Sometimes my FPS confuses me...

[fabiane]

So no FSX bashing here, please. After a long time of slider adjustment I was very pleased to get ~35 FPS with quite good settings for my sys (In the default caravan over Sydney with installed VOX). Then on the other minute everything freezes, HDD beginns to load like crazy and FPS drops to ~4,5  :-/, which isn't funny anymore.

OR on the other hand FPS remains high, but groundtextures turn blurry, even more with SP1.
Don't know, I've installed SP2 for FSX and I couldn't see an improvement with the blurry textures.

I've installed FSX on a new HDD with 320GB....
1 GB of Memory and a 7600GT....
overclocked AMD X2 4200+....

Any recommended setting for my sys?
Any solution, tipps? Got on my nerves when I flew Alex's new Cessna yesterday night.
Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Fabian
---
39FPS, that's how I like it..!

[mjrhealth]

You like may are too hung up on framerates, the important thing is smoothness . In FS9 FPS was important as anything below 20 FPS or so would stutter like mad but in FSX 15 FPS seems to be quiet ok, Turn of the FPS meter then you wont have any issues, You should upgrade to 2 gig ram that would help the most with your setup, and get the fastest ram your motherboard supports.

[garymbuska]

Have you installed service pack 1? If not you need to do so as that will help allot.  8-)

[Solid]

Amigo.......just remember, you are in the world of FSX, SP1+SP2++++++.....as you read on all forums in any language...Anything goes in this world!!!!!!..keep at it, do not dismay, someday we all will be happy....but its not time yet!!!! ......wise words above, if the thing is flying smooth, forget fps

[Wingo]

Seeing as how the posts above really haven't given you a fix, just beat around the bush and bash FSX, I'll try out a few things with you.

Step 1. Delete your fsx.cfg file, start up FSX and load the default flight. Close down FSX and restart. Due tot he changes in FSX between RTM, SP1 and SP2 you need to delete the cfg file and allow a new one to be made.

Step 2. We're going to try a few tweaks. Now I am not familiar with your system so I don't know what will work off the bat. I'll tell you the parts to edit/add and you can tweak it to your system.

Under the [Display] heading in the fsx.cfg you will find TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=XX where XX is most likely 40, but may be lower. Try setting it at 60 to start off with. If you have stutters, reduce the number, if textures are blurry and stay blurry for 5 or more secconds try around 70. I wouldn't go over 80-90 as it will tax your graphics card.

Next, if you have a dual or quad core system (NOT a single) find a heading called [Job Scheduler]. If you can't find it, add it in. Underneath find/add AffinityMask= after add 3 for a dual core system, or 15 for a quad core.

Under the [Terrain] heading find/add SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=37 now some people report this relates to the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT value. Basically, if you drop the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT by 10, raise the SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT by one. The current settings for both of those are correct based on a scale posted by NickN.

Finally add (I never find this in the cfg by default, but you may) the heading [BUFFERPOOLS] and underneath it Poolsize= now if you have a 256mb card add 5000000 (five million) afterwards. For a 512 card try between 8000000 or 10000000 (8 or 10 million). Basically this setting sets aside a small area of the video RAM for a vertex buffer. This can increase performance as all the vertexs are all in one place and FSX doesn't need to look for them. The settings above range between 5mb and 10mb, so the larger the video RAM the more room you can spare.

Now when you load FSX set your frame cap to 20. If you have an LCD some people report that setting 31 or unlimited increases performance as the FSX frames are in time with the refresh rate. Give this a test yourself. Besides that set what you find suits your system. This may take a few hours of experimenting, especially with the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT. I would advise trying TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT between the vaules of 40 and 80, maybe 90 if you have a fast card.

[SubZer0]

Next, if you have a dual or quad core system (NOT a single) find a heading called [Job Scheduler]. If you can't find it, add it in. Underneath find/add AffinityMask= after add 3 for a dual core system, or 15 for a quad core.

This is not longer needed if you have SP2 installed. As Nick put it, "you're basically telling FSX to do what it already knows, which is to use all four cores."

I haven't used any of these tweaks after installing SP2 except for the [BUFFERPOOLS] which did give me smoothness. I have a 7950GT at 512MB and setting it to 8000000 did the job. I haven't tried any other number.

Fabian, I'm shocked that you can get more than 30FPS in Sydney with that autogen with the hardware that you have. My system is faster and I doubt I'd be able to pull off more than 20 frames at max autogen in Sydney. Exactly how do you have your sliders set up?

EDIT: Just tested. I got around 40 frames at unlimited, but the autogen was set to Dense. I'm still interested in seeing how your sliders are set up lol.

[J.]

currently im trying the SWTO and TBM in SP2 and at the recomended settings (look at the sticky top of FSX forum) my frames rates are marginaly better.

Have you tried locking your frame rates down to around 25 FPS? i prefer to find an FPS i like, then tweaking the game and my system around until i meet it constantly (in my case 22fps hardly ever drops below )

the bufferpools will help you with any stutters you encounter when panning or turning but as you  have a &series card set it to around 500000 (but ofcourse test various values)

deffinatly play with the TBM without SWTO this should increase your performance marginaly, and the Autogen per cell tweak is always useful

cheers
kermit.

[fabiane]

My Sliders, but be aware:
GPU: overclocked,
CPU: overclocked,
Antivir & Firewall: off
Huge HDD (w 16 MB cache) only for FSX
And if you look a bit up, frames drop dramatically to ~15-20....



I locked the frames to 20 meanwhile and the blurryness got better.

I'll try Wingo's tweaks and tell you.

Thank you all,

Cheers,
Fabian

[J.]

how long would your frames stay at 39fps? was in constant but then would dip to 15 - 20 for a sceond and then shoot back up?

personaly i would say lock the FPS at 22, and play around with your sliders and .cfg

[J.]

your system is similar to my old one

1gb ram
4600+
7900GTO 512mb (which is up for sale btw )

and i couldnt manage those settings at a constant 39fps

what is your CPU overclock at?

also im guessing your video Card only has 256mb of memory?

at the moment i would deffinatly suggest you put these lines in your .cfg

under  [TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=xxx
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=xxxx

currently mine is at 3000 for trees and 1500 for buildings and it has improved my frames nicely

[fabiane]

So, I think I'm done. My sliders decreased a lot, but I'm somehow confident with performance now (I know I'm not havinging an high end PC). Locking to 20 FPS was better on my machine then at 31 FPS, although I'm having a TFT.

No, don't get me wrong Kermit. As I wrote in my first post I didn't get those frames for a long time. And if I had those frames constantly, I wouldn't ask for help...  ;). And when I look a bit up  (more to the horizont) in the sim the FPS drop dramatically. The 40 frames are I'd like it to have. And then it sometimes droped to ~5 as I already wrote but between 12 and 18 FPS is the main average value on my sim now -  after tweaking. My 4200+ X2 runs at 2,2GHz by default, now running at 2,5Ghz. did you have a dualcore aswell? The GPU runs at 700MHz, 560 Mhz by default and yes, only 256MB. Everything stable so far.

Guys your tips made my sim a better performance, I didn't know of those tweaks before. The detail went down a bit now but it's more fun to fly now.

Thank you all again,

Cheers,
Fabian

[J.]

yeh im running a 4600+ dual core standard clock of 2.4ghz currently at 2.54ghz

i have had it running stable at 2.8ghz before now but after a week or so once the dust started to build up the temps went to high

glad you have sorted your sim out fabien enjoy

cheers
kermit

[SubZer0]

When I had my 4200+ I ran it at 2.55Ghz. Any higher and it would crash when I started FSX. That's a fine cpu for FSX as long as you tweak the crap out of it.

[NickN]

And dont be hung up on FPS. FSX is not FS9. If you can maintain 20-25, in heavy urban areas and its smooth, your doing good


Make sure car and other traffic are reasonable. If you are not running a Intel quad, I would set cars to 8, boats to 15 - 15

If you are not using replacement AI and a fast system, dont push that much past 25% for both Airline and GA

And turn off "aircraft casts shadows on itself" if you are not on a fast system. The extra shader passes setting awater to 2xLow and disable the aircraft shadow feature along with the others I posted should give you a boost.

Use higher water settings for screenshots, not flight with slower systems

Try frame lock at 24, 30 and unlimited to see which one is smoother.

You need double the amount of system memory you are using to really set FSX up as listed above. The reason you are thrashing the drive is because you are out of memory and using the page file... and that is why you are dropping frames

[fabiane]

Thanks Nick, I've even set the sliders even a bit below.

I was never a fan of self shadowing and light bloom is also deactivated.

I'll get more RAM, as soon as I get a job.

But it's ok for now.

BTW: Which filtering should I choose?
Aniso?
Triliniear?
Bilinear?

I ran on Aniso but now switched to trilinear...

Thanks and Cheers,
Fabian