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Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 4:17 am
by richardd43
FSX-SP1  With everything set at medium high I was getting excellent frame rates over Los Angeles. Heading north towards China Lake at about 7500 feet and about 20 minutes into flight the FPS dropped to 2-4 FPS and never recovered.

I shut FSX down and restarted the sim. With the same aircraft I flew the same route as before without a problem. The problem has come up on numerous flights but is not consistant.

I also can't finish a flight and start a new one without rebooting FSX first. The new flight will try to start at 2-3 FPS. All of my temps are OK so am not not concerned with them.  I have no idea what settings I need to change. (changed the sliders to default and had the same problem).

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 12:40 pm
by Nick N
[quote]FSX-SP1

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:57 pm
by richardd43
I also noticed the flight change issue myself but in RTM. I can take off after landing, I just cant switch planes without the view being messed up and strange load problems. Its always required I exit and reboot the sim to use another plane after a flight has been completed.


I did not explain to clearly. I meant a new flight with a different airplane. I can land and take off ok with the same airplane.

I am flying in XP Pro.

Threaded Optimization is selected and currently set to Auto, will give that a try.

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 2:40 pm
by Nick N
I also noticed the flight change issue myself but in RTM. I can take off after landing, I just cant switch planes without the view being messed up and strange load problems. Its always required I exit and reboot the sim to use another plane after a flight has been completed.


I did not explain to clearly. I meant a new flight with a different airplane. I can land and take off ok with the same airplane.

I am flying in XP Pro.

Threaded Optimization is selected and currently set to Auto, will give that a try.


Thats what I meant too... I never could swich aircraft in RTM after landing and have it run right. I always had to close and set up a new flight to change planes.

When it happens, try ALT-ENTER twice to reload the screen and see if it stabilizes. Usually takes a few seconds after it refreshes for frames to go back up.


XP Pro.. Do play with the TO setting in the driver. Being it is not a problem that shows up and you can match a scenery or sim change to the event, I am not sure if its a bug or a thread issue which a config tweak may fix

I do know PTaylor mentions a few things here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2 ... n-sp1.aspx

Which you might want to review and see if anything pops into mind as it is happening.

With the FSX.cfg now controlling affinity, perhaps adding that to the config may make a difference?


[quote]There is a tweak to control scheduling of threads on cores.

It is not recommended to change these settings unless you have a performance reduction and/or maxed out CPU loads in the PerfMonitor. The tweak is

Edit:Fixed a typo here
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=n
where
n      num of cores scheduled
1

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 9:39 pm
by richardd43
It is looking like a dual core problem. Set affinity to 1 and never saw the problem, reset to 3 and first flight dropped the FPS to 3 after about 1 minute of flight. ALT + ENTER did reset it though.

Had to let the birds out, will double check it in a bit.

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 1:00 am
by Nick N
It is looking like a dual core problem. Set affinity to 1 and never saw the problem, reset to 3 and first flight dropped the FPS to 3 after about 1 minute of flight. ALT + ENTER did reset it though.

Had to let the birds out, will double check it in a bit.



I assume you do have the WindowsXP dual core hotfiix, confirmed the reg key is set for it ,... and have the AMD Processor/Driver Dual Core Optimizer installed?

If so then being an thread issue would suggest either a driver that may not like the threads or bug

It may be specific to video, chipset or a combination. Since SP1 was just released it may ba a week or so before common issues surface that can be identified as either FSX or other areas.

You may have to fly on 1 core for a while until it gets locked down for sure.

I will be installing SP1 this weekend. If I start seeing erratic behavior like that I will look into it

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 1:57 am
by richardd43
After I posted I installed the optimizer... sigh. That helped a little but was not a cure all. (With the optimizer installed do I still need the hot fix?)

I loaded the first profile we did for the bios and that was a disaster, the screen would go white for a couple of seconds then would be ok.

I tried our second bios profile and it worked absolutely great. The frame rates are up and all of the stuttering is gone. But, I don't think it was the CPU speed change that did it. We might want to compare profile 2 to the stock settings and see if there is something obvious that you had me change there.

I still have the problem with changing to a new flight with a different airplane. All is not lost though, it gives me time to get a fresh drink while FSX boots back up.

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 2:39 am
by Nick N
After I posted I installed the optimizer... sigh. That helped a little but was not a cure all. (With the optimizer installed do I still need the hot fix?)

I loaded the first profile we did for the bios and that was a disaster, the screen would go white for a couple of seconds then would be ok.

I tried our second bios profile and it worked absolutely great. The frame rates are up and all of the stuttering is gone. But, I don't think it was the CPU speed change that did it. We might want to compare profile 2 to the stock settings and see if there is something obvious that you had me change there.

I still have the problem with changing to a new flight with a different airplane. All is not lost though, it gives me time to get a fresh drink while FSX boots back up.



There has been some debate about the need for the fix and the optimizer. After testing it all myself on several systems I have seen success and failure with one or the other but I have yet to see a failure with them both installed, not to say it may happen

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 3:12 am
by richardd43
[quote]got side tracked in between the flu and pushing to get ready for my trip

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 3:51 am
by Nick N
[quote][quote]got side tracked in between the flu and pushing to get ready for my trip

Re: Eratic FPS

PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 6:04 am
by richardd43
LOL...Am not surprised you will track one of the big boys. I have taken the ferry a couple of times and we always had a couple of boats shadowing us.

As far as the Sim goes, a few weeks of stuttering across the sky might make some of us look this stuff up ourselves. I know I have become very complacent waiting for someone else to ask/answer a question. But I have CRS so thats ok, everyone else can find their own excuse.... ROFL

All joking aside I wish you the best of luck on your trip and make sure the 1st and 2nd mates have their cameras with them.