How to improve performance

[Selbio]

Is there any way to improve performance. FS run fine but when I'm flying near a real big airport with a lot of traffic I get lower fps ~ 13.4-15. I get good fps everywhere else.

System Specs:
AMD XP Barton 3000+
512MB DDR PC2700
160gb hard drive
Onboard Realtek AC'97
Windows XP Home Edition
ATI 9200 with 128mb of ram/128bit memory bandwith.

Going from an onboard V-card to that ati was a big difference. At least my system does not restart or lock up anymore.
I remember there was a line for those that use the Geforce 4 ti series of cards that needs to be in the cfg file. It was something like [DISPLAY.Device. on Win2k/XP] I remember when I had my ti 4200 and it did improve performance a bit. Is there a similar line for the ATI video cards or anything else I can do to improve performance around big airports?

Thanks in advance.

[X56SB]

you can look at the post still have bad quilty in the fs9 fourm. it should help ya  :)

[ozzy72]

There are several little things you can do to gain that edge.
Defrag your HD regularly.
Make sure no background programs are running (you can terminate them with a handy program called EndItAll).
Turn your AI down a little. I find there is little difference between 75% and 100%, but it frees up a few FPS.
Don't set your target framerate higher than 30, it wastes resources.

Ozzy

[Selbio]

Steelx I looked at that thread and read it but I was hoping to find a code to put in the cfg file like there is one for the gf 4 cards.

ozzy,
I have windows XP running with only 15 proccesses that are neccesary. I do defrag

[MattNW]

There are several little things you can do to gain that edge.
Defrag your HD regularly.
Make sure no background programs are running (you can terminate them with a handy program called EndItAll).
Turn your AI down a little. I find there is little difference between 75% and 100%, but it frees up a few FPS.
Don't set your target framerate higher than 30, it wastes resources.

Ozzy

Hey Ozzy, have you tried FSAutostart? It's a task killer made especially for MSFS. It'll kill tasks, programs and it defragments your memory as well as launch any other programs that you usually run with your sim.

[Jared]

Also another 512 of memory would significantly increase performance...:-)

[4_Series_Scania]

Also another 512 of memory would significantly increase performance...:-)

But not as much as a better card than the lame 9200...

[Selbio]

I'll get me another stick of 512mb. I'll have to keep the card for sometime because I just got it less than a week ago.

[Shadowe]

OUCH

[Selbio]

I disabled the sound and got about 5-8 more fps. Does this mean that if I get a pci sound card liek a SB Audigy I'll get better performance?

[noen]

the 9200 is a horrible card for 3d.

it is 100% garaunteed the bottleneck.  And no you wont see any major increase in performance from a new soundcard, they all use 8-12% of your cpu.

get a Radeon 9600xt (~150 bucks), radeon 9800 pro or nvidia geforcefx 5900 (both ~200 bucks).

[Selbio]

As much as I'd like to change the video card, I gotta keep this one for awhile. The card isn't the best but it is way more than the onboard I had and for $51 it performs pretty good, it plays every game I throw in there. FS9 is the only game I have problems with, it just seems to be a real pain in the rearend.
The only time I experience low fps is when I'm about 10nm from a real busy airport other than that I'm in the high 20's and 30's locked at 30. To be honest my current setup performs on par with my old system which was an AMD XP 2600+, 768ddr pc 2100, Nvidia Geforce 4 ti 4200 and rest of the hardware.

[Gary R.]

Well, I'm about to trade my 7200 for a better card.  I was going to trade up to the 9200 but I know its a bottleneck and for about $20 more for the trade I can get a 96.  I'm real tired of running fs9 with most of everything turned down or off just to get 16-20fps.  I'm very bummed that I just put this thing together after Christmas, see below, and I saved on the vid card and I'm not doing much better than I would have with my p-3 800 that I had before. It really is more about vid cards than processor speed and ram, isn't it?

[JBaymore]

Funkycowboy,

In my experience, unfortunately it is NOT more about the video card.  FS2004 is a VERY demanding program on most aspects of the computer system IMHO.

I think there are four areas that it is demanding in.....

• a fast CPU to calculate all the math it takes to simulate all the AI and your aircraft's performance and such
• a honkin' video card to quickly render all that lovely eye candy
• fast RAM to process the all the stuff that the CPU is calculating
• and a fast andf wide data pipeline thru the components to get all the information from one place to another

You might even want to add a fast HD to that list too..... to get the scenery data out of there quickly enough to keep up with the video card.

So really...... it needs a GREAT machine to get all the "promise" that is packaged into the MS marketing hype for this program.

BTW...... I had a 9600....... and quickly upgraded it to a 9800XT.  The 9600 just didn't do it for me at all.  Even that 9800XT does not give me the performance that I really want (see specs below).  I gotta' upgrade the mobo and the processor, I think..... that 533 fsb is killing me.

The place it all "matters" to me is on short final at a large international airport in a large jet with lots of AI around.  And in that situation...... you need a killer machine, I think.

Don;t get me wrong.... I still love this program in spite of the performance demands.  Eventually I'll get it "right"  ;).

best,

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

[noen]

your ram doesnt matter THAT much, its only used to preload textures for the video card and for data lookup tables for the physics and ai engines.

you are correct that the bus speed and processor speed do make a big difference,

hard drive will really only help in preloading the levels, unless you have a raid setup, then you might see a little improvement in-game.

Assuming you have a 2ghz+ Athlon XP or Pentium 4 (533 or 800mhz bus) the biggest bottleneck is going to be the video card.

And going from a 9200 to a 9600 is a much bigger jump than the 96 to 9800.  

Just make sure to stay away from the 9600se, get the Pro or XT.