Where is the bottleneck

[Blaunarwal]

Dear fellow Simmers

I have a good System but FSX stutters about every minute for a second or two. The problem is, that the scenery is not loaded while I fly. I tried different settings in the fsx.cfg but had no success. I also uses Bojotes optimazation. The further I fly, the more I get stutters and longer and the details of the scenery get lost. Sometimes only pausing or saving a flight and reload makes fsx to load the scenery.
Here is my hardware:

i7 3770K 3.5GHz, 16 GB, DDR3-1600, Asus Sabertooth Z77, LGA1155, PCI-E 3.0, SATA III 2x1TB Western Digital Caviar Black, 7200rpm, 64MB RAID, 2x80GB Intel SSD RAID SATA II, Gainward GTX-570 Phantom 1.28GB, Win7/64 SP1

What would you change on this system?The GTX-570 is a bit slow and has little memory, but according to a tool, has only about 50% load, while FSX is running. I see sometimes black squares from lights, loading only after a few seconds. Sometimes switching views shows the plane or cockpit for 10 seconds without textures, before loading. What can be done to make textures faster loading?

The raid with the caviar black should be fast. I get an index of 6.1 in Windows. Unfortunately Windows only measures the main disk, so I have no value for the SATA II Intel disks also in a RAID. I wonder if it makes sense to use SSD drives with SATA III and if a RAID really halves the read times?

Is my memory fast enough? I think for overclocking, I needed faster RAM, since with this, I can not go much further with the processor, before the system hangs. Which memory clock would match? The fastest ist DDR3-2400 or DDR3-2666. Is it just a matter of the price or do I have to select RAM speed related to my processor?

Hope for some goot hints.

Regards Dan

[Fozzer]

Even with a modern hardware system as good as that (Intel i7!), I still despair at the way FSX seem to struggle, hardware upgrade after hardware upgrade, for far too many FSX enthusiasts.
For consistent, smooth flights, I abandoned my FSX long ago, and concentrate now on FS 2004 instead...

..which seem a bit of a shame, and a bit of a let-down... ...!

Its all a great mystery to me...

For me, FSX is only suitable for fancy, static, screen-shots.

Paul...FS 2004 running flat-out, smoothly!... ...!

[Blaunarwal]

For me, FSX is only suitable for fancy, static, screen-shots.

I just wonder, how Jon5700 creates his stutterfree videos (see youtube)? Is this a done with a 10 GHz Hexacore Processor.

[F35LightningII]

For me, FSX is only suitable for fancy, static, screen-shots.

I just wonder, how Jon5700 creates his stutterfree videos (see youtube)? Is this a done with a 10 GHz Hexacore Processor.

That's exactly what I was wondering earlier today, after seeing his newest video ("FSX Dubai Maxed Out").

But if you see his YouTube channel page, it says that he's got a Core2 Quad at 2.4GHz

I'm gonna send him a message on YouTube, asking him about any tweaks that he might have done which made a significant improvement. If I get a reply, I'll post it here.

[Blaunarwal]

I'm gonna send him a message on YouTube, asking him about any tweaks that he might have done which made a significant improvement. If I get a reply, I'll post it here.

Good luck, my question about used hardware to Jon5700 remained unanswered.

My fsx run very well with the Core2 Quad at 2.4GHz. I had a smaller screen then. I remember flying from Zurich to Frankfurt without any big problem, with atc, no crashes, no big stutters. But apart from my bigger screen (1980 x 1080), today I also have a gpu able to run it. So I don't see this as the problem on my current system. After scanning fsx and seeing, it's opening all possible sceneries also far away from the current place, I also tried to disable all my addon scenery. But this didn't make a difference.

Professional sceneries like Dubai are very framerate friendly on my system.

[Bass]

My 2c.
You wont get much out from oc your memory, except heat, and with 16gb you got enough!

Your system should run fsx without stutters.

I would go into fsx settings and scroll down, expecially traffic aso, and then move up a bit after testing. Also remember to update scenery inside library.

Most simmers will not see the difference between high and very/extreme high, but ofcourse, it sounds better.

Its only your eyes that can tell you when you're satisfied, not the system

[Blaunarwal]

Thanks Bass for your opinion. Yes I tried recently to reduce details a bit. In certain areas I can fly pretty nicely with almost no stutters. From Zurich towards the alps is no problem. Very bad was San Diego to Las Vegas. Over the desert, only standard scenery there, I had terrible stutters and also lot of atc calls. ..please expedite your climb, ... traffic is 9 o'clock, with no end. I think this is an atc bug.

[Bass]

Well, all that i can say is, when you fly SD to LV you really get some TRAFFIC around!

[Fozzer]

It sounds like it would be a good idea to greatly reduce your AI Traffic; which, like "Weather" and "dense scenery", puts a heavy load on the Flight Sim!
Try setting the Commercial and GA traffic to something like 25%..(or less!).

Try a trip with no ATC traffic at all...see if you still get the stutters!

Paul.... ...!

I set my FS 2004 traffic to 10%, for smooth flights.

[Blaunarwal]

I had it at 31 Airlines and 40 GA. So now both are on 20, ships also reduced from 75 to 50. I love these ships

[Blaunarwal]

No traffic, no stutters. So easy it is. The calculation of the traffic takes down fps, but loading the aircraft seems to cause the stutter. Maybe also the atc chatter with the AI gives a lot to calculate.
Without traffic my scenery, clouds and aircraft look awesome, almost real. So now I go on and try to add little traffic again.

[OldAirmail]

I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree, and my computer isn't as good as yours, so my settings are simple.

But I'm getting 35 to 45 FPS in a Beechcraft Baron 58 flying low and slow. All 4 cores are working between 75% to 85%.

I think that I've posted the info somewhere here.

And except for the part of setting FSX to use all of your cores, EVERYTHING else is done in the Settings panels. If you make a mistake just hit the [Reset Defaults] button.

I'll try to post my settings soon, but I can't guarantee that it'll be tomorrow. Maybe next weekend, if not sooner.

[OldAirmail]

I found the article that I used to alter my settings. You can find it by searching Google for "Why do get 50 fps and you get single digit fps?".

Let me repeat - ALL of these changes are done in the Settings panels.

Or you can click here. Why do get 50 fps and you get single digit fps?. . . Important - *** Download the PDF for future reference.***

I followed the suggestions completely and made changes after testing my FPS. Most of my settings are actually higher. My viewpoint is that the human eye can't detect super high FPS so why not add more eye candy until the FPS get down to around 25-35.

When you very from the suggestions do so one step at a time so you can see how it affects your FPS.

I have to go now so I'll repost how to make FSX use all of the CPU cores later.

[OldAirmail]

Now we get to the part where you should backup your fsx.cfg.

The change is trivial but the results are rather nice. But do make that backup (just copy it somewhere else). Anyone can make a mistake.

Get a program that'll sit on your desktop and show you your core activity. Starting "Task Manager" will show that but it may effect all other processes running in the background. Run FSX before and after the AffinityMask changes.

When I tested it before the change I had core #1 showing the most activity. Cores 2,3, & 4 showed occasional activity. Afterwards all 4 cores showed significant increases in activity (usually in the 80 to 95% range).

The change for me was adding this info;
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=(whatever number matches your CPU)

There are 2 links to read. These are from FSX Times.
LINK 1 - 10: fsx.CFG – AffinityMask
LINK 2 - 19: Less CPU Core is More FPS

[Blaunarwal]

Thanks OldAirmail, this gives a lot of new sights for me although I've read a lot of other guides before. When I was on an FSX convention here in Switzerland, I also was astonished all people had fluent fsx graphics, even on laptops. I never asked, how they did, but was pretty sure they did not have traffic. I want traffic, but now have it on the lowest possible level. The big airports are a bit empty now, but at least there are some more aircraft on the terminal with me.
Now I test fsx with an interesting affinitymask of 20. Never tried this one. I tried all cores before, inclusive the second thread. This was also good, but difficult to use other programs like G-Plan on the same machine.