GTX260 and FSX

[TMcIver]

Hey All,

I've been reading threads all over the place about this card sure that the answer must be out there somewhere. I've had no luck.

I bought a GTX260 yesterday to replace my 8800GT. Flying around YMML (orbx) with the 8800gt I was getting 10-15 fps at worst and in the 20's when looking the other way. It was very flyable but YMML had me wanting more. So I bought the card. I'm now getting 5-6 fps. Not all that impressed. It seems to be a problem many people are having with these cards, even with the gtx280. Various threads seem to conclude that the drivers aren't up to scratch and that we should kill Nvidia and Microsoft or both. It seems to me however that there are people out there having success with these cards in FSX. I want to be one of those people!

John seemed to be recommending the GTX280 as the card of choice and a couple of people who have them seem to be singing there praises, I've also seen people on here with GTX260's who seem to be getting reasonable results.

I've tried the last couple of drivers. I'm on the 177.92's at the moment. They have made no difference. The most annoying thing is that everything else seems to work well. 3Dmark06 score is reasonably high other games seem to run fine.

I have tried other places in FSX so its not a YMML issue. Something is a miss. I spent a lot of money to divide my FPS by 3! There must be some setting somewhere thats killing me. Any help would be very greatly appriciated. Thanks.

Tim.

Asus P5K-e

Q6600 @3.6 (on water)

MSI GTX260

Corsair HX620W

4 GB Corsair Dominators.

22 inch @ 1680x1050

[LBPN]

I have a GTX260 too, and I don't get spectacular results with this card on YMML. But I don't get 5fps like you. I get 10-15 when facing YMML and, from 30-35 to 50-100 on FTX. On other games this card performance is great.  I play Crysis at max settings, but of course I don't exaggerate with high resolutions.

Regarding your 5 FPS, there is something wrong with your FSX settings. You should not exaggerate with autogen and scene complexity because those are bound to CPU. FSX in general is CPU dependent so I don't believe a better GPU will give outstanding results. Also try tweaking FSX.cfg.

YMML uses high resolution textures and lots of polygons, and I suspect FSX send this load more on CPU than on GPU. Maybe with SP1 orbx will improve YMML and will get better results and higher FPS. But will see when it comes out. Anyway before GTX 260 I had a 8600GT 512Mb and as far as I can see GTX performs much better in FSX and FTX. I cannot tell the difference on YMML because I bought this card before YMML came out.

[TMcIver]

Thanks for the reply. I did read through the thread of your troubles after searching the forums for anything gtx260 or 280 related. I have done lots of tweaking and am quite used to changing autogen and following all the tweaking guides. I'm also aware of how FSX enjoys a good CPU (thus my q6600 @ 3.6). I was quite happy with what I was getting out of my 8800gt (for what it was) so I don't think my troubles are in the FSX settings, though maybe theres a magic setting which is specific too the 200 series.

There seem to be two sorts of people flying this cards in FSX. There are those like me who are getting terrible fps after coming from a setup that was working quite well. Then there are those who are really happy with the cards and are able to fly over major cities with increased smoothness. There has to be something some of us are missing. Whether its a bios setting, maybe something in the config or even a hardware conflict. This problem is FSX specific but it doesn't seem to be just an immature driver thing.

I am running a second video card (8400) to drive a third screen but haven't had any trouble with it before. My FSX flying is done on one screen though panels often end up on the others. No other programs seem to be effected so I can't see how that can be it.

Perhaps coincidentally I can't seem to get AA working either.

Thanks again.

Tim.

[E-Rock]

Have you tried the 177.83 drivers? I've been following GTX260/280 performance in FSX quite closely and you're right, it is either very good or very bad. I'm holding off upgrading my 8000GT for this reason because it seems to be hit and miss at the moment which I can't explain.

[LBPN]

Yes, you should try 177.83 as I had good results than 177.92.I'll gues I'll go back to 177.83 myself. But hey @3.6Ghz with this GPU you should definitely get much better results than you get right now. I have my CPU at 3.00Ghz, sometimes @3.2Ghz and I can tell you FPS at YMML never dropped below 8-9 and that's very rare as I get 13-15 with autogen to dense and scene complexity to very dense. I cannot hold my Q6600 @3.6Ghz on a long period of time, because it's not stable (maybe I don't know how to tweak the RAM latencies and CPU voltage), but when I overclock it to 3.6 I get 15-18FPS which is a big improvement.

You should try a clean install FSX, FTX , YMML, and maybe Windows also, and see if something changes.In the same time you need to be sure you uninstalled your old driver completely.

There's an utility "nfr_071.exe" (search on guru3d.com) which scans and removes any file related to nvidia driver.  Then reinstall the new driver.

[shaneo17]

I have a GTX280, YMML is fine, but i have another problem. I can't get antialiasing to work, no matter what i do. It's really starting to bug me. Anyone got a solution? 

[LBPN]

I have a GTX280, YMML is fine, but i have another problem. I can't get antialiasing to work, no matter what i do. It's really starting to bug me. Anyone got a solution? 

What FPS are you getting at YMML, i'm being curious. Also what're your comp specs? What driver?. I guess we should have a thread regarding GTX200 series on FTX YMML, because I suspec there's something wrong with these cards on FSX. I don't have any problem with antialiasing, it works good.

[shaneo17]

my specs are in my sig. i'm getting 15-20 fps around YMML, yet for some reason they seem to be deteriorating every time I open the game.  \

I figured out the antialiasing, it only happens when DX10 preview is on. I'd really like to have DX10 on though  :'(

I think i've got some tweaking to do with FSX though, since I only just installed it on my new rig.

[TMcIver]

I'll give those drivers a try. I just tried running with AlacrityPC (which shuts down windows system stuff and other reduntant processes). At orange in the ultralight I got around 100 fps!! At YMML things were much better in terms of fps but everything seemed very ugly. Textures were pretty fuzzy and the draw distance seemed fairly small. I still can't get AA going which could contribute quite a bit to things not looking so good. I should go to bed now, but this is progress. There is some process running under Vista which does not like the GTX260. Working out which one should go a long way to solving this.