Replacing my dead computer

[Jetranger]

Heres my Video Graphics Card,, renders clouds with no problem and reflections are awsum

Fairly Quiet too !!





[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPyblM6LKHg[/youtube]

[pete]

Interesting reading.

[OldAirmail]

I've been putting together my own computers since about the mid-late '80s.

And there's one thing good about computer crashes, like it or not, - crashes give you that opportunity to have a fresh install that you would probably not do willingly.

Just like going to the dentist, no one wants to, but you do come out feeling better.

[OldAirmail]

LM reset my passwords etc. So P3d starts and runs just fine.


I guess that what they say about FSX/P3d being more affected by the CPU speed is true.

My old i5 2400K CPU was running at 3.3GHz The new i7-6700K runs at 4GHZ. The simple overclocking brings it up to 4.5GHz.

Under the i5 I was getting about 30FPS. Sometimes a little more, sometimes more than a bit less. Still, it was quite adequate.


Now? Set to "unlimited", it's showing around 160FPS.

BTW - the video card is one of the few things that is the same in both setups.

Time will tell what that means in real life, but with standard settings, it is undoubtedly smooth.

[Flacke]

And there's one thing good about computer crashes, like it or not, - crashes give you that opportunity to have a fresh install that you would probably not do willingly.

Just like going to the dentist, no one wants to, but you do come out feeling better.

LOL! truer words were never spoken. You get forced into it sometimes, and then you are glad that you did in the end.

[OldAirmail]

Have you ever run in circles until you have no idea where you are and what you did?

Welcome to Windows 10 and USB monitors.


Little by little, I'm adding back those programs that I consider essential. Tonight was the two 9 inch monitors that I use for instruments.

I started with one USB monitor, but had no luck. You could see that the backlights were coming on, but Win 10 wouldn't recognize it.

For no clear reason, I plugged in the other 9 inch monitor (the one with a touch screen). THAT ONE, lit up and started working. Then the other one started working.

Why? No clue.

Just little (idiot)oddities.

[OldAirmail]

OK, things are going well, now.

For the past couple of weeks, things WERE NOT going so well.

There was a very significant drop in my flight sim performance. I mean down from 60-70 FPS in dual screen, down to 6-7FPS.

Stutters everywhere, and the sim would actual stop for about 1 to 1.5 seconds every minute or so.



Load time was also VERY slow, too.

Everyone usually hits a slowdown at the 6% - 7% scenery mark, regardless of the drive type. Yes, an SSD will be faster than a standard HD, but it's still there.

Anyway, that slowdown at the 6% to 7% mark was taking an enormous amount of time. One, two minutes? Closer to two, I think.

It took me a couple of weeks to find the problem(s), and I can't say that I'm proud of finding the solutions.



To make this short, I'll just spell it out.

1) On an SSD NEVER select "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".



When I first set up the system, I had this un-checked on all three SSDs'. I'm thinking that one of the Windows 10 update decided to change that.

Anyway, with it checked, it seemed to be as slow as an old hard drive.

NOW, the "double click"/start to fly time on Prepar3d is back to 1 minute, 5 seconds.

I should probably post this elsewhere as a warning to check your drive properties.



2) This is the part that is embarrassing.

The smaller of the two power plugs had accidently pulled partially out of it's socket on the video card, making it look liked it was plugged in when it wasn't.





At this point I'm calling this a success.

My motherboard is over clocking the 4.00GHz Skylake CPU to 4.636GHz with fairly low temperatures (130F to 145F using the CPU water cooler). Yet it drops down to 400-600MHz when there's no real demand.

And I'm running Prepar3d on all three screens hitting 45 to 50 FPS.

I could probably chosen better parts here or there, but I'm quite happy as is.

[OldAirmail]

A parting post.

I've never tried to overclock before. To do it right you have to have it "just right".

Get it wrong and burn out something(s).


For this ASUS board there are two ways to have it "automatically" overclock it's self.

The first one involves interrupting the boot process and select a simple OC routine. That's what I did before.

The second involves starting Windows and running a program that basically (I think) keeps stepping it up until something fails. It then reverts back to the last "good" overclock settings.

That's what I did tonight.


The advantage of the second routine is that it overclocks the motherboard, CPU, and the memory.

This is the results. The speeds and temp are high only because I was starting Prepar3d in two screens. Once things settled down it would increase to maximum speed only when needed.

You end up with the best of both worlds - supper fast when you need it, and lower speed & power to help your computer last a long time. That works for me. WIN - WIN.

[Flacke]

Hello OAM, I checked my SSD properties and found that mine had the checkmark on " allow this drive to be indexed" like yours was.

I unchecked it and now my computer is much perkier/quicker overall. And it was fast before , and faster now. Thanks for the tip on this. <S>.

I would have thought that allowing indexing would make things faster, but the opposite seems to be true in the case of my SSD.

[Jean Loup]

HELLO both, OAM & Flacke. From times past (Windows XP) & before SSD drives, the PC was more agile & used less RAM with both options unchecked: Compress this drive to save disk space & Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties. Compressing (& decompresing when accesing files) would fragment files badly (slowing the PC & having to defragment more often), the indexed contens program would use more RAM than it was worth. You should NEVER defragment SSD drives, it shortens their life dramatically.
Hasta la Vista

[Awaken]

Hi guys, How do the newer AMD video cards like the R9's look with FSX? In the past I used HD4600 series card and it caused bad shimmering, has that changed with the newer cards?

[OldAirmail]

I'm using a AMD R9 280X at the moment, and it works great in both FSX & P3d.

BTW - I'm using three main monitors, a GPS monitor, and two USB monitors as well as one Saitek Pro Flight Instrument Panel.

I think that the AMD video cards give great results for much less money than NVidia.

The Problem comes in when you talk about high end, high demand, games of which group FSX can no longer be counted in.

Yes, FSX is demanding, but the upper end of either card maker will give good results.

I even had good graphics in FSX with a Radeon 5670 (with 1GB of DDR5).



Now's an interesting time to start thinking about a new video card.

Check out Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!.

It's not a "in detail" review, it's more of a heads up post.

AMD and NVidia are about to release some really great cards (in the next 30 - 60 days), and supposedly at very good prices.


Depending on your interests you might want to wait until both cards are out.

If you're interested in virtual reality, then you had better wait - Both offerings have VR enhancements built-in.

And if they are as good as the hype, and the prices are relatively low, then I'd expect that the lesser video cards might drop in price too.

[Awaken]

Thanks for the info AirMail, it will probably be about 3-6 months before I get my new card. I just want to check all possibilities, especially with my budget (around $200-250 for my graphics card).
I currently have a GTX960 in my Newegg wishlist. I don't play very demanding games, FS9,XPlane,and FSX will be the most taxing for my system.

[OldAirmail]

The GTX960 should work out great for those sims.

For what it's worth, a couple of comparisons between that card and my R9 280X:
GPUBoss Review - evaluation of R9 280X vs 960
TechPowerup - Performance Summary

The difference between the two is so small that all other things being equal, I don't think that you'd notice the difference. Go for the best price.


Now this is just personal opinion, but I'd go for a slightly lower end card if it'd let me buy an SSD to put the flight sim on.
My load time for Prepar3d is 1 minuet, 5 seconds from double-click to "on the runway" and ready to fly. Your mileage may vary.


One thing to consider - it's possible to have a video card that is held back by your CPU/motherboard. So if you're motherboard is more than a few years old, it's possible that you won't get all of the speed that you pay for.

[Flacke]

HELLO both, OAM & Flacke. From times past (Windows XP) & before SSD drives, the PC was more agile & used less RAM with both options unchecked: Compress this drive to save disk space & Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties. Compressing (& decompresing when accesing files) would fragment files badly (slowing the PC & having to defragment more often), the indexed contens program would use more RAM than it was worth. You should NEVER defragment SSD drives, it shortens their life dramatically.
Hasta la Vista

Hello and Hola Jean Loup . I don't manually Defrag my SSD, its not necessary because of the below. There are several very important "key words" so it is very important to read it carefully to avoid jumping to conclusions. Since Windows is taking care of my SSD's needs I leave it to them by default. So far, so good.

"CONCLUSION

No, Windows is not foolishly or blindly running a defrag on your SSD every night, and no, Windows defrag isn't shortening the life of your SSD unnecessarily. Modern SSDs don't work the same way that we are used to with traditional hard drives.

Yes, your SSD's file system sometimes needs a kind of defragmentation and that's handled by Windows, monthly by default, when appropriate. The intent is to maximize performance and a long life. If you disable defragmentation completely, you are taking a risk that your filesystem metadata could reach maximum fragmentation and get you potentially in trouble."