Has anyone tried 6-cores?

[pilotjohn75]

So on my new 2600k OC-ed to 4.5, the CPU is clearly the bottleneck, especially when traffic is added. If I turn all traffic off, and keep everything else at max, I get great frame rates even in the worst places. As I add traffic the frame rates in bad areas eventually drop to below 20, and even to the low teens when lots of add-on traffic from WoAI and FSX-GA are in the mix. AffinityMask 15 doesn't make a difference even though with 15 all 4 cores are maxed most of the time. AF 14 seems to provide a smoother feel/play with core 0 averaging around 25% and the rest mostly pegged. The GTX570 GPU OC-ed to 875 is never saturated with 30 FPS externally limited and 8xSQ. Generally it's pushing about 50-60% occasionally hitting 70%. All this with lots of add-ons: FSG, ST, UTX, GEX, REX, FTX and more.

Has anyone run a similar setup (basically maxed with lots of traffic in addition to the default) to compare 4-core vs 6-core on i7 9xx CPUs to see if the additional 2 cores would help in this situation? If 6-cores help, and the LGA2011 SB that's slated for the end of the year can OC as well as the current batch, then a 50% bump should be a nice upgrade path.

[nicky9499]

Why don't you try dumbing down your graphics settings before turning up the traffic? It sounds to me like you're trying to have the best of both worlds and as we know, FSX doesn't even want to play nice with quad cores some times. I can have my autogen if I'm flying offline, but if I'm going online with all that traffic I'd have to turn off the autogen and freeway traffic. This is with 3 cores.

[pilotjohn75]

Well my first choice is the high detail of terrain, as my of my flying is bush. All that traffic would be nice to give that added sense of a "living world". Most of the places I fly I get good frame rates (no less than 24) with most of my traffic still up and running (I have lots AI aircraft, with probably two dozen or more WoAI and a very large FSX-GA plan). However, the occasional visit - or look - to a bad area (Seattle etc.) sours the experience somewhat.

I was going to play with some of the graphics settings to see if a change would remove any load from the CPU (as my GPU is not loaded), but I'm doubtful, and auto-gen is likely the last thing I would want to touch.

[kagazi]

If you haven't already done so, I recommend this guide to optimize your OS and FSX. There's also a guide to optimize your UTX setup - don't skip this section as it will make a difference.

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html

FSX AI are not exactly the most fps friendly. WOAI can also bog down your system if you over do it. This is all covered in the guide.

Nice system by the way.

[nicky9499]

Well my first choice is the high detail of terrain, as my of my flying is bush. All that traffic would be nice to give that added sense of a "living world". Most of the places I fly I get good frame rates (no less than 24) with most of my traffic still up and running (I have lots AI aircraft, with probably two dozen or more WoAI and a very large FSX-GA plan). However, the occasional visit - or look - to a bad area (Seattle etc.) sours the experience somewhat.

I was going to play with some of the graphics settings to see if a change would remove any load from the CPU (as my GPU is not loaded), but I'm doubtful, and auto-gen is likely the last thing I would want to touch.

You just found the cause of the issue; not so much traffic, frames are good. Busy airports, frames are bad. I don't see what else there is to discuss, the universal solution for any game running poorly is to try turning down the settings first - in your case traffic or otherwise. (Autogen uses up alot of resources by the way.) You don't want to touch autogen? Fine, then reduce cloud visibility, ground resolution, lens flare or bloom.

Anyway, if you haven't already done so, try this: http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html.
Backup your original FSX.cfg first.

[loki]

You are running into the limitations of FSX. It's core engine is still a single core design going back many years. While it can use additional cores for loading scenery, the main parts of the sim all run on one core only, with little any of us can do about it. FSX also doesn't make heavy use of graphics cards the way games like Crysis do. In the end the best way to get the sim running smoothly is to overclock your CPU as far as safely possible, and adjust the settings for your system using the links posted in other replies.

[nicky9499]

You might want to venture into the less-travelled path of FSX across multiple computers with FSUIPC (as seen in various home cockpits). For example, 1 for graphics to the projectors, 1 for the logic and flight calculations and 1 for uhm, everything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnx-m9RQ1KU&feature=related

[pilotjohn75]

I've followed all the guides, so all the tweaks are done so as to get the max output I can get. Unfortunately that's still not enough. :) I still wonder whether a same setup on 4-core vs 6-core would show a difference. If the traffic "simulation" is done on multiple cores it should help.

[tvieno]

I found this thread in another forum and using this guy's advice, it helped my 2 processor laptop's performance. Not to the rate you have, but I am happy with it. Perhaps you can see if you can use his advice. http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=30796

[Paxx]

I still wonder whether a same setup on 4-core vs 6-core would show a difference.

The two additional cores will provide little if any increased FPS, assuming all sim settings remain the same.


If the traffic "simulation" is done on multiple cores it should help.

As loki said, ALL FSX processes, except some scenery loading, use one core only.

(Note to management - auto-inserting links in my post is quite disconcerting.)

[FS_Talking_Tom]

Breaking in here... trying to spec a new system...

All this makes me wonder if I should wait for Flight, which I assume will be compiled for 64-bit multi-core processors. But then, I can't imagine Flight being good on it's first rollout, so now how long am I waiting? Maybe I'll just build my new system and reload FS2K2 until the dust settles...? Really, the hardware/software gap is a pain for us right now, all that capability and FSX can't utilize it.

[nicky9499]

Flight won't be out for at least the next year or two. I'd suggest you not wait; by then the hardware you supposedly bought for Flight will be outdated or inadequate. Just get FSX or FS9 from the budget bin and you should be good to go with REX and Bojote's tweaks.

[pilotjohn75]

To hijack my own thread, somehow I doubt Flight will be as expandable as the FS series is/was.

[FS_Talking_Tom]

Scary thought, but you may be right. I just wish they'd recompile/optimize what we already have so that we could "max out". Prolly wouldn't sell, though, except to addicts like us...But yeah, I think I'll look at this fall for a target assembly date.

[Foxtrot789]

Something that helped me was selecting my own weather in high demand areas ensuring only stratus clouds were being generated rather than Cumulus. Those big cotton balls seem to hit harder on the frame rates than other, simpler, clouds. (that's with REX non-HD clouds selected)

[pilotjohn75]

Whether (clouds) don't affect my FPS normally. The only thing they seem to do is push the GPU a little harder. I can forcefully max the GPU, but only if I'm right at the cloud tops, switch to outside spot view, and pan fast around the airplane in all directions. This is the only time I can push the GPU to 100%, and I'm guessing it's because of the texture stuff being pushed around with REX. I've had yet to see GPU past 75% during normal VC flying under any circumstance.