Need advice on fsx settings

[dnkiwi]

Hi guys i just finished my most recent pc upgrade and am currently running a dual core with 4 gig ram and windows 7 and a ati sapphire radeon HD6570 2gig modeland i am getting a steady 20 fps with the target being 20fps within fsx but in would to know i maybe the fps should set higher to get more out the setup i have

[Ian Warren]

I would bring your f/rate lock up to 30 or 40 , it is known FS is limited to just below 20FPS at maximum but this will open your buffer and run smoother with all settings up to the limit .

[wildmanfiveone]

why don't you just set it to unlimited, the worst that can happen then is its not very smooth but then you can just bring it down until you find a limit that gives you a good result

[IslandBoy77]

I sometimes think that tweaking FSX is akin to magic - sometimes you get the "spell" right, other times you get legions of mops carrying buckets of water...

Presumably you've availed yourself of Bojote's tweaking website here: http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html ?

Also, as much as I love and use AMD / ATi cards myself, regrettably FSX has "biased" coding that means it will always work better with Intel / nVidia - which is a shame, as I still find the AMD / ATi CPU / Video Card combo generally (as in, excluding FSX) gives more "bang for buck" (as in, spend less money for roughly equivalent firepower), even if FSX won't play nice with said favourite combo... And since some of us are known to spend a wee bit of time charging around Battlefield 2 ("I need a medic over here!"), if FSX is not THE go to "game" on a computer, well, less is more, eh?

There are also a couple of other places to wade through - I've not made my way through them yet, as it's quite fiddly and results vary:
http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic34141...187.html#198187
http://www.simforums.com/forums/setting-up...topic29041.html
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/333332-fsx-ti...-by-tom-rogers/

On balance the general wisdom seems to slightly favour setting FPS to unlimited unless you are using an external FPS limiter (which is something I've only just learned about but haven't researched or tried)

[Ian Warren]

I grew away from AMD/Ati years ago , .. sorta like the old Ford Holden and Mazda Datsun with a Vauxhall Rover in the clover , always Intel since .... what century is this .. nah .. Last AMD/Celeron/Ati was 1998 , least kept the PC as a backup till 2000 .. Every one will have problems with hardware , to me , it seems there are faster more complete answers for the Intel's .. possibly it is the better system for FS .. AMD s for other gaming regimes , or just appears that way .

[IslandBoy77]

Hey Ian - the AMD / ATi combo still returns better performance per dollar than Intel / nVidia - OUTSIDE of FSX. Regardless, I reckon its a good idea to "fight the power" for those who aren't focused on FSX and support AMD / ATi, otherwise Intel / nVidia will stop innovating. The main reason we've got good choice / power these days is because AMD / ATi have kept nipping at the heels of the oligarchy. And there's certainly plenty of instances where an AMD CPU is better than an equivalent Intel, or an ATi (now all AMD) video card is better than an nVidia. And then there's drivers, with nVidia having had quite a run of massively bloated crappy drivers - of course this comes and goes with both platforms, but over the 15-odd years of using both, I've seen more awful nVidia drivers than I've seen ATi.

But as already agreed, if one's main / sole focus is FSX, and one is prepared to pay, there really is no choice other than to go Intel / nVidia (that's MS doing an "Apple-lock-in" thing on us - great...)

For most FPS gamers, if you asked them "Do you want 40 FPS for $500, or 45 FPS for $600?" - it's an easy choice unless one simply has to have the best for bragging rights... Also the combo of CPU / Video card has the motherboard coming into play, and the AMD ones are usually cheaper for a comparable setup. And having seen / worked on hundreds of systems over then last 9-odd years of being in business for myself, I can say with surety that AMD systems just "feel" peppier than their Intel counterparts in a general sense. I would agree with you that some of the early AMD CPUs were certainly lacking - if your last experience was 1998, that's the dark ages! Once the socket 754 CPUs came along - some of the Semprons withstanding (they were sometimes worse than those nasty Celerons) - AMD generally went ahead in leaps and bounds. ATi had a good run with pretty much all of their cards once they hit the Radeon series.

Funny to write this - there was a time, around '98 - '99, that I wouldn't touch AMD / ATi. Then I used a system with that combo and realised how over-priced and under-powered (relatively speaking) the Intel / nVidia deal was...

[Ian Warren]

The best quote yet for the argument "Do you want 40 FPS for $500, or 45 FPS for $600?"

[AndrewJamez]

The thing i used to lile about ATI is that there AA method was far supperior to Nvidias. Dont know if thats the case now??

[Ian Warren]

Think today .. its a Ford .. or a Holden , hells they both the same , just depends how bigger the engine you put in it .

[Lapun]

Times are a changing yet again Chaps, the 500 series nVidias with the latest 'inspector' and a 4.6 i72600k chip runs FSX as smooth as can be wished given appropriate tweaks (if necessary) - I haven't used ATI so am not knocking it - but wouldn't dismiss nVidia simply on price.

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (Lapun @ Apr 21 2012,1:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...but wouldn't dismiss nVidia simply on price.

Agreed - nVidia is the card to have for FSX-only users. Also, there's nothing "wrong" with the nVidia cards at all that I've seen / used of late - even the drivers seem good at the moment (except for that awful "update" user that gets created if one wants auto-updating - yuck!). But if it comes down to economics, and FSX isn't the primary focus, AMD / ATi is the way to go. I only mention any of this at all as many FSXers don't realise how good the AMD / ATi cards are since FSX is hard-coded to work best with nVidia, and I don't like that there are some people on the 'net who "bag" AMD/ ATi only because of looking thru the FSX "lens" of "forced" nVidia selection. I would consider nVidia myself if a) The drivers at the time are stable b) Money is of no consequence (oh to be in THAT position, eh?) and c) The card I was looking at was definitely better than the AMD / ATi equivalent for what I was doing. Although I will freely admit to just liking the way the AMD / ATi cards work & their software over nVidia - that's the thing with getting to see the "good, bad and ugly" of both manufacturers on a day to day basis across a wide range of computers types / usages.

What I'm NOT saying is that people should ditch nVidia just cause I like AMD / ATi. What I AM saying is that a shift in thinking is in order away from "worshiping at the nVidia altar" just because an FSX "guru" somewhere in the internet ether says that's the only way to go (implying for ALL simming / gaming, not just FSX).