Simviation Forums

I decided to go ahead and copy this post I made at a from a technical support website for MSI motherboards. It is my method of keeping a system in perfect tune. There is a limit to the amount I can put in 1 post so this will be in several segments below.
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Flight Simulator can be a tough program to get tweaked. It is memory dependant and both CPU and GPU intense as well. Flight Simulator is a 3D application that differs from others because the variables that constantly change in textures and level of details to include weather, AI traffic, geography, populated areas and effects. In order to get FS to perform smoothly with the aircraft being released, such as PMDG products, it usually requires changes to the cloud textures and other FS9.cfg tweaks to produce satisfactory results with the big planes around large airports. It also requires the system (OS) be tuned for peak efficiency.

Backin the days of Windows95 and 2000, there were some really good OS and registry tweaks that would give boosts in performance. With WindowsXP that has changed. Just as 99% of the WindowsXP registry performance hacks posted on the internet are total placebo bunk, there are allot of myths about setting and tweaks in FS which produce nothing more that placebo results. Tuning FS for an acceptable performance to quality ratio is a strictly dependant on the individual system and personal preference. The rest is system wide related.

7.      Clean out all the temp files that are not in use by the system from: C:\Windows\Temp

[move][size=200]

12.

.... UPDATING OR INSTALLING DRIVERS

As Always, shut down any ANTIVIRUS programs prior to making driver updates

When motherboard or video drivers are installed into todays systems there are dependancies that allot of people are not aware of. The best way to make sure you are getting a 100% registered driver installtion is to do the following when updating the motherboard OR the video drivers (either one):


1.
Uninstall all the motherboard drivers, reboot

2.
Uninstall ALL the video drivers, including any video support programs the drivers use such as with ATI the Cat Control Center. Make sure everything that has to do with that video driver is uninstalled and reboot again.

There is a reason for that and I highly recommend both the motherboard drivers AND video drivers be removed when updating EITHER the motherboard OR the video adapter. Upon removal of drivers the OS may install one from its own internal database, which is fine... reboot if Windows instructs you to do so. Once all of the rebooting is completed, continue to the next step. Cancel any "Windows is looking for drivers

Not a bad tweaking guide, however, its not that good either!!!

For example,

It refers to turning off the "page file" if you have 1 to 2 GB RAM. I would STRONGLY advise anybody running Battlefield 2 to NOT do this, BF2 will not like no "Page file" on a 1GB System I assure you!

Also, theres a fair  few "Myths" in there that I know from experience are far from "Mythical" at all..... - The CPU Priority tweak for a start, this is the only way (despite my specs) I can get older games such as Toca Race Driver to run without stutters....

For my money, the best Windows  security & optimisation guides can be found here....



Baddass' Guide to Windows Performance, Optimization and Tweaking

Ivers Guide to keeping your system secure and safe.

Enjoy! -  Theres alot to read!

Not a bad tweaking guide, however, its not that good either!!!

For example,

It refers to turning off the "page file" if you have 1 to 2 GB RAM. I would STRONGLY advise anybody running Battlefield 2 to NOT do this, BF2 will not like no "Page file" on a 1GB System I assure you!


The CPU Priority tweak for a start, this is the only way (despite my specs) I can get older games such as Toca Race Driver to run without stutters....

You did not read my post correctly.... It says turning the page file off is a MYTH

And whatever melts your butter when it comes to CPU priority changes on a single CPU system. Most of them have nothing but a placebo effect on a 3D based programs unless the program being boosted is mathematically based such as Seti@home. I will explain why

Nick N., very informative!

I did all the steps but I am having trouble with Step #2 which is the video card latency.

On my Dell Inspiron 5150,

[quote]Nick N., very informative!

I did all the steps but I am having trouble with Step #2 which is the video card latency.

On my Dell Inspiron 5150,

I have never had any problems with the version I am using which is v1.02 although in googleing the issue there was someone else that posted the same issue about v2.7.

I assume you had it set to: APPLY ON STARTUP ?

Right click the video adapter line in v2.7 and select: Quickset Latency

Does it change?

Done all that and it still goes back to 248 on the next restart.  It doesn't permently stay at 32 like I tried to set it to.

[quote]

Done all that and it still goes back to 248 on the next restart.

I hate to say it but out of all the tray tool programs, ATITool has the least effect on a system and it does have an option to change the latency...

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

see if that helps


I am assuming you are trying to smooth graphics out a bit. Dropping the latency does not speed anything up in the way of frames (22FPS will still be 22FPS), but in most cases will make the same frame rate smooth instead of jittery.

I have NVIDIA, not a ATI.  I installed that and ran it, it won't let me change any settings because I do not have a ATI card installed.

I even donwloaded PCI Latency 1.02v and tried it, same results.

What could be the problem?

Also why isn't my other comp's video card showing up on the PCI Latency program?

[quote]

I have NVIDIA, not a ATI.

You can also download nlite and tweak most parameters onto a custom windows install CD, so when you load your op sys, it's ready to rock! It also integrates service packs, MS updates and drivers into your WinXP install disk for a clean, one step installation of windows with no backup files and so much more, err, I mean less   .

Nick, you seem to know quite a bit about system maintenance, thanks for all the suggestions.  I have been having lots of FS errors reporting involving the ntdll.dll.  I uninstalled my sim, completely cleaned the system, reinstalled and after a few hours the errors returned.  I dont know much about the ntdll, can I pull it off the install disk and replace the current one?  Wil this cause major problems within the system?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Todd

System specs: Pent 4 2.6 ghz with 800 FSB
Soyo Dragon plus 2 Mother board
1 gig 3200 Ram
ATI 9600 Pro 128 using Cat 5.10
2, 80 gig Maxtor HD with 8mb buffer
Win XP SP 2
FS is run on D drive and is only program on there.