Compter upgrade

[pickup]

I have a AMD ATHLON  xp 2500+
runs at 1.84 GHz
1.00 GB of Ram
Windows xp
Nvidia Geforce Ti 4200 with 128mgs of ram

I am running FS2004 around 80% on the graphics  but I am having trouble with the computer stopping to reload all the time. The frame rates are down to 3 to 4 frames per second. Even when it is just showing clouds with the weather turned down to 50% or less the frame rate is around 4 to 6  per second. I defrag everyday.

I would like to upgrade my computer so I can max everything out and have it run smooth.  

Is there any good video cards out there with a Gig of Ram?

I would appreciate any suggestions as to the kind of Video card I should be looking at, mother boards, processer speed etc. I am not great on computers but I am learning.

Pickup

[Scottler]

The most you'll find on any one video card is 256MB of RAM.....but to be honest, with your system specs, you should be okay.

How big is your hard drive, and how much of it is left open?  Something isn't right...you should be getting much higher than 3 or 4 fps....

[bm]

The core spec looks great! Although 3-4 fps is not good at all...... Any chance this being in the middle of Heathrow?

If you want to upgrade I would wait a couple of months for the new generation of GPU's (IE. NVIDIA 6800) to be in the shops then you could pick up an ATi 9800pro for cheap. Or even one of the new generation cards for that matter!

[Delta_]

No games use 128MB GFX memory right now, so a larger amount of memory will only suite you if you are going to run anything at 1600*1200 or higher.  

I would recommend you back-up stuff you need and format the HDD and re-install everything.

Install the OS,
motherboard drivers,
GFX drivers,
sound drivers,
other drivers,
then software.

[JBaymore]

pickup,

Hi.

If you spend some time looking at the "fs2004" and "hardware" forums and look through a lot of the back threads you find there..... you'll find that the performance of fs2004 is a very well discussed topic.  Try other flight sim boards also and you'll find the same exact thing.  FS2004 is a real performance hog....and seems to be very erratic as to what it "likes".

If you "read around" a lot....... the "pattern" in performance you tend to see comes down to about four general aspects:

• Get the honkin'est, costliest gaming machine that you can find (not necessarily afford)
• Put in the absolute top-of-the-line graphics card (current Radeon 9800XT)
• The machine still might not work as well as you think it should
• Someone with a Pentium II at 800 MHz will report far better fps performance at full settings  ;)

See my machine specs on the trailer at the bottom....I bought it to run this sim just before it came out.  If I run full sliders on all settings, full AI, and about 50-60% on the clouds and weather and sight distance at mid range, at 1024x768x32bit.....at a busy large international airport on short final it can come down to a slide show at about 10 fps.  Unflyable.  

I have been trying to debug this since the release of the new sim.  MANY kind people have tried to help.  Nada.  I've tweaked, reinstalled, added hardware and so on.  I get GREAT performance and graphics way up in the air and away from airports........ easily 60-70 fps.  But that is not where the "rubber meets the road" as far as flying is concerned.  I think you need the fps at takeoffs and landings.

Were I to (have the money to) buy yet another machine now to run this sim in light of what I now know from this experience.... I'd be going 3+ gig processor, a 800 or more fsb, agp 8X, 2 gig of fast RAM,  still the 9800XT card, and so on.  Effectively.... the most cutting edge machine out there.

And someone with a Pentium III at 450 MHZ will possibly get better performance  ;) .

best,

.......................john

PS:  I still love fs2004 for the realism over fs2002......its "warts" and all.

[pickup]

Thankyou everyone for all your suggestions. My computer runs 2002 very well. It never has liked 2004 right from the start. I have had the computer reformatted, and windows reinstalled but 2004 seems to take a lot to run when you like graphics and realism. I have a 40 gig hard drive with about 30% of free space left. The low frame rates are usually at airports like Vancouver or Seattle.  I also get low frame rates like I mentioned earlier at alttiutde where all there is cumulus type clouds.Is there a difference with Ram and fast Ram?
It also sounds like the Radeon cards are better then then the Nvidea?Does the Radeon cards have 256mg of Ram like the 9800xt?
I appreciate everyones input. Thankyou all again

Pickup

[Delta_]

The 9800xt is a Radeon.

Also wait until the new ATI cards come out (the x800xt) they will cause a significant price drop in the 9800xt.

[nickle]

Good cptr components.  As good as or better than mine except for card.  The one you have for COF should be ok.
Run a virus scan.
Run Ad-Aware or similar.  Lavasoftusa.com. $15 for full version.  Free is PITA.
I'd bet major infection of data miners/malware.
You don't need a gig of graphics RAM. 128 is ok.

[Scottler]

Definitely run a virus scan....I also run Ad-aware (the free version) and have had no problems with it.  It picks up lots of stuff I didn't know I had.

In addition, I run Norton AntiVirus 2004 (fully updated)....that thing is a lifesaver.  As careful as I am, every once in a while it picks something up.  

Crazy world.  lol

[nickle]

I favor the pay $15 for Ad-Aware because it is more convienient to use.  And no one works for free.  Excellent product.
Additionally, when data miners are found during the scan, I open the cookie and find the net address. Then Internet Options\Privacy\Edit and enter the offender with an always block.  After several iterations few have returned.
I daily scan Cookies and cull because vermin may not make the dat listing.  Anything alphanumeric, don't like or don't need is deleted.  Only sites I recognize and use.
About 30 make the cut.  Ditto culling Temp Internet Files. Two days and eliminate many of those.
Uncontrolled cookies are an invite to a virus attack as they steal e-mail addresses and they compromise cptr performance.   My cptr and no one has access privileges without my consent.

[congo]

Pickup,

I'm sure it's a settings or a driver issue, your machine specs are very similar to mine, albeit the same graphics card as well, and I have managed to tweak 2004 to be not only flyable, but enjoyable.

My best advice is also given above; read thru the threads, make some adjustments, then come back here screaming for help when your better informed.

There are some third party tweaks that work, not all of them, but some really help.

It's a bit of work, but the payoff will be worth it if you really like the sim.

You don't need to defrag all the time, I do it every couple months.

You don't need a better accellerator to get good graphics in FS9, but it will certainly help a little. If I get 25 FPS on my TI4200, I'll get 30-40 with a Radeon 9800XT, depending on the situation.

The killers with your graphics card in FS9 will be the following:

1. Resolution - drop it to 1024x768x32

2. Antialiasing - clouds antialiasing in FS9 kill nVidia graphics performance. Reduce cloud or antialiasing while flying around cloud.

3. Anisotropic filtering - turn it off or reduce it, this affects distant texture clarity, but it's a FPS demon with the TI4200.

4. Basic hardware setup - includes BIOS settings (video aperature, AGP rate, etc.),

5. Video card settings (as above in 1, 2 & 3, plus a couple other informed adjustments), AGP and video driver etc.

If you do all that, and you still have probs, then look at some of the other suggestions above. Normally spyware/virus activity - won't impact FPS to the extent you are experiencing.

Have you messed with your swap file (or virtual memory) size? If it's constantly loading stuff, maybe that's it. Use a constant value (minimum and maximum) of 1048mb! (Hey! it works for me!)

One last thing, Get a No CD required crack and do a full install of the Sim, that might be your only problem lol.

[JBaymore]

Congo + all,

SO... my framerate situation is still driving me bonkers.  Using your recent photo as a "stimulus"... I went to Heathrow and tried some finals.

Settings in Shot #1 are 4X AA and 8 X AF.  Agp is at 4x.  Fastwrite is on.  Vrt Sync and Trueform are always off.  All set on the 9800XT card.

In the sim, ALl sliders maxed in SCENERY and AIRCRAFT.  Render to Texture is checked as is Transform and Lightling.  Mip is at 4 Hardware lights is at 8.

Sound is high quality.  AI is 100%.  (Note: I have not added any flights into Heathrow...so all AI traffic is default.)

Weather is set with sight distance minimum at 60 M, Cloud Draw at minimum at 30 mi  3 D clouds is set midrange at 50%, detailed clouds is checked, and cloud coverage is high.

Here's my framerates with the computer that is listed in the trailer:




SO I went into the card settings and decreased the AA and the AF per your comments to 2x and 4x.  This is what I then got:




This isue has been going on since the July release.  I have reinstalled.  I have Ad-Aware and Spybot getting rid of crap.  Virus software is up to date and the machine is "clean".  Hardrives are not anywhere NEAR full and are kept defragged.  I run "Game Booster" (kills idle processes)  before running fs9.  Nothing much else is running in the background except what needs to be for Win XP.

I can go on and on with the tweaks and trials that people have suggested and which have not worked.  NOTHING has worked.  Except each install of the ATI driver releases has dropped me about 1 FPS per release.

Suggestions?


BTW.... if I go the the "Select a flight" and do the "Scenic FLights" and do "Along the Rockies"........ I get beautiful performance, stunning images, and and high framerates even with the clouds that are present in that scenario.  In the mountain it will hit 50 - 60 fps.


best,

...................john

[Daz]

wow sound like u guys are having a hard time..

i had some trouble with my card when i first got it and my solution was to swap my two hard drives around to have the 80 gig the slave....they both ran at 7200 rpm but for some reason fs2004 loved the new maxtor (see specs). i get great performance now. also NTFS file system helped me when i had to reformat...

just a suggestion for when u run out of things to try swap yer hard drives over if you have 2.

[JBaymore]

Daz,

Yeah..... it is frustrating.

The 80 is my C: drive and the 120 is my E: drive.  Fs9 is on the E: drive right now.  Tried it on the C: drive... no difference.  File system has been NTFS from the start.  Both are 7200's.

Hum...... never tried "swapping" which drive is which.  Wonder why the heck that should make a difference?  Head seek time would be marginally longer on the larger hard drive... but pretty minimally so.  Plus if you have a lot of RAM and a large virtual memory swap file...... it shouldn't be seeking all that much.

best,

.................john

[Iroquois]

Sounds to me like your having a heck of a time Pickup. First of all, go to Guru3d.com and download the new nVidia Forceware 60.72 drivers. These are the best yet for FS2004.

Here are some more tips I picked up over at Avsim. If you have the luxury of two hard drives, put FS on a drive that does not contain your MBR (your OS). Also do a full disk defrag while you at it.

Under you FS2004 Hardware tab in display settings, you'll want to adjust some things. Turn off "Render to Texture", turn on "Transform and Lighting" and turn off "Anti-aliasing". Under Filtering always select "Trilinear". Set your Mipmapping slider to 4 or 5 and Hardware renderd lights to 8. You can set global max texture size to "massive". Target frame rate should be 25 (this forces the card to focus on image rendering), and your resolution should be the same as your desktop.

There's also a really good guide by the people at Reality XP that explains the different FS2004 settings, how the computer renders them, and what they should be set at for a standard machine. I know Avsim has it but it might be here too. Do a search for "Reality XP FS2K4 Tweaker".