PC Performance.....

[RobDob]

Morning all

I'm having trouble getting FSX running particularly well on my reasonable spec 3 year old PC. Can any, more technically minded, folk offer any assistance if I post up my PC details please?

Technology overtook me some years ago so I'll probably screw something up if I start blindly fiddling with system or FSX settings!

Any assistance would be gratefully received!

Many thanks

Rob

[DaveG]

Feel free to post your specs Rob.
We may not be able to help, but it's worth a shot. Failing that, we'll just point and laugh

[RobDob]

Thanks Dave...here goes;

I have a SSD with Windows on, and a separate 1TB drive running just FSX. Below is a cut-and-paste from Belarc Advisor.

Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601)
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. G1.Sniper 2
3.40 gigahertz Intel Core i7-2600K
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
8192 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Hyper-threaded (8 total) Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. G1.Sniper 2
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz

I have Earth Simulations scenery and when flying the JF Canberra I get around 7 fps.......surely it should be able to run a bit better than that? I don't know.......

Thanks chaps

[DaveG]

Earth Simulations + JF Canberra will be a bit hard on the system, but you should be able to do better than 7fps
How much memory do you have, and how have you got the sliders set up in FSX? Oh, and what graphics card?

[TSR2]

Certainly my machine is of a similar vintage and lower spec, but runs FSX and P3D well. I don't have the JF Canberra or ES though.

[RobDob]

Ooops! Thought I was missing something!

Graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 with 4 Gb (I think). The PC itself has 8 Gb RAM.

I will re-check the FSX sliders; I had been using Xtreme FSX PC before I re-installed a while ago, but even that only made marginal improvements.

Are there any recommended hardware improvements I can make? Better CPU? Install FSX on a secondary SSD?

Cheers all

[RobDob]

Seems some sliders were maximum; I've tried lowering slightly.

Should 'filtering' be trilinear?

[DaveG]

A SSD will only really decrease loading times, it won't improve frame rates, although it may help with the overall smoothness.
That CPU should automatically boost up to 3.8ghz under load. May be worth checking it's running at it's full whack using CPU-Z. You may be able to overclock as well, if you're feeling adventurous!
The 580 should be fine. I used to use a 460 and that gave acceptable performance as long as I didn't crank the AA up too high in nVidia Inspector. Clouds can really kill the FPS with highish AA settings.
I'd leave the filtering on anisotropic. I've never noticed and gain by lowering it.
Don't push AI traffic up too high, especially if you're not using native FSX models.

[RobDob]

Thanks Dave. That program is good....seems my graphics card is actually 2 gb not 4 as I thought!

If it automatically shows CPU speed then mine seems to be running fine.

Maybe I just need to keep fiddling with the FSX sliders to find the best performance; I was concerned I may have a hardware issue or non-FSX related software problem!

Thanks for your help.

[petermcleland]

Try defragging your hard drive...BUT do NOT defrag your SSD.

You should defrag the hard drive after INSTALLING any software on it