Four-core chips and FSX?

[homebrewer]

I read somewhere in these pages that a four-core chip and FSX have compatibility issues unless some magic tweak is performed. I have had FSX (still in the box) for about a year, I have looked at some of the add-on sceneries available for it, and I now want to put it on my system. So what must I do to avoid this mysterious compatibility bugaboo?

[markag]

I may be wrong, but as long as you install SP1 and SP2/Acceleration you should have nothing to worry about.

The compatibility issue you talk about was that it would only use one of the cores instead of all four, but that has been fixed.

[NickN]

you are correct, FSX with SP2 will figure it all out by itself and can use up to 256 cores

Be aware the only thing that is used past core 2 is terrain and some autogen threading. Thats the part they left out when posting how many cores FSX will use. the majority of the application is still tied to to the first core of the processor, or, the one selected by affinity changes no matter what you do.

[macca22au]

Yes true, but I have found 4 cores still has made an enormous difference - getting terrain and autogen over other cores is still a major benefit in this game with its massive display demands.

It is going to be interesting when truly made for FSX aircraft arrive, some of the retreads do give a major hit, even on high end systems.

At the moment scenery is way out in front of airplanes in development.

[homebrewer]

And where do I get SP1 and SP2/Acceleration? How do I install it? If it has no automatic installer, I'm plugged. I have no idea how to drag and drop folders from the SPs into the various folders of FSX to effect the desired outcome. Trying to install add-on aircraft is as futile an exercise for me as it is for Sisyphus to push that rock out of Hell...

[markag]

And where do I get SP1 and SP2/Acceleration? How do I install it? If it has no automatic installer, I'm plugged. I have no idea how to drag and drop folders from the SPs into the various folders of FSX to effect the desired outcome. Trying to install add-on aircraft is as futile an exercise for me as it is for Sisyphus to push that rock out of Hell...

Both service packs are self installers, so it makes it easy. You can find them here.

Service Pack 1: http://www.fsinsider.com/downloads/Page ... Pack1.aspx

Service Pack 2: http://www.fsinsider.com/downloads/Page ... Pack2.aspx

Note: You must purchase Accelleration if you want it, but it is not required as it is just an add on to the original. If you do decided to purchase it though, you do not need to install SP2.

[NickN]

And where do I get SP1 and SP2/Acceleration? How do I install it? If it has no automatic installer, I'm plugged. I have no idea how to drag and drop folders from the SPs into the various folders of FSX to effect the desired outcome. Trying to install add-on aircraft is as futile an exercise for me as it is for Sisyphus to push that rock out of Hell...

Installation of the service packs without Acceleration:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 380641/0#6


Important Update for the C++ library

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

[NickN]

Yes true, but I have found 4 cores still has made an enormous difference - getting terrain and autogen over other cores is still a major benefit in this game with its massive display demands.

It is going to be interesting when truly made for FSX aircraft arrive, some of the retreads do give a major hit, even on high end systems.

At the moment scenery is way out in front of airplanes in development.

Correct,... FSX is best run on a quad

[FlightHound]

NickN, didn't you say somewhere that you can assign your scenery software to run on other cores than 0 which is where FSX runs?

And if so, what's the procedure to do this?

[NickN]

If you mean an external program such as Active Sky weather engine, yes

After launch of AS, CTRL-ALT-DEL and bring up the task manager... process list tab, right click Xengine.exe (the weather engine program) and select SET AFFINITY. Uncheck all the cores but the last and click OK

[FlightHound]

Will it automatically take advantage of the other cores when rendering scenery?

[NickN]

Ok now you have completely lost me

There is no such thing as an external program that 'renders' scenery. Only FSX renders scenery. The weather engine addon Active Sky X feeds weather data to FSX and FSX renders it. What you are doing is taking the CPU time a program such as Active Sky would remove from the first core and placing it all on the last core, away from where FSX needs the most resources.

Again, there is no such thing as an addon rendering anything outside of FSX... addons feed FSX textures, data, information, etc but they do not render.

[FlightHound]

Sorry, sometimes I confuse myself.  That what I was wondering about.  If FSX runs mainly on Core 0, then what's being run on the other three?  

[NickN]

As mentioned above... with FSX only the terrain engine of FSX and autogen in FSX have higher than core0 thread access. If the application sees more than one core it will automatically schedule core access based on the processor installed and divide the terrain and autogen instructions between the rest of the cores while the primary part of FSX runs on the first.

[Flight Ace]

Yes true, but I have found 4 cores still has made an enormous difference - getting terrain and autogen over other cores is still a major benefit in this game with its massive display demands.

It is going to be interesting when truly made for FSX aircraft arrive, some of the retreads do give a major hit, even on high end systems.

At the moment scenery is way out in front of airplanes in development.

Do Quad Core CPUs provide better performance over Dual Core CPUs when running FSX.

The answer, I believe, is yes, as long as you are comparing identical computers and the core speeds of the dual and quad CPUs are the same. This doesn