after the coming of my new computer, i was away from it for a while, and only yesterday and today i've been able to actually try FSX in it... so, i thought i'd drop a line here to tell how it performed thus far, and maybe get some tips to make it even better... so here it goes:
yesterday i installed FSX and SP1+SP2... had a problem with the activation, which was solved shortly after... ok... so i fired up FSX for the first time on the new rig, and was surprised by how much better and faster this new computer is compared to my old one... i have a lot more room to play with the sliders now... full autogen is actually a possibility now
so i tinker with the graphics settings for about an hour... great fun
... being able to max out autogen and scenery is something that's happening to me for the first time in my life... but there are stutters... and although the frame rate is up in the 20-30s, there are stuttering spikes that make the sim anything but smooth... but i've read about this here before, and i was kind of expecting it would happen to me too... so today i decided to install my addons (i missed them) and do some tweaks to improve the stuttering... so i dug through the mess that is my old hard drive, and finding my addons, happily installed them onto the new installation of FSX... no problems there
and then i applied some tweaks to the FSX.cfg file to remedy the stuttering... namely, the TEXTURE BANDWIDTH MULT = 80, [BUFFERPOOLS] PoolSize = 1000000000 and the [JOB SCHEDULER] AffinityMask = 255
so i fire up FSX againto see how this affected performance... i loaded my Nemeth Designs CH53, and went to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, for a test flight.... the stuttering was still there... although lessened, and the frame rate was locked at 30 (frame locked) and oscillating somewhat along with the sutters... i thought then that the tweaks didn't make much difference... then i loaded my AlphaSim Rutan LongEZ, and took off again in the same airport... perfection... is all i can say... it nearly brought tears to my eyes... never before have i seen any version of FS run so flawlessly while set to such a high setting level... the frame rate was absolutely glued to the 30 FPS lock... and although my flight was short, since at this point i was already late for college... i couldn't help myself not to try out the Alphasim SR71, at edwards AFB... i realized then, that performance now greatly depends on the aircraft i'm flying, and that the weight of a particular aircraft can now be compensated simply by lowering autogen a bit... the SR71 was far heavier on hardware than the LongEZ... and it brought the frames down considerably... one notch down on autogen and sceery didn't quite cut it to relief the burden this craft imposes on the sim... but i've become spoiled now by the beauties of flying on full autogen... and i found it hard to dial the sliders back some more...
well, at this point i was almost 20 minutes late for college... and i hadn't even packed up to leave yet
... so i decided to 'buzz' a nearby city at 500kts and make a grand exit by blasting away with full afterburner, hopefully breaking some windows ...and now it was time to say goodbye to FSX for now, and get my ass to school before i got into trouble... So, this is where i am right now... FSX is behaving much better than expected, and i haven't even OC'd this beast yet... default planes, and light addons now behave flawlessly at full scenery settings
...the FPS dropped to 10ish... when it was before at a solid 30