I should do? The other big problm that i have is that i have difficulty understanding all the different types of drives (SATA, ATA, etc) and what would be compatible for my comp I hope this isnt too convoluded, and if you need any more info plz ask. Thanks, Luigi

Hi to all guys, I got SSD OCZ Vertex 3 where I wanto instal ONLY FSX, not operating system. My actual system is: C: OS Windows 7 (HDD WD Velociraptor 160G) D: FSX (HDD WD Caviar Black 500G) So I want to change WD Caviar Black with OCZ Vertex 3. My question is: may I have to set something special settings under BIOS or Windows 7? or can I simply initialize OCZ Vertex 3 (now it's not yet mounted onto Windows 7, but only phisical installed), change drive letter to "D" (after changing Caviar Black's one) and copy fsx data files? I repeat: I want only to use OCZ for FSX, not as boot operating system. My MOBO is ASUS Rampage II Extreme. Many thanks for your help, Riccardo

Greetings! I am building a new PC. I have been away from Flight Sim for 3-4 years (pre Steam and pre p3d). My new build will be for FSX Steam, but I also do Photoshop and Video editing. I anticipate using FSX Steam, PDG 737, Orbix, Rex, most all of the goodies. I am guessing my system will be overkill for Flight Sim, but would like confirmation of that. I will be overclocking the CPU. This is my third build of a system. As I only build system every 4 years or so, I am going high end. I respect the contributors on AvSim and hope for some feedback. Thanks guys! This is my current wish list: CPU: Intel i7-6700 MSI Graphics Card GTX 980 gaming 4g ASUS ROG Maximus VIII HERO Motherboard 2 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5 inch SSD G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 SDRAM EVGA SuperNOVA 850 Watt G2 80+ Gold Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Mid Tower Case Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX CPU Cooler Windows 10 Home 64 bit system builder OEM Don Maxwell

I've seen some confusion around SSD's not performing or making much of a difference in one's system or a difference in FSX, XP10, P3D, etc. So here are some things that might help clarify: SATA is 1.5GB/s SATA II is 3GB/s SATA III is 6GB/s Motherboards often have a mix of SATA ports, they are NOT all the same -- some are SATA II and some are SATA III and some maybe even be SATA. You'll need to check with your motherboard manufacturer/manual as it should clearly define which ports support the various different SATA specifications. Does it make a difference in performance which port you use for your SSD, yes, absolutely. For example I have two OCZ Vector 256GB SATA III SSDs. I plugged one (remember these are identical drives both supporting SATA III) into an SATA II port on my motherboard and the other into a SATA III port on my motherboard and ran SiSoftware Sandra Pro's Disk I/O tests. OCZ Vector plugged into my SATA II port on my motherboard: Benchmark Results Drive Score : 247.15MB/s (246.68MB/s - 248.87MB/s) Random Access Time : 153µs (153µs - 3.74ms) Performance per Thread Drive Score : 10.3MB/s (10.28MB/s - 10.37MB/s) OCZ Vector plugged into my SATA III port on my motherboard: Benchmark Results Drive Score : 527.61MB/s (495.5MB/s - 534.72MB/s) Random Access Time : 18µs (18µs - 542µs) Performance per Thread Drive Score : 22MB/s (20.65MB/s - 22.28MB/s) As you can see, a pretty staggering difference in performance for the same drive just in a different port. Now some of you may not have SATA ports so you go out an buy a SATA controller ... these can range from $30 to $1000, but often they get limited to a 1X or 2X or 4X PCIe configuration which can negate the benefit of SATA III (6GB/s) control (especially if the controller has more than one SATA III port. And to muddy the waters up even more, SATA III uses a slightly different cable type and connector ... they will (backwards compatible) fit all SATA ports, but the cable specification is different for SATA III. So the moral of this story is consistent with what I've always maintained ... a computer's real world performance is a sum of all it's parts not any single component. Rob. P.S. Here are performance numbers from an external USB 3.0 3TB HDD (7200rpm mechanica drive by seagate): Benchmark Results Drive Score : 153.53MB/s (97.78MB/s - 191.58MB/s) Random Access Time : 16ms (16ms - 285.41ms) Performance per Thread Drive Score : 12.8MB/s (8.15MB/s - 16MB/s)

Hi all, Just had a quick question - I have two Samsung SSD 840 EVOs. One for my OS and one for my FSX install. The SSD comes with the Samsung Magician software that offers a range of features. I was just wondering if anyone took advantage of these features to optimize their SSDs? I'm looking at the Perfomance Optimization, OS Optimization, Over Provisioning, and RAPID mode features. I wouldn't be totally honest if I said I knew what all those features did. Just wanted to see what other flight-simmers/PC users have done. Also, on a related-note: every time I boot my PC and log in, I get a message basically saying Samsung Magician needs Admin rights in order to run and I should relaunch the application with admin rights. For security, I run as a standard user and have a separate Administrator profile when needed. Is there any way to keep Samsung Magician from running on startup? I've read from numerous places that it is not required to startup with Windows, however, it is not listed in the msconfig.exe Startup tab? Thank you for your help. As always, it is greatly appreciated!

Hi guys. Yesterday I installed an SSD for the first time, transferring my FSX installation seamlessly across from it's previous home on one of my HDDs. The only installation issue was the device driver not installing properly, but a pc reset or two solved that and the subsequent much faster loading of FSX was very welcome. That was yesterday. Today my pc thinks it doesn't have an SSD, and no matter what I try to do, I can't get it to recognise it's new component. Any ideas? Nothing has changed since yesterday's installation - I haven't even put the side panel back on the case yet - and I can't see how anything could have changed in the software installation either. Any suggestions? I'm grounded until someone finds my SSD for me lol. Cheers, SkipperMac EDIT: Here's a thought - iTunes updated this morning and required a reset (pc wasn't turned off since yesterday). When it rebooted I noticed my desktop 'flying' icons had gone generic and FSX couldn't load ... hence discovering the SSD wasn't being recognised today. Could it be something to do with the iTunes update? Drivers messing about? :(

Hi All, I have a new build in progress with two SSD; one for Windows 8.1 and one for FSX, as recommended. On which SSD should I install the Saitek X-55? Hope this question is in the right place, and if it's already been answered, greatly appreciate someone pointing me to it. Thanks!

Are there substantial benefits (retrieval speeds) of using one on a dedicated flight simulator machine ? Would an SSD smooth up the simulation ? (stutter?) How much storage space would you need and should you put everything on them (including 3rd party scenery files) or just the P3D files ? http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-3.html http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?263624-Will-a-SSD-Hard-Drive-Make-Much-Improvement-In-Performance-FSX Worth it ?

Ive installed FSX on a seperate drive (128GB SSD) called the F drive. Opposed to the normal C drive in hopes of making the sim run faster. However, i cant find the cfg. I know under normal circumstances, it would be under appdata, etc. However, when i installed FSX on the F drive, there was nothing currently on that drive, not one folder. I created a folder called Microsoft Flight Simulator X and thats what the game was installed into. Where would i go about finding the .cfg? Would i have to add a new one? The game runs fine, so im sure there has to be one somewhere on that drive. Thanks- Matt

Now that I'm thinking to upgrade my laptop to a SSD (see current specs at the bottom), I'll also perform a clean install of Windows on it (something I never did with my 4-year old laptop, i.e., I started it using it as unboxed). However, this could be a good chance to move to Windows 10. This is what i have in my laptop: - FS 2004, in full screen (always) - FSUIPC registered - PSS 757 and 777 - Wilco/Feelthere Airbus - Feelthere E135/E145 - Feelthere E170/E190 - Leonardo Maddog - vasFMC gauge version - ISG gauges - iFly 737 and 747v2 (but I'm not longer flying them) - And lots of sceneries that shouldn't be an issue. Is it worthwhile to move to Windows 10 or should I stay with Windows 7? I have already downloaded both ISOs...

As you may see in my specs, my laptop is not exactly a good one; however, is what I've got for FS2004. After a friend told me what he did to his 2008 Dell laptop, I'm thinking about replacing my DVD drive with an SSD (I've only used my drive 6 times in 4 years). The caveat: somehow Toshiba disabled SATA3 for my laptop, with no solution in sight, so I'm stuck with SATA2 (half of SATA3 speeds). My budget is a modest one; in the US I think I may be getting all what I need (SSD + ODD caddy) for less than USD 80. Currently, my laptop has a 640 GB 5400 rpm HDD. Taking all this into mind, do you think is it worthwhile?

I need to upgrade my SSD drive as my add-ons are quickly out growing the 120 GB I'm looking to go with 500 GB drive (or close to) but have a question about transferring data; I plan to transfer the contents of my existing SSD to a folder on my Desktop HD. Then I will install the new, larger SSD ensuring the replacement takes on the same drive name as the previous. Then I will transfer the folder back to the new drive. Will this work? I'm thinking FSX won't have any problems recognizing the data on the new drive as long as the drive name stays the same? Or, is there something or some step I'm missing that will complicate the change? Any advice would be appreciated.

Hi, I had FSX installed onto my HDD, but as I was purchasing the NGX I decided to move the file over to my SSD. I didn't do this completley conventionally using Steam Mover. This worked and everything is going well!. However I now wish to install every steam related application to a 250GB SSD I have just purchased. As steam mover uses links to allow the game, I'd like some advice as to how to approach this. Do I need to revert the step by using the back arrow so the game is now completley on my HDD first? How will this affect the NGX? I am concerned that I'll do this and then lose my NGX (which I absoloutley love!) and thus the money I spent on it. I'd like some form of reassurance that if this happens I will be able to get my NGX back and reinstalled? My set up: SSD1: OS, Steam.exe, Steamapps, FSX, HDD: Steamlibrary, FSX Shortcut + 10 games. SSD2: I would like everything other than the OS on this SSD including FSX:SE and NGX. I hope you can shed some light on this. Kind Regards George Hunt

I've just fitted SSD's to hold my FS-X installation and thought I would share the experience. First of all I put in one 240G SSD to hold my FS-X system then later installed a second SSD in to take the OS and other software. The final figures after installing both SSD's are in bold. Starting the program to appearance of the free flight menu: was 45 secs, with one SSD 22 secs, with 2xSSD : 26 secs Loading the aircraft choice screen from the free flight menu: was 25 secs, with one SSD 13 secs, with 2xSSD : 11 secs Loading a flight from the free flight menu to sitting in the cockpit: was 4 minutes 30 secs, with one SSD 3 minutes, with 2xSSD : 1minute 24 secs Certainly a big improvement in load to cockpit. Also I've noticed that the time to switch views seems to have dramatically improved and is now virtually instantaneous. The horrid pauses I use to get while textures for aircraft loaded when I switched views seem to have gone too I wasn't expecting a frame-rate improvement so I didn't note what I had before - maybe 30fps peak, unlimited - but I do seem to have got a jump to around 50fps (if I leave it unlimited). Throttle back to 26fps and its beautifully smooth. The other heads-up on this was that cloning the C drive was really easy with the Kingston kit and the Acronis software.

Dear readers, I would like to improve my performance for my favorite game: FSX. My system: - Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3 iP55 - Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz 2.5GT/s Box - OCZ 4x2GB DDR3 PC10666 CL7.0 Platin. LV - MSI Videokaart PCI-e GeForce GTX275 Lightning 1.8GB DVI/HDMI - OCZ GameXStream 700W - Samsung 1TB SATA300 32MB, HD103UJ Recently, I purchased a Noctua NH-D14 cooler and succesfully overclocked my i7 860 to ~ 4GHz. Still, I am not happy with the FSX performance. I play FSX with a few add-ons, such as: PMDG 737NGX, Ultimate terrain X, Some Aerosoft sceneries as well as the IVAP online multiplayer. Also, I did the standard FSX tweaks ( such as [DISPLAY] TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 [GRAPHICS] TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 [Main] FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.15 and more) Current performance: I run FSX at a mega airport with all sliders maxed out (but not slides such as the light boom) at ~ 11- FPS. Goal: I would like to run FSX at a mega airport with all sliders maxed out at ~ 20+ FPS. I have some thoughts how I can improve my performance: 1. Buy a SATA6 SSD ( such as the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB). If i am correct, I do also have to buy a new motherboard in order to improve the transfer rate of data. 2. I am not sure but my RAM frequency might be a bottleneck (1066MHz), So maybe buy other RAM? Can you tell me if my thoughts make sense and what you think is the bottleneck of my System? Many thanks, Jasper

Folks, I'm looking to add an additional drive to my system for scenery, aircraft add-ons, etc... My system currently has an SSD for the OS, and SSD for FSX and I have the option of either using an older Corsair P256 SSD (256GB) or an older 300GB VelociRaptor. I believe I can use SATA II for either drive. Which will give me the best performance? I'll be most likely using it to load photo-real scenery etc. Also, is there a tutorial on how to point FSX to load the scenery if its stored on a second drive? Thanks in advance for any advice!

I am looking for a good way to back up my PC's. I have 5 PC's (4 running W7-64 one W8-64) a Windows Home Server with 4 TB of space and a 2TB NAS (primarily for photos). I have been using ReadyVault NAS but for some reason on my FS box the engine keeps failing. ReadyNAS Vault is a free version of Geni9, which I like as it saves previous versions of the file but I am concerned if I move up to their Comprehensive Backup software I will have the same issue with the engine failing. I would like something that does incremental versioning and back-ups. automated, and it needs to be able to save to a networked location. Any thoughts on what would be a good (and reasonably priced) solution? Thanks Kevin

Hey, So I just got a new computer today with my main goal to run FSX as smooth as i can. I have done alot of research about hardware requirements and have learned that installing FSX on a separate SSD can help performance. My computer has a 1TB Western Digital hard drive, and also a 120GB Crucial M500 SSD. I was planning on dedicating the SSD to FSX with all of my add-ons and everything, but the SSD seems to be my main C drive and my 1TB WD hard drive is the D drive. My windows 7 is installed on the SSD (C Drive) and it seems to be my default drive at the moment where everything gets downloaded to. Does anyone know how to move everything to my 1TB WD hard drive and make that my default drive so I can dedicate my SSD 100% to FSX? Any help is much appreciated, Tyler

What do you think of using the OCZ Revodrive PCIe SSD in comparison to SATA3 SSD? Please do NOT discuss price tag, only performance review/comparison, also HDD is not an option. Reading the numerous pages here and all over the internet there are some simmers that use the fast PCIe SSDs for their FSX setup. Can you share the experience with us that are in a process of selecting the optimum SSD combination? I plan to have: OCZ Revodrive 3 X2 [240GB] for a Win7+FSX+737NGX and Xplane10 and priority sceneries (FRA, AMS, ZRH, MUC, VIE) and all other less important scenery on SATA3 SSD Intel 520/Samsung [120 or 240GB]. PC will be: i7 3930k water-clocked, 670GTX, 16GB 2133 RAM, 850W, Asus P9X79 PRO, Obsidian 800D. Thanks for sharing your PCIe SSD experience.