I have tried everything - please help!!

[Totty]

Hi there,

I am having issues running FSX smoothly with my Mac. I have been working on this for 2 weeks now, and I am close to giving up. I understand my machine is not the ideal for FSX, but I am a designer and this is the machine I have invested in for my work, but I still want to get the best out of it for FSX as it is my hobby. It is a powerful computer and although the raw clock speed may not be adequate, I'm hopeful someone here with some expertise can help me.

I have this set up as below:

8 x 2.8 Intel Xeon 5400 (2 x Quad Core) 1600 FSB
8800GT 512 Mb - Latest Driver 1.89 I think
4GB 800 MHz ddr2 ram
Win XP pro SP3
750 GB SATA II 32 mb cache
FSX Acceleration on OS XP Drive but separate to OSX etc

I have followed lots and lots of advice in many forums on how to optimise my system and optimise FSX to run better and have installed this all on a blank version of Win XP. I primarily experience micro stutters now due to my optimisation and can cap my fps to 60 and it looks best there (apart from the stutters).

Here are the settings I use.

Global Tex Res: Extremely Dense
Autogen:Off (but have tried it on as suggested in tutorials)
Bloom Off
Mesh etc on Very high default settings.

I have worked through many examples on how to get a good frame rate, but I found that 30fps did not appear to feel like 30fps and was blurry and flickery whilst flying but still stuttered incidentally. I am using SFO to take off from and an F18 to test the speed of things. I have had FSX for a few years but gave up a while ago to get it running as initially it had HUGE stutters which made it unusable for flying at all. I then learnt that Affinity_mask was this problem. If I disabled core 0 then those big stutters went, but I have also been trying to use less and more cores as I have had a hunch that my system suffers from "thread collision". I have tried tons of BP settings although i don't think this helps at all.

My biggest breakthrough came with the Fiber_Frame_Fraction setting. I have read that this doesn't do much on SP2 or Acceleration and isn't recommended, but I have found running it down very low (0.01 - 0.20 I have tried) gets things running even better, but I still cannot get it totally smooth. It always feels like its going to run great but every 1-3 seconds the sim stammers in the most irritating way. The TBM setting I have tried at 60 70 80 400 etc and I'm not sure this is my issue as I cannot discern much difference. I have also found that in the NVidia CP that pre-rendering upwards of 3 frames also helps, but still won't fix things fully.

I learnt about this FPS Limiter Java app the other day and thought this would be my saviour, alas it doesn't seem so.

I am totally fed up, I have spent what amounts to probably days trying to get this to work and I can't. I would so appreciate some help here as I feel that my machine should run this quite well.

Kind regards

Michael

[jime59]

Try lowering your settings. Extremely dense and very high can push even the best of systems.

[Totty]

Thanks for your reply, however, it doesn't seem to be related to settings, I can turn everything down and it still happens. I am in the process of completely rebuilding my Win XP disc, with the intention of only running FSX on it!

I am going to follow to the "letter" the tutorial and system optimisation I have read by Nick. If I get no joy from this, I will likely explode. My wife is loosing patience faster than me now

[NickN]

thats system is not made for FSX.. its made for a server

You wont get high settings on that.. you need to move to a single QUAD DDR3 on a GTX 285 and let the server tower do server work

Your problem is a combination of a older video card that can not handle 2 quads and is dealing with thread collisions left and right

and a application that although is multicore aware is not very optimized.. so the memory controller @ DDR2 is just flat out hammered to death

FFTF DOES NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING for multicore after SP1

THE BLURS are becuse you are screwing with that on a multicore system


Yes.. start over... from scratch.. Install correctly and do not skip anything and make sure to tune the system correctly using the FSX tuning guide I posted.. link in the same thread about 4-5 posts down


As for video drivers... either 174.74 or 180.48 for 8800GT

follow my lists and do not try to skip, skimp or think you know better and add a buch of stuff I DID NOT say to do in the order I posted they be done..





But I still think you are barking up the wrong tree with that system

[Totty]

Hi Nick, I was hoping you'd read this! Since I have read all your hard work and you are undoubtedly a fountain of useful knowledge!

I totally agree, my machine has a server architecture and isn't great for this, but it's sure as hell good for everything else I do, rips through X-Plane and it has a better chance of running FSX than my old P4 1.7 512 Ram!

Unfortunately at present I haven't the cash to get the ideal system, so I am committed to dealing with what I have. Last night I have reinstalled Windows from scratch on an empty Disc. Over the weekend I'll get on with the optimization and see where it gets me.

Thanks very much for your time, I'll get back on here when I have any joy.

Michael

[Totty]

I'm back and I'm disillusioned exhausted and peed off. You're right. I don't think I'm gonna get it to run how I want. I've done everything you said and, it is better but not smooth as I'd like.

Is there anything else that can be done? What I want to understand is if I run FSX at a lower fps (which does make it run with less stutters), why is it that when I turn the plane it looks like the scenery is fuzzier (this isn't the "blurries" but a fuzzy jitter on the animation). Is this normal?

I am looking at whether a friends old computer will do the job but Its an AMD and ATI system which I know isn't ideal. If I got a GTS 250 with 1GB would I get any improvement, or is it all the cpu and ram?


You also mentions FFFT does nothing. It does on my system with Acceleration... If I put it to 0.1 it improves dramatically the amount of stutters. I have also benefited from shutting down cpu cores in the boot.ini to 4. I believe that 8 was causing huge thread collisions.

When you said Nick that the memory controller is hammered, is that before it hits the FSB as it is 1600mhz, which I thought is pretty fast, so if the bottleneck is the ddr2 ram, would I benefit from taking 2gb out to reduce traffic on the bus.

I know I'm clutching at straws, I just can't really afford to have a whole new machine right now unless its cheap, but I don't know where to start!

[Totty]

I presume, no one is going to offer any more help or advice, geeze friendly place here. I guess I have to post about 20 posts a day and be an expert on everything before I get noticed

[Fozzer]

I presume, no one is going to offer any more help or advice, geeze friendly place here. I guess I have to post about 20 posts a day and be an expert on everything before I get noticed

...have you tried forgetting all about FSX for a while, and loading up FS 2004....and running it on its Max settings, like I do on my elderly machine.......!

Paul...G-BPLF...FS 2004...FS Navigator...and Multiplayer... [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]...!

[NickN]

I presume, no one is going to offer any more help or advice, geeze friendly place here. I guess I have to post about 20 posts a day and be an expert on everything before I get noticed

I don

[Totty]

Thank you both for your responses. I know I was a bit hard, I'm just aggravated by the whole thing and let my frustration boil into my comments. Apologies for that. Yes Fozzer, maybe I should, I have it installed and it does 50+ frames with everything on. Thanks Nick for more very useful info. I will spec this all up and see if it is something I can do now, or whether I wait 6 months to things are cheaper or better for me, using FS9 in the meantime.

I've always loved Flightsim and have been running it since version 3! But I knew when I got my Mac that one day I'd wished I bought a PC instead. I suppose you can't have it all your own way.

Kind regards

Michael

PS: It was never a mistake buying my Mac, I am a Graphic Designer who does some Electronic Music too, it was the best compromise and power at the time I bought it, but I take your point

[NickN]

Woah!

I missed the OSX!

LOL!

Your running this off a MAC with bootcamp or an emulator and Windows?

FORGET IT!

Regardless of the hardware .. No wonder you are pulling your hair out.. do you really think you are getting full high end support with that emulator running a top end Windows game off of a MAC?

NOT!

Give it up and yes, if you want game then you need to use a MAC for ART and a PC for GAMES

[Cessna172150]

Theres one thing being over looked.   Get a sim for mac its called xplane

[Totty]

Let me set the record straight! I know its always funny when a Mac user tries silly things However I grew up with PCs and only switched to Macs because of work.

I am not quite stupid enough to try running FSX in Parallels or VM Ware 8-) I am also quite at home in windows as i am in OSX. I also have Windows Vista 64 and XP 32.

I also have X-Plane 9 and it runs great, but as someone has said before, XP is a Flight Sim. FSX is an Aviation Sim, and I really want to play it. Im gonna look into all this advice when I get a chance and see what i can do.

Kind regards

[Cessna172150]

I agree. i would only use xplane for goofing around.  but i agree with the others who posted to get fs9.  i have a pc and i want it because the graphics are the same and it runs way smoother as ive heard

[Totty]

What spec is your PC Cessna?