Graphics cards and FR's in FSX

[DaveB]

Yo Clever folk of this esteemed forum

You'll be aware of recent upgrades, failures and finally success with the old pc..

Well, I was scooting along in FSX this lunchtime (I know, you DID read right).. admiring the ES Alderney and Guernsey scenery then I decided to truck up to Scotland and revisit the Western Isles scenery I bought yonks ago. All was going well but to be honest, I wasn't as impressed as I might be by the smoothness of the sim. Noting that the new GTX560Ti has a gig of DDR5 ram onboard.. I have to admit I expected it to run FSX better than this. In a moment of frivolous disregard for all things written, I decided to unlock FR's from 30 (as they'd been for the 8800GTX) to unlimited.
As if by magic.. the slightly stuttery, clumsy, uncertain way FSX ran went in an instant. It now runs silky smooth

So.. if you have a reasonably butch graphics card (OK.. the 560Ti isn't the fastest you can buy but it's butch to me!) and you have FR's limited in FSX, chances are you're choking the poor thing so give it it's head and change the setting to unlimited. I know a lot depends on the other bits and pieces you have fitted but on this pc (E8400 WinXP/32-bit/SP3 3gb system ram) the Asus GTX560Ti has increased the FSX performance as no other card has done. I thought the 8800GTX was fast and it was but it wasn't a patch on the 560Ti in FSX.

There may be some (like me) who've upgraded a graphics card and while you've seen an improvement, it's not been as good as you'd hoped. Try unlocking your FR's and see the difference it can make If it doesn't.. pop em back again.. no harm done

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

It's also worth checking full-screen mode against windowed mode in FSX.

Personally I run windowed mode with unlocked frame rate.

[Tako_Kichi]

My old rig was very much like yours before you added the 560Ti and I would get the occasional stutter too. I've built a new rig over Xmas and I am slowly repopulating it with just the planes I know I will fly as opposed to having a hangar full of planes I installed and flew once.

One thing I have found useful (and I used it on my previous rig) is to combine the information provided by Jesus Altuve at this site...

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

....with the use of nVidia Inspector set up as described here...

http://www.simforums.com/forums/nhancer ... 36586.html

...I set the FPS in FSX to 'unlimited' but run the small 'FSP Limiter' external app to limit the FPS to 30 and that seems to work very well.

[Tako_Kichi]

It's also worth checking full-screen mode against windowed mode in FSX.

Personally I run windowed mode with unlocked frame rate.

That's a good point too. I run in windowed mode 99% of the time as I do a lot of testing/tweaking and need to get at various files while the aircraft is on AP and then I re-load the aircraft in mid-flight to see the changes.

[DaveB]

Larry/George..

Yes, something I forgot to add. I also run windowed mode.. this enables me to use FSCommander on a second monitor

ATB
DaveB

[TSR2]

Well, after Dave's success with the 560Ti I took the plunge the other night and ordered a 560Ti 448. Dabs seemed to be the cheapest at £214, for the Palit card.

http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value ... lit&src=16

(Palit cards are the NVidia reference cards - i.e. its effectively their own brand that they do their own testing on.) So the 8800 GTX (Also Palit) which has been in my PC for almost 5 years was unplugged and the new one plugged in. I uninstalled the old NVidia software and downloaded the latest NVidia drivers. To my surprise and worry, the card wasn't detected! So I dug out the CD that camme with the card (something I never do) and installed the driver from there. To my surprise, the version on the CD was newer than that on the Nvidia website and worked a treat. It seems the 448 Core cards are so new that they haven't updated the website with a version of the drivers which supports them!

Anyway, inspite of the two large fans on the card, its quiet as a mouse. I now have everything maxed out and not even a hint of a stutter, very very smooth

[DaveB]

Hello Matey

Glad you're pleased with the card. I know the one I have goes like stink and the additional 64cores can only speed things along even more

ATB
DaveB

[Airspeed]

Until recently, I'd believed the FS Help advice - run in full screen mode to get the best from hardware accelleration. I was queried about this on another forum, so checked my FRs..full screen 60fps, full screen windowed mode 300fps.
To be honest, I find anything around 30 easy on the eye.

[Benedettini]

Intel core i3 2.13Ghz quad
4GB DDR3 RAM Kingston 2x2
ATI Mobility Radeon HD5450 1GB non-shared videocard

With Carenado aircrafts and ORBX scenery I cant get over 15 fps ever in the quality I expect. I have to lose autogens for that,but it would suck.

[DaveB]

Hi Gokalp

I thought i3's were dual core so I've learned something today!

ATB
DaveB