FSX Benchmark

[fabiane]

I just read Gary Dunne's tests on FSX performace on linked on the avsim mainpage.

He draws some interesting conclusions / summary:

1. SP1 gives just over double the performance of RTM and SP2 adds another 10% with DX9 on Vista 64
2. SP2 DX10 is 25% slower than SP2 DX9, however when bloom is enabled, DX10 performs the same but DX9 loses 37% performance on Vista 64
3. Max sliders is unplayable in SP1, SP2 DX9 and SP2 DX10 at around 6 FPS average and mass blurries set in within 30 seconds on Vista 64
4. My SP1 optimum setting configuration goes from a 13% benefit to a 5% deficit between SP1 and SP2 on Vista 64
5. Enabling widescreen support causes a 9% performance drops with SP1 and only a 5% performance drop with SP2 on Vista 64
6. Using TH2G, which increases pixel output threefold, elicits a nearly 30% performance drop in SP1 but a lower 23% performance drop in SP2 on Vista 64
7. Using cores 0 and 1 out of all four cores incurs a 3% performance loss, however gives a 7% performance boost when cores 2 and 3 are used on Vista 64
8. A 50% CPU overclock translates to a 34% performance gain, which is an efficiency factor of 68%, on both OSs
9. Running 1066MHz FSB versus 1600MHz FSB results in neglible performance difference (<0.5%) on Vista 64
10. The highest recorded performance was 35 FPS average with SP2 DX9 Global High settings and the CPU overclocked to 3.6GHz on Vista 64
11. XP Pro is 4% faster than Vista 64 with RTM
12. Vista 64 is 4-6% faster than XP Pro with both SP1 and SP2, with CPU overclocking causing the highest difference
13. The gains in XP Pro going from RTM through SP1 and SP2 are approx 10% less than with Vista 64
14. Reducing FSX core use from 4 to 2 cores with XP Pro resulted in a 2% (cores 0&1) to 7% (cores 2&3) performance boost

Find his whole thread here

Cheers,
Fabian

[Wingo]

Those are some interesting results! Hopefully it will show Vista bashers that it helps rather then hinders FSX.

What I find interesting is the performance gain that he recieved by reducing from 4 to 2 cores. Wouldn't this create a performance reduction?

[reider]

I noticed my Vista 64 bit was faster with FSX and only on a single core.  I use a dual core on another machine most of the time though and this runs Vista 32 bit, I have FSX Deluxe and Standard.  I had heard people saying XP was faster with FSX but was quite happy with my setup and the FPS.  Due to checking out another unrelated problem I formatted the drive and reinstalled FSX, SP1 and 2 via Accelleration.  Even with careful tuning and defragging, the FPS was no where near that of my Vista 32 bit setup, let alone the 64 bit.  It didn`t fix the unrelated problem either, which I now think I`m beginning to sort out back on Vista 32 bit for good this time.

Not benchmarked here, but plain to see and so easy to spot the big difference!  The grass on the other side is not always greener.....

Reider  

[Camel_Moe]

Despite his results, there is still differences in machines to take into account.
Last night, I reinstalled FSX back to XP on my dual boot systems, so that I can run it either way.
All I did was copy the FSX config for vista (DX9 of course) over to the XP installation. Ended up with a major FPS increase on XP with SP1 and Accelleration installed.
And despite some reporting bloom doesn't hurt them in DX10, I lose 15% to 20% FPS using it on the vista install.
Different machines=different results.

[Werd]

Different machines=different results.

for sure
I wasnt lucky with acceleration. SP1 was perfectly configured and runned at ~15 fps in average over New York (and much more elsewhere obv). I had HUGE fps drops with SP2 (like 30% to 9-11 fps) with same settings.