FSX slow on an alright computer... Where's the bottleneck?

[montymintypie]

G'day all, I recently built my first computer, mainly for gaming, cost me about $1600, but it still has decent components.

The thing is, even though I think the specs are alright, FSX still runs pretty slowly, about 15-25fps at Sydney (ultra high). What's worse is that I've bought the ORBX FTX YBBN airport addon (photorealistic), and Brisbane almost grinds to a halt at about 5-10fps with that scenery enabled (the FTX settings are at optimal performance versus detail).

I've tried some FSX tweaks and get minimal (1 or 2 fps, but hard to tell) improvement, and I've also tried some mild overclocking on both my CPU and GPU, but I still only get an improvement of a frame here or there.

Does anyone here know what my bottleneck is? Would getting another 5850 and running a crossfire setup help? CPU needs an aftermarket cooler and more overclocking? I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong, that's all... :-/

Almost forgot to put the specs in here
CPU: Intel i7-930 (2.8GHz, 3.36GHz when I tried overclocking)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5850 (760MHz, when OC'd, went to 875MHz core clock)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

[CHUCK79]

Have you tried any Cfg. tweaks?
If not, try this..... http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaB ... 1183998514 .....third entry down. This guide to editing the FSX Cfg file really helped me out.
Hope it helps you too

Also, here is the homepage for SimVs' FAQ http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaB ... 1197423715

[Groundbound1]

You're not doing anything wrong. I don't think there is a bottleneck really. 15-25fps on ultra high is actually pretty respectable. It's all about the sliders. AI traffic (air,land and sea) are REAL performance killers.


Also, to answer your crossfire question, I wouldn't bother. Unless you're using a monitor @ extreme resolutions, a second card won't help much. (FSX is more cpu than gpu oriented anyway.)

When you've read the links posted by Chuck, give this one a read too. (Posted by our buddy, Nick) I lays it all out for you!
http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_p ... ?TID=29041



Nice system btw!

[montymintypie]

Well, those email notifications for replies didn't work...

Thanks for the tips, I think I might just have AI traffic set to high along with cars etc... I'll also try out the config file modifications. Thanks again! 

[idahosurge]

Here is a link to an excellet guide to optimize Win7 and FSX for performance.

It starts with the post by NickN on April 11 @ 4:31

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_p ... 187#198187

With a decent air cooler (Venomous X or Noctua NH-D14) you can easily get to 4.0GHz on your 930 and a lot of people get to 4.2GHz fairly easy.  When you OC you also need to set your ram up for it rated timings to get the best performance out of your ram.

When you have a decent system and you do, it is not necessary to use a bunch of FSX.cfg tweaks.  Here is a link to a tread that discusses tweaks and the few that you need if you have decent hardware and like I said, you do!

The start is post #2

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_p ... ted#198635

Regards,

Rod

[montymintypie]

Sorry for bumping this now ancient thread...

Using the ATI utility and task manager, I've determined that it's the CPU that's holding things up, with FSX pushing it at 100% all the time and the GPU only running at 20%.

I've been seriously considering overclocking, and I know with a after market cooler I can easily get to 4.0GHz (currently at 2.. What type of a boost in speed should I expect from bumping it up to 4.0GHz?

[Groundbound1]

Sorry for bumping this now ancient thread...

Using the ATI utility and task manager, I've determined that it's the CPU that's holding things up, with FSX pushing it at 100% all the time and the GPU only running at 20%.

I've been seriously considering overclocking, and I know with a after market cooler I can easily get to 4.0GHz (currently at 2.. What type of a boost in speed should I expect from bumping it up to 4.0GHz?

Overclocking can produce pretty big gains. Before you start however, you'll need to make sure your ram can handle the stress.