How are my framerates ?

Pro Member Trainee
airwolfe Trainee

I am currently running FSX on Vista64 Ultimate. My PC specs are listed below, but I would like to point out that I am using a TH2Go with three 22" Samsung Syncmasters and a 4th monitor for instruments on the second output of my 9800GTX. When I slide everything (and I mean everything) to max I get about 10-15fps in the air but only 7-10 on the ground. That's a little choppy for me, even though it looks amazing ! My questions: 1) is this about right ? or do I need to work on it ? 2) Can I expect these rates to improve with better drivers in the future ?

I think I made the mistake of getting 'cutting edge' hardware when I could have gotten some proven hardware for much less.

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Pro Member First Officer
Westernstyle First Officer

I get 1-5 with everything low, i don't fly FSX much with that like it.

Pro Member First Officer
Westernstyle First Officer

With some tweaking, i now get an average 20-40 fps, AMAZING 😀

Pro Member First Officer
Bob (Traches) First Officer

For most people, 15-20fps is the best balance between pretty and smooth framerates. You usually tweak your settings till you get a constant 15fps at a major airport. (Unfortunately the time when you need the best framerates, i.e. on approach, is also the time when you're in the area that's the slowest... i.e. a big airport with a lot of stuff going on.)

Sounds like you've got a pretty sweet rig though!

Pro Member First Officer
oldsamer First Officer

Can I expect these rates to improve with better drivers in the future ?

If you referring to the drivers for the 9800GTX, that has been the common opinion for a long time, but it doesn't look that way any more. The latest performance comparisons on Tom's hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-2008-q3/Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-X-SP2,782.html still show the 8800GTXs out performing all other vid cards. A personal observation is that I'm not seeing any degradation of performance using multiple monitors. The issue is Frame-Per-Sec (FPS) versus choppiness. I'm happy locked at 20 FPS because it's smooth at any point during the session.

I got a question for you since you run FSX on a quad-core. Since an application has to be multi-thread capable to take advantage of multi-cores.
Are all you cores busy during an FSX session?
I don't know how to check this in vista 64. With winXP it's Windows Task Manager / Performance / cpu usage history(s) see below as an example.

It's a consensus opinion around here that FSX is mostly CPU intensive. That's why I ask about your quad-core. Personally, I saw a big improvement when I migrated from 3ghz Pentium to 3ghz core-2-duo. Below are my spec's & settings that give me constant 20 FPS smoothly.

FSX Sp2 & Ultimate terrain-X USA on winXp Sp3
intel E8400 3ghz processor (core 2 duo)
intel G31 I/O chipset
2gb corsair 800mhz ram
nvida 8800gtx 768mb
GRAPHICS
Target frame rate 20
1680x1050x32
Filtering Bilinear
Anti-aliasing checked
Global texture resolution Medium
Advanced animations checked
AIRCRAFT
Default cockpit view 3-D virtual cockpit
Show cockpit ToolTips not checked
Hi-res 3-D cockpit checked
2-D panel transparency 0%
Aircraft casts shadows.. checked
SCENERY
Level of detail radius Large (maxed)
Mesh complexity 100 (maxed)
Mesh resolution 1m (maxed)
Texture resolution 7m (maxed)
Water effects none
Land detail textures checked
Scenery complexity Extremely dense (maxed)
Autogen density Extremely dense (maxed)
Ground scenery shadows checked
Special effects detail Medium
WEATHER
Cloud draw distance: 70mi / 112km
Thermal visualization none
Simple clouds
Rate at which weather.. Medium
TRAFFIC
Airline traffic density 0%
General aviation traffic 100%
Airport vehicle density Minimum
Show aircraft labels not checked
Road vehicles 15%
Ships and ferries 0%
Leisure boats 0%

Pro Member Trainee
airwolfe Trainee

I will check on the activity of my Quad-Core as soon as I am near my Flight Sim machine again.

Pro Member First Officer
lkw First Officer

under options is there an option for 1 window for each core. I think I am only see 2 cores in your example

Pro Member First Officer
oldsamer First Officer

lkw asked;

under options is there an option for 1 window for each core. I think I am only see 2 cores in your example

That's because I'm running an intel E8400 3ghz processor (core 2 duo) with only 2 cores. When I played FSX on a single core Pentium, winXp Windows Task Manager / Performance / cpu usage history(s) showed only 1 window.

Radarman said;

SP2 if loaded after SP1 or if you loaded the Acceleration pack will activate the usage of all cores, before SP2 they didn't work.

In another thread, Radarman has answered my question. So now I'm internally debating yet another major upgrade to intel g45 chipset and i7 quad processor. It's a debate because I'm satisfied with my present FSX performance.

Pro Member Trainee
mickwill Trainee

Hi All,

When you fire up task manager it will show one processor window per core. So for duo 2 windows and for quad 4 windows.

You can also force FSX to play with a number of cores in the FSX.CFG:

[JobSchedular]
Affinity=xxxx

where xxxx is

0001 - singler core
0011 - two cores
0111 - three cores
1111 - four cores

A word of warning though. I have a quad and I have set the config to 0111. This is to allow "windows" to have a core to work on. I'm fairly sure that if you tried to allocate all cores to FSX windows will either error or crash in a most spectacular manner! You need to leave at least one core for "everything else".

TTFN

Pro Member Trainee
airwolfe Trainee

oldsamer wrote:

I got a question for you since you run FSX on a quad-core. Since an application has to be multi-thread capable to take advantage of multi-cores.
Are all you cores busy during an FSX session?

I had some problems since I began this thread. First, my mobo went out on me. I got that replaced this weekend... and now (2nd) I cannot figure out how to get the full screen working properly with my TH2GO. That is the topic for another thread though.

I did get to run FSX w/o a service pack all the way through SP2 and noticed that it was only using one thread (CPU) until I installed SP2, then it looks like there is one thread for 'windows' and one for FSX w/two other threads working on something (I assume FSX) but not to the same extent as the 'primary' thread.

Well, I am off to try and solve my newest problem.

Pro Member Trainee
airwolfe Trainee

Here is a screenshot of my rig running FSX SP2 on a quadcore.

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