Below average performance?

[MartinW 0]

Defrag of course after all that installing and uninstalling. But no need to go way over the top with regular defrags. Once a month is enough.

[pacinka 0]

Sorry for the late reply, I've been doing lots of testing.

Kelvin, I did install all addons with rebooting in between, as per Nick's guide. As for FSUIPC, I have never used it before, and have never ran into any problems because of that. I don't really see the piont of it, so I won't install it for now. And I do not use UAC or Windows Defender - I have MS Security Essentials, which works well.

With regards to having FSX on its own drive, that was not in my original plans when I was picking out the parts for my computer, and therefore, I do not have a suitable drive for it. I currently have all my data, including Windows and FSX on a single 600GB Velociraptor, which is more than enough for my needs (I'm only using 110GB of it with all my programs installed - and half of that is FSX!). That being said, I also have a 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green which I use for backups and anything that I don't want on my Velociraptor (and again, I've only used 120GB of it). However, I don't think it would be a good drive for FSX, since it only spins at 5900RPM, and doesn't really have top quality specs.

Martin, I have Acceleration installed, so that took care of both service packs. As for the settings, I don't have them all at max - in fact I'm pretty conservative with the settings. And I do agree with you that UAC is pretty much a waste - I turned it off right after I installed MS Security Essentials. With regards to my BIOS (and all the other motherboard/graphics drivers), I downloaded the latest one form the Asus website, so it should be up to date. For defragmenting, I use O and O Defrag, which is what Nick said to use in his guide.

At this point, I have installed all my addons, and I am just trying to get the frame rates under control. Locking them at 60 seems to work well. However, even with high frame rates, I am getting some horrible blurries, and scenery is barely loading ahead of me (with the LOD Radius set to Large). Any ideas?

[MartinW 0]

You know what, it's easy to get carried away with stuff like Bojote's customised CFG file and then end upwith the dreaded blurries. There's no free lunch! But in my experience, the sim runs best without so called tweaks. I have used CFG tweaks in the past sparingly, but currently I don't use a single one. Apart from a few aircraft CFG tweaks of my own.

My rig is an i7 920 overclocked to 4GHz cooled with an NHD-14.

6GB ram

EVGA GTX580

I get very good frame rate. I have it locked at 40, [40 is smoothest for me] and only see it dip down below that at busy airports and heavy REX weather.

Water is set to one notch lower than max, due to a known issue at max, not due to performance. Autogen is fairly high but not max, simply because I don't like the pop up effect after SP2. Traffic is about 20-30% I seem to recall, can't remember precisely. And that again is because high traffic irritates me.

I can give you one tip...

Usual advice when using nVidia Inspector, or nHancer is to have AA not ticked in FSX, so it doesn't override nHancer or Inspector. However, I found that AA must be ticked in the sim, or performance decreases markedly. It doesn't at all bypass nHancer or Inspector AA if it's ticked in the sim.

Whatever you are using, Inspector or nHancer, or just nVidia's control panel... do try AA ticked and not ticked in the sim settings, to check the difference.

[allardjd 1,853]

Just a word about defragging. I believe it's an over-used and over-rated thing in most circumstances and in particular for Flight Simulator. If you consider the FS program and it's supporting files installed to your hard disk, by what mechanism would it become fragmented once installed?

FS, when started, goes to the disk and loads what it needs into memory and runs from there. As you proceed to use it, it will repeatedly go to the disk to fetch other things needed, perhaps the scenery for the area you're flying into. Most things it needs it only fetches to memory once so there's no impact from a fragmented file anyway beyond the duration needed for the one-time fetch.

What FS does NOT do is re-write those things back to the disk, which would lead to fragmentation. FS may edit a few small cfg files or logs, but not much else. There's simply very, very little happening that could cause fragmentation.

De-fragging is indicated when there is a large file that is subject to periodic updating - adds, edits, deletes - in a word, databases or large, live documents. In those situations the files can become badly fragmented over time and that can result in diminishing performance and increased access times. Those kinds of things should be de-fragged as often as needed to keep them performing crisply. Static programs and data files simply don't need it more than once and repeatedly de-fragging to improve FS performance is pretty much a waste of good electrons.

For program files or static data files, of which FS is a great example, there is little need and little benefit to repeated de-fragging. It may perhaps be helpful once just before or after installing FS, or after putting in an add-on that installs something into the FS folder structure - beyond that, it's difficult for me to see how fragmentation of FS files could occur or how de-fragging could possibly improve performance.

John

[MartinW 0]

beyond that, it's difficult for me to see how fragmentation of FS files could occur or how de-fragging could possibly improve performance.

I would say FSX itself certainly does become fragmented, both upon initial install and over time. Microsoft themselves tell us so in regard to Flight Sim. When FS and the OS share drive space, apparently the OS has priority and will move the FS folders out of the way, So OS on a separate drive can be advantageous some claim.

However, I would agree with John in terms of excessive defragging. Software like O&O Defrag is merely snake oil. I tested O&O and found no difference in terms of FSX performance at all. The windows defrag in my view is perfectly adequate for occasional use. Defragging weekly or more, as some do, is pointless and merely wares out the hard drive unnecessarily.

Once every couple of months is all that's required.

I know Nick Needham who promotes O&O [GEX developer} is an ex NASA employee and experienced programmer, but I dispute the requirement for frequent use of O&O defrag entirely.

I remember Magic Man on JF mentioning a while back, how Microsoft's software engineers have also conformed that excessive defraging is not required.

[Andrew Godden 934]

I am weighing into this discussion late and after much testing. However, with a system that is spec'd slightly higher (see below) I am regularly getting average frame rates of 50+ and up to 100+ depending on the areas I am flying in. Frame rate spikes can go over the 200 mark.

All scenery settings are pretty much set to the maximum and I am using the FS Global 2010 X mesh scenery, FTX AU scenery and OrbX freeware scenery.

A key to success is changing a few of the scenery settings and this can have a massive impact of frame rates. A must is to uncheck "Lens flare" and "Light bloom" on the Graphics tab of the Display Settings to start with and set the various AI sliders to approx 15%.

Finding the optimum graphics solution is often a process of trial and error.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Andrew

[MartinW 0]

Yep, with frame rate lock off, I can see spikes over 200.

Locked at 40 gives the smoothest experience for me.

[mutley 4,487]

Are you locking it in the sim UM? or with a 3rd party app like FPS limiter?

[MartinW 0]

Just in the sim uncle mut.

It's smooth enough.

I did attempt FPS limiter some time ago but had issues with it.

I will try again when i get round to it.

[pacinka 0]

Oh, whatever...

Yes, it's been almost 5 months since I've posted in this topic. I have wanted to reply, but I've continuously been putting it off, and never got to it. So here's the conclusion I've reached:

I haven't reached any conclusion. I have decided to forget about performance and just enjoy what I have. I think this is the most effective and simple way to remedy my "sickness". Now back to some relaxed flying!

P.S. I'll post some shots from the new (well, not anymore) computer in the screenshot section.