Simviation Forums

Hi nick, first of all, thank you for considering helping me out! Cant thank you enough

Okay here we go, im going to start from teh beggining:

its a dell 720 h2c, at the time i didnt know any better or i wouldve built my own. anyways, i wiped out the hard drive and instaleld a retail XP sp2, so dell junk isnt a problem anymore, and the only gripe i ahve is the limited bios.

Hardware:

QuadCore Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700, 3466 MHz (13 x 267)
nVIDIA nForce 680i SLI
(3GB) 2816 MB

OK I will look this over and post back later

2 thing first though

This memory issue concerns me. Please download and run CPUz

http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz_147.zip

and post the CPU, Memory and SPD tabs (note: with the SPD tab make sure a popumated slot is selected in the drop-down)

2nd.. 2x8800GT? That right there can be a problem. I assume you ae not running FSX in SLi mode and only using one card? If you are trying to run SLi you may as well hang it up with FSX. Its not worth the headaches of trying to get it balanced and you will not see a single frame more with a single card over SLi. All SLi will allow is higher AA (16-32AA) and then you are pounding the CPU so the gains are shadowed by the loss.

If you are trying to run SLi.. disable SLi and only run 1 card

Uh-oh I was running SLI. will turn it off.


Here are the CPU-Z results:

UTX

Make the following changes:

The UTX NIGHT LIGHTING feature has the most impact on performance.

I highly recommend you enter the UTX settings and make the following changes..

FOR USA and CANADA

NIGHT LIGHTING

first i wanted to let you know im making a documentary on antarctica right now, went there last winter, and as appreciation for helping me set up FSX and my machine, i would like to give you a copy when its finished. if you PM me you email, ill let you know when its done. its people like you that do this kind of amazing help without wanting anything back that make their respective communities (FSX here) a good place to be. taht shouldnt go unnoticed.

ok since i guess this is my thread lol is it alright if i ask you about some hardware stuff? now that you know my system and my FSX and how they run together, i wanted to ask you a couple pieces of advice on upgrades, but please feel free to say no, you have already performed a minor miracle on my machine

as you can see and as I pointed out to Vic... more is not always worse and less can be worse than more in FSX.



It sounds to me like everything is working correctly but you are held back by that Dell system

The only thing you can do with the current system would be to upgrade the memory to 2x2GB DDR2 800 CAS3 or 4 MAX which would help but you also have to find out if that tower will accept 2x2GB in the slots.. it may not

That would assist but you are still held back by the motherboard. If you could get that proc to 3.6GHz it would go a long way too. They will do 3.6GHz but it requires a 1.44-1,46v vcore and a HSF that can handle that load.. you also must shut down the CPU speedstep and other CPU features such as CE1, Vanderpool, etc.. all the CPU power management features in the BIOS must be shut down.


Did you DISABLE the UTX 'moving traffic' feature to see how much of an impact that was having?

Another thing you can do is replace the default AI with WOAI airlines and GA traffic from a few sources. Its not an easy job and it has to be done right by disabling the FSX aircraft traffic bgl file correctly and also updating the WOAI and GA traffic BGLs to FSX using a special converter tool.

Removing the high poly AI load in AI and raising the AI sliders can help but as I said it is quite a job to accomplish

I assume there are no partitions on this 500GB hard drive... if there are, and you are not running FSX on the 1st partition installed directly into Windows that will also slow you down quite a bit. Best way to run FSX is on its own drive with no partitions but baring that, Windows and FSX should be on the same drive and located on the 1st partition if a partition exists on that drive


The same system that would do best for video editing will do best for FSX with one exception... in video production you want a RAID array which uses 16K as a STRIPE or BLOCK size and in FSX you want a RAID array that uses 256K to 500K for a STRIPE or block size and in BOTH cases you do NOT want to use motherboard RAID0.

A professional RAID0 solution is the key...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816116042


one that will allow you to set up 2 arrays, one for editing 16K STRIPE) and one for FSX (256K STRIPE). In both cases the best drives for such purposes would be the Samsung 32MB cache 500GB drives or the WD Raptor. The newer Samsung drives are much cheaper than the Raptors however because they are being used in RAID0 you can take full advantage of the 32MB cache and those Samsung drives are better suited for AV production in small STRIPE RAID when used in RAID.. as single drives they are not fast, only in multi drive RAID systems with those 32MB cache Samsung drives perform equal or better than a Raptor.

With Nehalem hitting the streets next month I would wait before building.. after the first of the year you will have a much better choice for upgrading and the expense of DDR3 can go into a i7 platform where it belongs so you get the full DDR3 perf ability out of the cost.

by the way.. clocking the video card a bit can help too



The main problem now is the hardware more than anything else however we can try a few other things to see if any changes occur... try the UTX moving traffic disable first

Ok took me a while to fully appreciate your post, needed to do some research!

I will wait for nehalem processors to upgrade.  8-)

at that point i would need:

1. LGA1366 motherboard, such as the X58
2. the nehalem processor
3. ddr-3 memory

is that correct?

as for right now, im going to upgrade the memory. i can take 2X2gb. my problem now is selecting one. will any of these three be the same?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145194

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146726

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231192

my only concern would be to get the 4-4-4-12 timing out of the box, since my  motherboard doesnt let me mess around with timings, only 1t or 2t.

i have this EPP memory sli thing, should i not even bother with that right nwo since at the end of the year im gonna be upgrading all anyways, and this is just a temporary thing?

and finally, as for the hard drive, i don't think have the technical expertise to configure that real RAID array thing. would the process be as simple as instal controller, plug HDDs into it, and configure to RAID 0 in bios? b/c if its way more involved then im not that good lol.  
in that case, would just getting a 10K rpm drive to put FSX on it seperately improve anything? b/c that would be pretty easy.

ok cool tx!!  :)

as for the FSX settings, I will try them now and report to you when im done.

as of right now, i have my cpu running stable at

QX6700, 3466 MHz (13 x 267)

32C with no load

would rivatuner be good to overclock the GPU?

EDIT

i haev no partitions on the drive.

You know,,.

Here is the problem with that board... if you have no way of verifying the board will run the sticks at the correct timing, and many Dell's and OEMs lower timing in 4GB situations.. and, you have no control over the memory voltage which must allow 2.1-2.2v then upgrading the memory would be a crap-shoot

As for RAID.. you would need to learn how to set up the card I posted and also use its onboard BIOS to set up the STRIPE and base settings in the arrays before they are created and there are instructions for accesing the cards BIOS and I posted the settings for the card to someone else here:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 99753803#3

The card goes in a 2nd x16 video card slot so the motherbioard must have 2 video card slots available and only one video card in use, or, one of the new boards coming out which may have 3-4 PCIe x16 slots... or a single PCIe 8x slot will also work

The single Vrap is plug and go and would be easier for you to deal with


Riva tuner is probably the best way to do it but you do need to learn how to not overclock too far too.

Heres what im thinking of doing:

Im going to do the major upgrade around january or february. So thats about 4 monhts until i get my ultimate FSX solution. 4 months justifies a new board i have control over and faster memory. so this is mostly to free myself from dell and geain control over motherboard and memory and my system once and for all.

im thinking this combo:
board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131295

memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146785
btw can it be 4X1GB or is 2x2GB better?


Then in january ill get i7 w/ ddr3 and RAID.

gonna test fsx right now.

EDIT

was at new egg checkking out different combos and stuff and believe or not i accidentaly just bought the stuff i just mentioned, mb, ram and a 10k raptor drive. well, oh well lol. if id doesnt work ill just return it i guess. i have the newegg preacct thing so i hit go to look at finance but it was submit.

come january ill transfer to i7/ddr3 and get a samsung 32mb RAID going, put windows in the 10K drive.

btw how do i get xp32 going with the 4gb?

Your right.. the Q boards are budget boards and that may have been a mistake although they do have access to the BIOS settings you need and it will be better than that Dell POS

I just went through a setup on a Q budget board with someone and the FSB was very limited.. it topped out at 400

That would still have you running faster than that Dell garbage though


You ALWAYS go 2x2GB, never 4x1GB and with Asus boards there are usually high and low speed memory slots. Check the manual for which slots should be used for high speed memory

I dont know about the Mushkin product but I know these do DDR2 1080 stable @ CAS 5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145197




>btw how do i get xp32 going with the 4gb?

(3GB) 2816 MB

One other thing too

you said you had 2 video cards running... did those cards come in the box from Dell?

what kind of power supply did Dell provide for this?

I have to wonder because Dell is not known for good PSU's and i would be concerned about that especailly with 2 video cards in the system

The Q board will only allow 1 video card be used which is fine for FSX

Ok i found a way to cancel my order.

Which MB would you suggest that can do a better FSB and tweak settings? and ill get that dominator you suggested instead too.

You already have 3GB... its the same process
did you set that up by the list in the thread??

i followed the list exactly, so i did do the /3gb, but i thought it would be different for 4 gb. when i said 4gb i was referring to the memory im gonna buy

did those cards come in the box from Dell?

They did. I just got done removing one of them. Am running 1 8800 GT right now.

what kind of power supply did Dell provide for this?

got a 1000W Power supply that has been very stable, in that department they did good

Also, there is a humongous liquid cooling system on top of my processor. occupies 1/4 of the case almost (and the case is huge too) my overclocked (3.5ghz) quad has been iddling at 32, so that component is also pretty good, and im gonna keep both on my new setup.

alrighty then!