FS9 Performance: memory, CPU or graphics card?

gevers1 · Post by **gevers1** » 05 Jun 2007, 22:59

XR219 wrote:Just out of interest, what OS are you running and what is your hard disk config?

Cheers

XP, Version 2002, Service Pack 2.

As for hard drive config, where can i find that info?[/img]

airboatr · Post by **airboatr** » 05 Jun 2007, 23:16

gevers
what I meant by a clean install is
A Clean install by formating the HD
But I would probaly try a FS9 clean install first
wipping the HD is a pain.

gevers1 · Post by **gevers1** » 05 Jun 2007, 23:44

airboatr wrote:gevers
what I meant by a clean install is
A Clean install by formating the HD
But I would probaly try a FS9 clean install first
wipping the HD is a pain.

Ah right, naw, that's real last resort stuff. I'll uninstall FS9 tomorrow, defrag and reinstall. I'll add only the a/c i want to fly with, then benchmark on a standard airport. KSEA will do nicely.

then i'll add glacier bay v2 (my general flying area) and benchmark again as before. I just hope I still have all those license keys to hand!

ah well, off to bed. 6th june, happy birthday to me

airboatr · Post by **airboatr** » 06 Jun 2007, 00:36

HAppy Birthday!!

Nigel H-J · Post by **Nigel H-J** » 06 Jun 2007, 09:29

For anyone who is interested. Tonight the new power supply (650w) and graphics card arrived (Sapphire X1950XTX). Installed it all and, well ...

After the crushing dissapointment of the complete lack of any improvement in fs9 fps after installing an extra 2gb, I thought "surely, this has to make some difference" ....

Hi Gevers

I'm not really any good at technical advise but one thing I noticed when I upgraded my Graphics Card some time ago was that I saw no improvement on FS9 so on taking the bull by the horns I unistalled then re-installed FS.

When I started FS the improvement was immediate, better frame rates and less stutter. Sometimes it may be best to check that the FS9.cfg file has recognised your new Graphic Card first as that could be the problem.

Regards Nigel.

gevers1 · Post by **gevers1** » 06 Jun 2007, 10:18

Thanks Nigel, it gives me hope to read that.

I've been trawling through the avsim forum as well (some familiar faces there!) for help on this problem and it seems I am not alone in this. Other advice i've seen:

1 - reinstall FS9 (probably not a bad idea anyway, it's a bit of a mess)
2 - switch of anti virus (as long as the firewall is up, not a problem right?)
3 - a variety of bios tweaks (getting hairy now)
4 - a variety of graphics cards tweaks (should be ok with this)
5 - defrag (did this every week anyway)

over at tweakguides.com they have a great document about tweaking performance on ati cards so i will plough through that also. I am convinced this is software and not hardware related, though I cant explain why. It's just a gut feeling I have.

i'll keep you posted.

Nigel H-J · Post by **Nigel H-J** » 06 Jun 2007, 12:25

gevers,

I often unload my anti-virus when off-line only but yesterday I did a silly thing.............Forgot to re-load it including my Firewall and was on-line for about fifteen minutes and only noticed my mistake when I came off!!

Still don't think much would have happened? :redface:

I would not advise unloading your anti-virus whilst on-line!!

Post by **TSR2** » 06 Jun 2007, 13:10

gevers,

You shouldn't need to tweek anything to see a performance improvement. My advice would be to reinstall as is, and then tweek if necessary. I would never recomend unloading your Antivirus / firewall, but you could exclude your FS directory from realtime scanning.

gevers1 · Post by **gevers1** » 06 Jun 2007, 15:40

I'll try that too. I've a lot of things to try out tonight! I use Norton, I'll check the options there. The good news is that ive got all the license keys for all the add-ons i've bought, so a reinstall should not be an issue. The defrag will take a while as I've got nearly 7gb's of addons and scenery on there!

I'll also reinstall active-sky.

Reading some excellent threads on the avsim and flightsim forums I've seen posts from people with dual-cores and more memory and better video cards than i have and they're getting similar frame rates. I get the feeling that I should just lock the fps at 22 and be happy with that. But again, my ROI (return on investment) at this moment is zero, which is never an acceptable outcome - it seems like such a waste. Perhaps my expectations where just too high, or too unrealistic.

tonight i'll try whats been suggested and get back to you. hopefully my experiences might be useful for anyone else having the same problems. For now i'll leave you all in peace to enjoy your fps', whatever they may be!

Jetset · Post by **Jetset** » 06 Jun 2007, 15:51

Looking forward to hearing your results. I too recently purchased the X1950XT, and my results were not that brilliant. Deleted the cfg so it can be rebuilt and still not much. I still get stutter and delayed appearing textures. Rather confused how you can go from an X800 to a X1950XT without alot of performance.

If your reinstalling FS works, then I may go for that to.