Simviation Forums

Are any of you doing this?
I have FSX running very nicely on a new machine I just built a couple of weeks ago.

But I would really like to use my PMDG 737, so was planning to install FS9 as well.
I would not install to 'C' (where FSX is installed) but obviously a load of FS9 files are going to go to 'C' no matter where I install it.


Just wondering if installing both of them could cause problems or conflicts.

thanks

I have both FSX and FS9 installed and have no problems. But I did put them on seperate hard drives.
I did this so as not to put so much on my main hard drive. One of the ways to make either sims run a little better is to have them on a seperate drive than your operating system. It seems that FSX takes a little more space than that of fs9. I do not have much of any thing else on that hard drive there fore I do not have to defrag it as often. 8-)

It's strange how many people believe there would be conflicts between those two games. They are two different games installing in two different folders, why would there be any problem ?  :-?

Thanks Gary,
I only have one big hard drive in the machine at the moment so will give it a try on a separate partition and see how it goes..

"It's strange how many people believe there would be conflicts between those two games. They are two different games installing in two different folders, why would there be any problem ?"

Did he say games?    ::)

Thanks Gary,
I only have one big hard drive in the machine at the moment so will give it a try on a separate partition and see how it goes..

Never partition a performance hard drive with the OS or a game on it. Leave it with 100's of gigs of free space if necessary and use folders, not partitions, to sort data.

Partitions are for backups, music, videos, and storage not drives which require read performance to deliver content

When you partition a drive, every single file call that is read by the system for the game and OS must also read the partition data. its like putting a 'speed-bump' in the road, or, extending the data size that must be read. You add in that duplicate read for every file being called and it adds up fast.


FSX works fine on a separate hard drive. FS9 can work the same but tends to have a few background arguments looking for files it wont find without scanning the other disks. Still, if the system if fast engough the arguments FS9 displays wont hinder it that much however slower systems should always install FS9 to the OS drive.

That's interesting.
I have a 40 gig. C and approximately 180 gig E partition, the rest of the drive is used for Linux which I dual boot with XP Pro.

I have some, but not all programs installed to C. It is my belief that you can install software anywhere you want to and I have always done it that way with no problems ever. the Windows registry doesn't care where you install programs.

I am not a gamer, but have ran the last three versions of MSFS with never any issues.
You may have something there, although I can't see the speed bump theory being an issue with today's fast SATA hard drives and dual core processors.

I appreciate your input.
So, given my particualar setup, would you put FS9 on C or E.
I'm thinking E would be the best thing.
the reason I even asked this question was based on some posts on different forums about people having issues with cfg. files getting mixed up and leading to problems. Could have been nothing at all or problems releted to any number of things.

I don't believe that on a clean well maintained system this would ever be an issue, but just thought I would ask in case someone had a problem..
thanks again... 8-)

Let me put it like this


The difference between the typical computer tech and even the typical IT

[quote]
The difference between the typical computer tech and even the typical IT

Hi,

I have read all this tech. stuff on the subject. I am sure there is some truth to most of it however
I have a practical answer to your question.

I have both FSX and FS9 on my machine, both on C:\Program Files, their folders side by side.

I have nearly 500 files on FSX and some additional files on FS9 (planes that wont show in FSX). I
have not had a single mixup between the two porgrams.

So I say that you can put the two programs on the same machine, anywhere on your hard drive
that you like.

Have fun,   DB      

Then, for what it's worth, I suggest you partition your hard drive.

Split it down further too.

Then again the last statement made tends to suggest otherwise (it isn't theory either) so unless you are sure your friend is right, I suggest you not partition and allow the NTFS system to function, with the proper free space, MFT and without forcing the head to seek. As for the details, there is a latency factor being applied by placing a partition table(s) into a mechanical hard drive.

It matters not. What ever works for you, thats fine

Buffering using mechanical or limited bandwidth solid state bus means only goes so far and in a high performance system, is useless. There is a cache to buffer spec for all mechanical drives which means the drive can never exceed that spec for I/O. The only buffer that 'theoretically' adds to performance would be a solid state buffer that is not restricted by a USB (30-40MBs) or older PCI bus systems. In that Robson Technology by Intel is being developed for PCIe bandwidth which will allow solid state buffering of data. It uses the Vista Ready-Boot and Ready-drive systems and it also has its limits which are related to motherboard bus technology, in other words, you are better off on 4 gigs of high speed system memory than using Robson Technology or Ready-boost in Vista and trying to run 1-2gigs of PM.

The best HDD system is solid state whereby partitioning and mechanical latency have absolutely no influence on file reads. The second best is a dedicated RAID, SCSI or SATA card which has a dedicate DDR2 RAM memory onboard to cache with the system RAM and communicate at only the limits placed on it by the card slot. In that 64bit PCIe or PCIx increases that ability by quite a lot, however, it all comes down to the bottleneck a mechanical drive places on a system to begin with. Memory fills up and that drive has to be paged regardless of the buffer in place, therefore, it is best to purchase a drive with the highest 'Buffer to Disk" rating possible and the lowest access specs and not slow it down further by forcing more mechanical activity.

Many people think because a WD Raptor is a SATA 150 drive, their SATA 300 is faster, on the contrary, the buffer to disk spec for a WD 150 Raptor is 80MB/s and a SATA 300 sits at about 56-65MB/s max. That, and the fact the Raptor has a 10,000 RPM platter with lower access specs, makes it much, much faster.

To partition such performance setups is, quite frankly, rediculous

NickN:  do you ever plan to visit Australia?  My computer needs you.