FS9 Performance

[Batman93210]

I have about 3 GB of aircraft, in my FS9 maine aircraft folder. My question is will having this many aircraf in my fs9 aircrat folder effect who the game runs?  ;D

[Max_Power]

The size of your aircraft folder should not affect in game performance much. It will affect loading time when you try to change aircraft ,etc, But as far as framerates it doesnt have much impact. The bigger worry is the size of the Gauges folder.....Todd

[Batman93210]

Realy;

Os what would I do to help the performance?

My computre is a Dell Dimension 4600 with a Pentium 4 3.06GHz ,128MB DDR NVidie GeForce FX 5200 graphics card, with 512MB SDRAM at 333MHZ. I,m not tring to berag. The raesen I say all of this is beacas when I try to fly rael wether FS9 is real jerky, and slow. What would be a best settings for FS9 ;? D

[MichaelH]

Well, FS9 is a real pig when it comes to resources.

You have a good powerful CPU there but the FX 5200 card is not really very good for this flight simulator. And, your memory is a weak spot. This sim likes  1 gig. of mem (1024)
to perform well.

A few things to think about:


Make sure your drive is cleaned up, checked for errors and defragged regularly. Make sure everything else including your antivirus program is shut down while running the sim.

Are you using Direct X 9?

Get the latest drivers from Nvidia if you don't already have them (ver. 61.77)

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_61.77

Also, many Windows XP services are not needed and can be disabled. Take a look at the site below.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

[Batman93210]

Thanks for the info

I have upgraded the Direct X 9 to Direct X 9c. So a better graphics card would help? would it also help to shutdown MaCafee?

[MichaelH]

would it also help to shutdown MaCafee?

Yes, by all means. You don't need that running while you are flying. It's just eating up CPU cycles and memory that could be used by your simulator.

Basically, you don't want anything running while you are flying.
Look down at your system tray (lower right side of your desktop to the left of your clock)
shut everything down except your firewall before you start up the sim.

A lot of people use a program called end it all to do this with as little aggravation as possible:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1935,00.asp

If you decide to upgrade your video card, there are lots of people here who will steer you toward a better one for this simulator.

[Batman93210]

Yeah my brother was telling me about a graphics card, I dont remember what he called it but the thang was $400.00. So I'm going to have to wait untill I get my income Tax return for that, and more memory.

[data65]

I agree. With FS2004 1 gig of ram , minimum. Also, I just upgraded from the FX 5200 to a FX5700LE . That card does a much better job . Below are my specs.

 P4 2.66
 1 Gig PC2700 DDR ram (running at Dual Channel)
 FX5700 LE 128 meg card
 
I just built this system myself and it runs 2004 with all sliders maxed except for anti aliasing and terrain mesh at 50%, at 20 frames a second over New York City in heavy clouds. The trick is to close all running programs and get rid of all non essential windows services.

         Hope this helps

[Batman93210]

RGR that I went to the website MichaelH  told me about. It will take me some time to read the material there, and figure out what I can shut off, and what cant.

All sliders maxed what would be the best settings with the computer I'v got?? The terrain mesh looks good. I gess it a tread off I can have the terrain looking good and not to mane clouds, or good cloud cover, and so so terrain mesh. what do you thank??

[Politically Incorrect]

Get the latest drivers from Nvidia if you don't already have them (ver. 61.77)

Not true! Most of the newer drivers will decrease performance with the 5200. I have basically the same set up and find the 61.11 to be the best drivers yet.

I have tried just about every driver there is for the Nvidia cards and anything above 61.11 either decreases performance or becomes unstable . The newer drivers have all been made to run games like Far Cry which most know won't run good on a 5200, so it is really pointless trying to update to a newer driver for a video card that you know still won't run a game smooth, sort of like putting racing fuel in a lawnmower.

Of course though no two computers are alike and you may find that different drivers might work for you than for me. Only way to tell is to give them a try. But may I recommend before doing the "driver challenge" to download Driver Cleaner 3, and use it everytime you install , be sure to follow instructions and no conflicts should arise, this is the important part you must remove the old driver completely before install of a new one!!! Otherwise you'll end up with problems that will affect more than frame rates

[Delta_]

Graphics cards affect performance massively.  My Dad has a faster CPU (by quite a bit) than me, he has the same amount of RAM and he has a 128-bit 128MB FX5200 GFX card.  I perform over 3x better than he does in FS9.  So it really helps to have a good GFX card with this sim.  

Also i run higher settings than he does and have 3x more performance.

[Gixer]

For Nvidia drivers the latest official ones haven't been updated in ages now.  I just got some BETA ones from guru3d.com and have had good results.  If you look in the hardware section I think others with the FX5200 have also had good results.  Try 66.72's or 66.81's

I think the 66.72's are faster but a few peeps reported Anti Alias problems.  I use these drivers (66.72) and AA works fine so maybe they are doing somthing wrong on install?

For this sim to look its best you have to use Anti Alias.  Make sure you get yourself a good card that will handle the use if Anti Alias as the sim just looks so much better with it on.  Also use Anistropic Filtering too.

With the way things are progreesing at the moment I would suggest an ATI 9800pro or FX5900 minimum.  If you can afford it get a new gen card. One of the Nvidia 6800 range or ATI X800 range.

[data65]

Well, I love the 61.11 drivers for FS2004, but they wash out the graphics on the far cry demo. So until I beat the demo, I'll be using the drivers that came on the disk.  As for what you can do with your system to increase performance...use simple clouds. I'm not talking about the percent of 3D clouds option, but the simple clouds option. I did that with my 1.8 Gig system, and it ran as good as FS2002. All these clouds do is replicate the clouds in FS2002 ,but you still get the great high altittude clouds, plus all the other good stuff in 2004. It's a compromise that really is worth it.

[Scottler]

I've got a P4 2.0 with 640 mb RAM and an FX5200 and I haven't had this issue...make sure you've got as little as possible running in the shadows.  Check out a program called FSAutoStart or EndItAll....either are good for shutting unnecessary things down.

[MichaelH]

"RGR that I went to the website MichaelH  told me about. It will take me some time to read the material there, and figure out what I can shut off, and what cant."


Batman,
if you stick with Blackviper's  "SAFE"  configuration you should be OK.

 
Not true! Most of the newer drivers will decrease performance with the 5200. I have basically the same set up and find the 61.11 to be the best drivers yet.

Maybe you're right P. Incorrect. I havn't used an FX5200 for a long time.
The 6177 version work the best so far for me as far as any I've tried with my Ti 4800 se.