FSX & SLI

[Nick N]

continued from the previous page


Let

[ATI_7500]

Chkdsk messed up your startup?

Aye. It refused to start when I attempted to start it in Windows (I checked the two options..."Auto-correct file system errors" and "Look for faulty sectors, then restore" (Or something like that)). It then offered me to start at the next system boot. When I rebooted, it "stopped" at the blinking cursor (got no boot screen enabled) and a lot of HDD activity (the light on my case was not blinking, it was lit up). I let that run for about an hour but it didn't change. So, being a bit impatient (a status bar would have been nice or something), I cancelled by rebooting. Getting into Windows again was a bit troublesome, but I managed to get in via "Use last working configuration" (System Restore hooray! ).

Did you shut down system restore or is that still enabled at this point in time?

Still enabled.

[quote]I would not think it would be an issue either since the add-on AI traffic bgl

[Nick N]

Chkdsk messed up your startup?

Aye. It refused to start when I attempted to start it in Windows (I checked the two options..."Auto-correct file system errors" and "Look for faulty sectors, then restore" (Or something like that)). It then offered me to start at the next system boot. When I rebooted, it "stopped" at the blinking cursor (got no boot screen enabled) and a lot of HDD activity (the light on my case was not blinking, it was lit up). I let that run for about an hour but it didn't change. So, being a bit impatient (a status bar would have been nice or something), I cancelled by rebooting. Getting into Windows again was a bit troublesome, but I managed to get in via "Use last working configuration" (System Restore hooray! ).

Did you shut down system restore or is that still enabled at this point in time?

Still enabled.

[quote]I would not think it would be an issue either since the add-on AI traffic bgl

[ATI_7500]

"Use Last Known Good Configuration" on a F-8 boot has nothing to do with system restore. That functions works just fine and exactly the same without system restore enabled.

Very good. Then I'm gonna switch off system restore.

No need to reinstall on C. But be aware, a partition is much, much worse than running 2 hard drives because the head of the drive has to seek across C to get to D every time a file is being called up... not a good performance setup.  

Yeah, but I don't need a second HDD, since I've already had trouble getting my old 80GB disk full.

Get C cleaned up and optimized with O&O

Mkay, will do.

... and I would really like to know why check disk is not working. That is not right. The only way check disk will fail is if something is writing to the hard drive at low level and wont allow it to have access. Low level boot bugs do that.

It would only take 4-8 hours if there is a problem. Normally it should complete between 45 minutes and 1-2 hours at most. It may have been running and you simply became impatient. It is not a good idea to stop a check disk in operation however being there was not screen displayed I can understand why you may have thought it was best to stop it cold.

Does Chkdsk rely on any windows components for operation?

[Nick N]

"Use Last Known Good Configuration" on a F-8 boot has nothing to do with system restore. That functions works just fine and exactly the same without system restore enabled.

Very good. Then I'm gonna switch off system restore.

[quote]No need to reinstall on C. But be aware, a partition is much, much worse than running 2 hard drives because the head of the drive has to seek across C to get to D every time a file is being called up... not a good performance setup.

[Black ZR-1]

Just a head's up. New Nvidia drivers released today

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Not for this old man

I'm don't have one of those 8800 cards. According to the site the 78-7900 series are still November of last year.

I have a feeling they are going to drop support for all cards that are not designed with the Vista hardware seal of approval and spy chip installed

Bummer! I didn't realize they were for 8800 cards only. I got a 3+ FPS increase with them in FSX  :)

[Black ZR-1]

Nick, brilliant writeup.

The reason why FSX runs so poorly out of the box for most people is because it's not properly setup by default. Your 1:2 ratio theory and my many hours of test & tune expirements clearly proved that.

Waiting for part 2

[ATI_7500]

Nick, I defragged my C: file (3*Complete\Name, 1* Space) but I don't know when I'll have the time for the chkdsk stuff over the weekend.
Soonest date would be monday or maaaybe sunday.

So you have one person less to worry about for the next few days.

[Nick N]

Nick, I defragged my C: file (3*Complete\Name, 1* Space) but I don't know when I'll have the time for the chkdsk stuff over the weekend.
Soonest date would be monday or maaaybe sunday.

So you have one person less to worry about for the next few days.

No problem. When ever you get to it is fine and I think it is a good idea to run chkdsk from the CD and see if it finds any problems.

I run that utility once evey 6 months on all my mechanical drives to ensure there are no hidden problems waiting to surprise me.


Have you noticed since going through the thread and completing the steps and now the O&O service a system boot and running speed difference?

[Nick N]

The reason why FSX runs so poorly out of the box for most people is because it's not properly setup by default. Your 1:2 ratio theory and my many hours of test & tune expirements clearly proved that.

It's not so much that it runs poorly out of the box by default as it is people trying to run the sliders too high for their hardware...

But, lets face it, when you are trying to dial something in to smooth it out and you sit there thinking more is bad, less is better, and that only works if the load is balanced (autogen and all the other numbers) then you can pull your hair out for hours trying different numbers that seem to almost make it, but not quite. It's at that point one must decide to accept less visually appealing autogen or really bad performance.

It may turn out it is best to maintain the 1:2 ratio when testing. Since I started playing with the numbers I have found maintaining that ratio seems to provide the best result. It does not mean what I see or how I am calculating things is correct. That

[Nick N]

and one other thing...


going back to the FSX default values:

TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=4500
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000

my thinking here is *perhaps* someone knew there was an issue with the trees and foliage and perhaps that value was scaled back to 1:1.5 instead of 1:2 because of a last ditch attempt to make a quick fix until the real issue could be addressed at a later date.

Just a thought, and not one that has any basis in fact

I find it strange the building factor remained in sync with FS9 but the greens are not



The reason the cloud9 landclass has a positive affect on the system is because it disperses the autogen in a different pattern which removes trees, houses and buildings from areas they do not belong and places them better in areas they do. This just happens to work in the KSEA area and may be different around Chicago or other areas. It does not mean upgraded landclass will improve the sim performance everywhere on the planet but in my opinion I would rather set up the sim based on the right landclass which will display the world with more accurate results than one that does not.

Settings and add-ons, it is the combination of the two working together that make it all work.

For experiment purposes in research I asked the default LC be run along with default traffic however I would probably set it all up with everything installed under normal circumstances IF I know for a fact the add-ons do work correctly. If I was not sure I would set it up by the default as we did, save the FSX.cfg file and then add my extras one at a time to be sure something I am putting in the sim is not going to make my day miserable, which happens all the time to people and they cant figure out which one of 50 add-ons is giving them grief. Until all these new add-ons are out and tested very well I would be very careful of what I add to the default sim.

Things like porting UT designed for FS9 is not my high list of good ideas especially since it is not endorsed or supported and was put out there as a quick fix for those who just can not wait. I can not say porting UT is a good or bad thing but the amount of FS9 files being imported to FSX is in my opinion pretty high. Personally, I would wait for the FSX version to be released.

With SP1 coming in less than 30 days, after that is when you can expect the better add-ons to start seeing daylight on the market. I don't blame them for waiting either.

[Black ZR-1]

I'm gonna go ahead and say this: the Cloud 9 LC was the 3rd best thing I've done to my system.

[justpassingthrough]

[quote]
So I gave miltest some some-what mixed numbers and asked him to work it out.

[macca22au]

Quite brilliant.  I am away from my gaming machine for the moment, which has a 6700 CPU, an 8800 card, 4 gigs of RAM, and Vista.  I will reinstall the original autogen, and test it with a 2000 trees/1000 buildings per cell.  The Leclerq Trees_v2 do provide three quality options, and also an option to reduce canopy.  After a few test runs, I will post my results, but your empirical theory seems well based in results, so thank you for such a thoughtful contribution.  ACES would do well to employ you!

[Nick N]

[quote]Quite brilliant.