FPS Issues

[Hondo]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm having terrible time getting FPS up so I can fly smoothly. 

 

I recently installed Windows 8 and with FTX Australia I get around 15-25fps flying a Cessna 152.

It goes down from 10-20fps if I try to fly a 737. 

 

I have tried numerous online guides to improve fps with no improvement. I have a pretty good PC and I would have thought I would get better FPS than This.

 

 

Comp Specs:

 

i7 3930K 3.2GHZ

32GB RAM

2 x GTX690 running SLI (Nvidia Surround) @ 5898 X 1080

 

Can anyone guide me through some tweaking to get my FPS up a bit.

 

Greatly Appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

[rockliffe]

Hi Hondo,

 

I so wish I had a pound for every time I read a post like this   One of the first things that I notice is the resolution, so I guess three monitors. I would suggest this is the major reason for the low performance. The other, running at 3.2ghz, is to be fair, a little on the low side to get the best. However, considering your setup, it really means you have to tweak the settings to get the best from the hardware. If you look at my rig, which is no slouch by any stretch of the imagination, you can decide whether you want to follow my advice or not. I have posted my cfg settings, FSX settings and slider settings. Beyond which i suggest, you overclock your CPU to get the very best from it. You'll be surprised at the difference. The next thing is to investigate the Bufferpools tweak, if you haven't already done so. This if set up correctly can provide a boost of 20-25%, depending on your rig.

 

NB: Two things that will change from flight to flight is the AI and autogen settings. With AI, I suggest you only fly with one type, otherwise you're filling the skies with unnecessary aircraft. eg, when flying GA I have my GA selected at 30% in FSX and airline at 0%, when flying airlines I select 25% airline AI and GA set at 0%.  As for autogen, when I fly the NGX, I never fly with autogen set at anything other than normal.  When I fly GA I set autogen at dense around urban scenery and very dense for bush flying.

 

Check out my settings and let us know how you get on, but please, if you haven't already done so, DO investigate the bufferpools tweak.  BTW, lock your frames at 30.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spirit_66]

...............I have a pretty good PC and I would have thought I would get better FPS than This.

 

 

Comp Specs:

 

i7 3930K 3.2GHZ

32GB RAM

2 x GTX690 running SLI (Nvidia Surround) @ 5898 X 1080

 

......

For FSX this is NOT a pretty good PC. It's pretty good average but unbalanced. CPU a bit too week and GPU too powerful. P3D v2 would be better for this rig.

You should think about OC the CPU to reach 4.6 GHz.

Did you ever think about DX10? Here is what you should know. http://forum.avsim.net/forum/569-dx-10-discussions-hints-and-help/

Spirit

[Hondo]

Ho Rocklife,

 

Thank you for taking the time out to response to my post and the screenshots. I know there are lot of info in tweaking fsx and I have gone through few guides already and not much have worked.

And there are lot of info there and I have been trying to make sense on some of the tweaks. I am thinking about OC the CPU. I have not done this before so I will need to do bit of research and

then try and do it in the next couple of days.

 

I did go and buy FSX GO and tried setting up a profile with the settings you posted, but I could not find some of the settings in your profile to add to the new profile. Would you be able to share

your profile file so I can just copy it to the profile folder and just pick it up from there in FSX GO.

 

I have set up nvidia inspector and the FSX settings to replicate what you have. I noticed that you dont use DX10? is there a particular reason for this? Spirit posted a link to sub forums that deals with DX10

issues. I;m just going through to see if there is fix for it.

 

I'm also looking at buffer pool settings... but these kind things are little over my head.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

[rockliffe]

Ho Rocklife,

 

Thank you for taking the time out to response to my post and the screenshots. I know there are lot of info in tweaking fsx and I have gone through few guides already and not much have worked.

And there are lot of info there and I have been trying to make sense on some of the tweaks. I am thinking about OC the CPU. I have not done this before so I will need to do bit of research and

then try and do it in the next couple of days.

 

I did go and buy FSX GO and tried setting up a profile with the settings you posted, but I could not find some of the settings in your profile to add to the new profile. Would you be able to share

your profile file so I can just copy it to the profile folder and just pick it up from there in FSX GO.

 

I have set up nvidia inspector and the FSX settings to replicate what you have. I noticed that you dont use DX10? is there a particular reason for this? Spirit posted a link to sub forums that deals with DX10

issues. I;m just going through to see if there is fix for it.

 

I'm also looking at buffer pool settings... but these kind things are little over my head.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

 

Hi Hondo, I don't use DX10, 'cos I've never been able to get it to work properly, despite many attempts.

 

As I said before, the two main issues you have are a) running a three monitor setup and running at 3.2ghz. Running with such a high resolution is a big performance hit for any rig due to the extra pixel count. As for sharing a profile, to be fair, I would suggest you spend a little more time so that you know why you are doing something. Copying someone elses profile will not help you in the slightest, as the next time you want to make some changes you won't know how, but more importantly you won't know why!

 

So, to help, if you look to the right of Orbx Go GUI you'll see an icon called Master List. From this list you can choose to add values to the cfg. Try it and let me know how you get on. Remember one thing though, un as few tweaks as possible, as running too many without understanding what they do can cause more problems.

[Hondo]

Hi Mate,

 

Thanks... I did have a look at the master list and it doesnt have all the settings to add like what you have in your profile. For example I cant see "Mesh Complexity" in the master list at all.

 

There are lot of settings that I would need to understand what they do, which kind of put me off FSX as they are fairly complex to understand for me. Anyway... I'll keep researching to try and understand what they are.

 

Also I have tried FSX in one screen 1920 x 1080 resolution. Which still gives me the same FPS. So there is something wrong here.

 

Thanks,

[rockliffe]

Hondo, if you're getting the same fps in a single window running at 1/3 of the resolution, as you are running in three monitors then there's something amiss. OK, are you running unlimited or locked frames?

 

As I said before, any tweaks must be kept to a minimum. The only ones which are important to have are Affinity Mask, HighMemfix and Disable preload. These are not really tweaks in the true sense but should be present in the cfg. The other two to consider are Fibre Frame Time Fraction, this allows you to decide how much resources are given to the loading of the scenery at the expense of smoothness (frames) this is used to diminish the effect of blurries and will work differently for different rigs.

 

The Bufferpools tweak, this is the holy grail of tweaks and I suggest you do some reading up on this one. Effectively it allows the data to bypass the bufferpool and go directly to the GPU. It works most of the time but may need to be accompanied by setting the water slider to High 2x.  I suggest you do a search and read up on FFTF and BP. The other settings you see are simply views of the FSX sliders. Having them in the Orbx Go app allows you to tweak all the things that affect performance in one place. This is useful as settings and tweaks should be applied on each flight and determined by things such as the autogen load, type of weather and the kind of aircraft you're flying.

 

I would just add that any changes you make to your cfg, you do so at your own risk. BTW, if a value isn't in the Orbx Go GUI then you can create one from accessing the master list on the right handside.

[GroovyMotion]

Having 32Gb RAM and a SLI GTX690 4Gb will definitely not give you any benefits in FSX! You just need raw power from the CPU!

 

I will strongly suggest that you become a member of overclock.net...you can read this OC guide for your specific chipset: http://www.overclock.net/t/1189242/sandy-bridge-e-overclocking-guide-walk-through-explanations-and-support-for-all-x79-overclockers

 

This is one of the best community for overclocking, you will get a LOT of help there, trust me!

[rockliffe]

Just a thought Hondo... how many sticks of RAM do you have and what size? Are they all the same?

[Hondo]

Hi Groovy, yeah i'm doing some research now on how to OC.... I realise now that CPU is a bottleneck for my rig. I never done overclocking so I'm a little nervous as i'm no expert in this area. My mobo (ROG Rampage IV Formula) comes with couple of OC profiles and I tried them first & my PC refused to start-up. After couple of frantic hours luckily I figured out this mobo comes with a backup bios that I can boot from to recover, which saved the day. I've been looking through the ROG forums for easy OC guide but I have not found one. I'll take a look through the overclocking forums.

 

Rocklife, I have Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600mhz ram sticks. So thats 4 sticks of 8gb RAM. I know these are the fastest ram but they are meant to be pretty OK. 

 

Also I did bit more testing & Went back to testing with default scenery & FTX. This is what I found.

 

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 50-60fps (1 Screen)

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 35-45fps (3 screen)

 

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 15-20fps (1 screen)

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 10-20 (3 screen)

 

From that there seems to be huge hit when use FTX Australia

 

I did some testing with the PMDG 737 as well, but I want go in to it for now cause PMDG from what I know does have a fairly huge FPS hit.

For now I'm just using the Cessna at the same airport [YRED] as baseline to sort this out.

[GroovyMotion]

Hi Groovy, yeah i'm doing some research now on how to OC.... I realise now that CPU is a bottleneck for my rig. I never done overclocking so I'm a little nervous as i'm no expert in this area. My mobo (ROG Rampage IV Formula) comes with couple of OC profiles and I tried them first & my PC refused to start-up. After couple of frantic hours luckily I figured out this mobo comes with a backup bios that I can boot from to recover, which saved the day. I've been looking through the ROG forums for easy OC guide but I have not found one. I'll take a look through the overclocking forums.

 

Rocklife, I have Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600mhz ram sticks. So thats 4 sticks of 8gb RAM. I know these are the fastest ram but they are meant to be pretty OK. 

 

Also I did bit more testing & Went back to testing with default scenery & FTX. This is what I found.

 

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 50-60fps (1 Screen)

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 35-45fps (3 screen)

 

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 15-20fps (1 screen)

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 10-20 (3 screen)

 

From that there seems to be huge hit when use FTX Australia

 

I did some testing with the PMDG 737 as well, but I want go in to it for now cause PMDG from what I know does have a fairly huge FPS hit.

For now I'm just using the Cessna at the same airport [YRED] as baseline to sort this out.

Hi Hondo,

your ram is fine...this won't be the bottleneck at all...so is your SLI setup!

What kind of case and cooling you have? and what power supply?

Did you try raising the multiplier alone step by step?

 

Also, for OC you really need prime95, CPU-Z and HWMonitor they are your friend. You first need to run CPU-Z and HWMonitor stock to see your settings and then start OC

Prime95: http://www.overclock.net/t/137251/prime95

CPU-z: http://www.overclock.net/t/138137/cpu-z

HWMonitor: http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.24-setup.exe

[Mac_Maddog88]

Something must be up. 

I get 30-40+ FPS in Australia with default aircraft, on my laptop! 20-40+ FPS with addon aircraft too. 

I hate to say it, but perhaps a reinstall is in order? I have in the past done a reinstall and gotten MUCH better frames! 

 

Also, I believe I read somewhere that multi-core GPUs like your 690 may decrease FS performance. 

EDIT: I'd used these charts when I was planning my computer, http://jetlinesystems.com/performance.php

 

Very strange issue though, you shouldn't be having that IMO...

[Hondo]

Thank Groovy,

 

I'll start D/L these apps you mentioned.

 

For cooling i have the corsair h100i which is believe is pretty good for OC.

And I have Antec High Current Pro 1200W power supply so I dont think this is a problem.

 

Ourtarge yeah def there is something wrong. I got these FPS when I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8. So I just did full re-install of the FSX from scratch just couple of days ago. So it is a fresh install.

[Mac_Maddog88]

Thank Groovy,

 

I'll start D/L these apps you mentioned.

 

For cooling i have the corsair h100i which is believe is pretty good for OC.

And I have Antec High Current Pro 1200W power supply so I dont think this is a problem.

 

Ourtarge yeah def there is something wrong. I got these FPS when I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8. So I just did full re-install of the FSX from scratch just couple of days ago. So it is a fresh install.

My best guess really is that the GPU could be bottleknecking the processor, as far as I know,  the 690 is one of the most powerful GPUs on the market. 

Unfortunately, your processor and one of the newer ones, the 4770k don't share the same socket type, so if you were thinking of upgrading, you'd have to purchase a new motherboard.

 

Kind of a radical idea, but if you have the money, I'd purchase a new MOBO and CPU. Another simpler option though would be to overclock, as I said above your GPU could simply be bottleknecking the CPU.

 

I'm kinda wondering too, what were your frames like before upgrading to 8 compared to how they are now?

Mac

[GroovyMotion]

Thank Groovy,

 

I'll start D/L these apps you mentioned.

 

For cooling i have the corsair h100i which is believe is pretty good for OC.

And I have Antec High Current Pro 1200W power supply so I dont think this is a problem.

 

Ourtarge yeah def there is something wrong. I got these FPS when I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8. So I just did full re-install of the FSX from scratch just couple of days ago. So it is a fresh install.

 

My best guess really is that the GPU could be bottleknecking the processor, as far as I know,  the 690 is one of the most powerful GPUs on the market. 

Unfortunately, your processor and one of the newer ones, the 4770k don't share the same socket type, so if you were thinking of upgrading, you'd have to purchase a new motherboard.

 

Kind of a radical idea, but if you have the money, I'd purchase a new MOBO and CPU. Another simpler option though would be to overclock, as I said above your GPU could simply be bottleknecking the CPU.

 

I'm kinda wondering too, what were your frames like before upgrading to 8 compared to how they are now?

Mac

 

Hondo your cooling and psu are way more than what your CPU needs even OC'ed! Athlons require a LOT more power and cooling than Intel's!

Outrage has a good point, your cards might be way too powerful for your rig! And if you can't OC even modestly then I'd check into another mobo and cpu

[Hondo]

Hi Guys,

 

If I recall, before Win 8 upgrade the FPS was around the same. I was really flying PMDG 737 back then so FPS was fairly low anyway.

 

I rally dont have the money get another CPU & Mobo, so OC is my only option. I'm still looking in to this.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

[GroovyMotion]

I know what you mean on the money!

Check out the overclock.net forums it's an amazing community!

[spirit_66]

Hi Guys,

 

If I recall, before Win 8 upgrade the FPS was around the same. I was really flying PMDG 737 back then so FPS was fairly low anyway.

 

I rally dont have the money get another CPU & Mobo, so OC is my only option. I'm still looking in to this.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

Hi Hondo,

 

well, we've the same CPU and same MoBo and I had the Corsair H100i which I changed now to a Thermaltake water 3.0 extreme. The Corsair got a faulty pump. With the new Thermaltake I even get 5 degrees Celsius lower. My GPU is only a Asus GTX670 OC and I get nearly always stable locked 30 FPS. The GPU run at close to 99% power with P3D v2 and <50% with FSX.

 

I think your GTX690 is not what you should have but I'm not the expert for this. I only know that the GTX690 is in fact a double GPU. I would rather prefer a GTX780TI but for a FSX installation it will be over-sized.

 

I OC my CPU to 4.6 GHz and it runs stable at max 70 C. I'm just looking if I can find the YouTube vid which I used to get it done. - Sorry, I didn't find it but I remember that these Asus MoBo profiles didn't work for me too. It was explained in the video how and how much to adjust all the single parameter in the BIOS and it worked fine. I also had to use the reset button of the MoBo sometimes but it's easy with this nice MoBo.

 

Take your time and do it cool and slow. Think before doing and do it after rechecking. You can't make it wrong.

Good luck

Spirit

[rockliffe]

Guys, the big problem surely, is Hondo is running three monitors!

[Spacey]

Hi Rockliffe,

I am just curious about the reaso for the water setting .....

Bufferpools tweak, this is the holy grail of tweaks and I suggest you do some reading up on this one. Effectively it allows the data to bypass the bufferpool and go directly to the GPU. It works most of the time but may need to be accompanied by setting the water slider to High 2x .....

I know that high water setting are a drain on FPS, So what the theory here with this bufferpools tweak? Why does it make the tweak work?

Thanks for your time on this if available.

Spacey

[rockliffe]

Hi Spacey, quite often when the Bufferpools tweak is used ie Poolsize=0 all the data I sent directly to the GPU and it is often accompanied by data overload, resulting in graphical spiking and anomalies. Increasing the water setting 99% of the time eradicates these issues. Unfortunately, by increasing the water setting it often eradicates the benefit of using the Bufferpools tweak, but the benefits can still remain as the sim very often takes on a more smooth experience. Alternatively to upping the water slider is to use the RejectThreshold value in Bufferpools. By setting a particular value determines the amount of data that is passed directly to the GPU as opposed to ALL the data being sent. There are different values that can be used with reject threshold and these are determined by the GPU memory. I suggest a search on the forums will return more in depth information than I can convey. Cheers...

BTW Why the water setting eradicates the graphical spiking I'm not entirely sure, but I understand it passes the data through the shader cache twice, or something similar. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can expand on this.

[Hondo]

Hi Guys,

 

I spent whole of yesterday OC my CPU. It took me a while and finally got it OC to 4.6ghz. It seems to be stable and I have been running stress testing to see how its preforming.

I'll soon fire up FSX and try out these settings mentioned in this forums. II;m sure I will still need some help and will post back once I had sometime to test FSX.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

[Mac_Maddog88]

Hi Guys,

 

I spent whole of yesterday OC my CPU. It took me a while and finally got it OC to 4.6ghz. It seems to be stable and I have been running stress testing to see how its preforming.

I'll soon fire up FSX and try out these settings mentioned in this forums. II;m sure I will still need some help and will post back once I had sometime to test FSX.

 

Thanks,

Hondo

Nice job!

 

Low chance of me overclocking, the 4770k runs quite hot, even with the NH-D14. I'm just using Turboboost to 3.9 GHz right now, read online that performs like the Sandy Bridge at 4.4GHz.

 

I wish you luck mate, hope your FS runs better!

[Hondo]

OK I have done some testing with FSX and used some of the settings rocklife posted and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any great improvements after OC my CPU 4.6ghz.

 

This what I have done to Test.

 

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 50-60fps (1 Screen) - Same as before

Default Scenery With Cessna 152 - 40-45fps (3 screen) - Very slight improvement (but when flying over terrain it goes down to 20-35fps and around 16fps when landing)

 

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 30fps (1 screen) - About 10fps improvement

FTX Scenery With Cessna 152 - 15-25 (3 screen) - while flying. Slight improvement around 5ps

 

I was expecting bit more of an improvement after OC. I'm yet to even try PMDG 737 which I know always 10-15fps less than flying a Cessna. Is there anything I can try to get my FPS up?

 

Following is what I have installed with FSX

- FTX AUS

- REX

- AccuFeel

- Ezdock 

 

Thanks,

Hondo

[GroovyMotion]

Hondo is it REX 3 HD? Just curious because my FPS drops a lot with the HD textures even OC @ 4.4Ghz but if they are off it's very smooth.

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hi Hondo

 

I know eh! 3 monitors is flight sim heaven! I would be severely depressed if I had to go back to one monitor Lol Surely you have checked this out? but if not, have a look, it is an amazing guide to running FSX.

 

  http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html

 

Doug

[Hondo]

Hi Groovy,

 

I have REX Essential + Overdive HD. I believe this is the latest version. I could be wrong as I bought it little while back.

 

Hey Doogles, I cant play in one monitor anymore. With monitors with TrackIR its the best experience you can get if I can get this damn FPS fixed.

 

Hondo

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hondo, you have some good hardware there...and sounds like your getting some overclocking done, way to go!

 

Keep in mind that sometimes its easier to get a good stable overclock with two sticks of ram instead of four.

[Hondo]

Hey mate, yeah I have fairly decent hardware and I was expecting bit more FPS. I was told my cpu is the bottleneck and to OC my cpu which I have done but I dont see any much of an improvement.

 

I'm really not sure what I need to get this sorted.

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hondo, I hope you will dig into Nicks FSX Bible...I know it is very extensive, but I believe he tries to teach us that chasing FPS is not necessarily the goal so much as just overall smoothness of flow. How long have you had this rig?

[Hondo]

I had my rig since mid last year.....

 

I have seen that guide before but I didnt really read through thoroughly. I'll have to sit down go through it soon.

[GroovyMotion]

Doogles is right...you don't have to read it all but the part from reinstalling windows from scratch is awesome!

In your case it might be both the CPU not being able to catch up and the SLI cards throttling the CPU.

[Doug Sawatzky]

Cool! I also know that FSX does not benefit from crossfire ATI cards, if anything it decreases performance, I am not sure how that works with the Nvidia stuff? Can you run multi monitors off one GTX690?

[GroovyMotion]

Don't know about the 690 running multi...best thing is to ask in the overclock.net forum

Hey Doogles do you like your UD5? You have the GUI BIOS? I have the same board and glad I got it because the UD3 is only good if it's the latest revision.

I got my 6300 as high as 4.5Ghz stable but I will get a Cougar vortex fan and swap my H60's fan and use it as a second one pushing cold air in the casing to lower the temps.

It's fairly "cold" at 4.36Ghz but it really bumps it up @ 4.5!

[Doug Sawatzky]

Ya, love my UD5, its the first version 1.1 with non GUI Bios, but I am starting to get to know my way around it  lol. I still need a little more practice to get the 5.0ghz stable but my Inwin Mana case with five 120mm fans plus the two pushing through the H100, i have had no cooling issues 50c seems to be the consistent temp for both the CPU and GPU with a good load on.

Your 6300 sounds like its running good tho! nice!

[GroovyMotion]

Nice! Well, the 6300 is dirt cheap and can OC pretty darn quick! I was on a very tight budget so I was not expecting much but I m surprised! With that extra cooling at the bottom and the upgraded H60 fan that should help me go beyond 4.5

[Doug Sawatzky]

Thats awesome! Maybe have to try out a H100 and crank that 6300 up to 4.8?

[GroovyMotion]

Thats awesome! Maybe have to try out a H100 and crank that 6300 up to 4.8?

nah H60 is plenty, I can add one more fan to the top and one to the front so that H60 is plenty, I am not aiming more than 4.5 on that one

[Doug Sawatzky]

Oh, for sure! I am just being silly I am actually quite happy with my modest 4.6 overclock and dont feel the need to push much higher, Is your UD5 the newest version?

[jdonner]

I get the impression that you don't quite know what you're doing. Now if it would be me, I would completely ignore FSX and run an extensive hardware performance and reliability test before I would start to analyze FSX from top to bottom. Heck, I would already have done this BEFORE I would install any application! Also do extensive tests on both graphics cards and make sure that they're showing the performance that you can expect from SLI and make sure that you have all the latest Windows 8 drivers and don't rely on Microsoft's update service, but go directly to the manufacturer sites instead and also check any bios or firmware.