Sudden Drop in FPS

[Kiwisdofly]

I recently built a powerful new computer. Now, FSX runs perfect on it - 30-40 FPS on high settings. Everything has been fine for the past couple of weeks.

So suddenly today, I start getting these weird FPS drops. The plane would be sitting on the ground (anywhere, any part of the world), everything off, completely still and at 30 FPS. After a couple of minutes though, suddenly the FPS would drop to 10 for what appears to be no reason at all. Infact, I had a five-hour non-stop flight just yesterday.

In terms of hardware, everything is fine - temp is at 57C with no change, FSX uses the same amount of memory, etc. All other games run fine, it just seems that FSX does it.

The only change I can think of is that I install Active Sky X but when it started happening I uninstalled it right away. Could it have screwed up my FSX?

Has anyone had anything like this before?

My system is:

Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz
Gigabyte P35-DS3L
2gb DDR2 800
8800GT 512mb
Windows XP Pro

[McFlysky]

I recently built a powerful new computer. Now, FSX runs perfect on it - 30-40 FPS on high settings. Everything has been fine for the past couple of weeks.

So suddenly today, I start getting these weird FPS drops. The plane would be sitting on the ground (anywhere, any part of the world), everything off, completely still and at 30 FPS. After a couple of minutes though, suddenly the FPS would drop to 10 for what appears to be no reason at all. Infact, I had a five-hour non-stop flight just yesterday.

In terms of hardware, everything is fine - temp is at 57C with no change, FSX uses the same amount of memory, etc. All other games run fine, it just seems that FSX does it.

The only change I can think of is that I install Active Sky X but when it started happening I uninstalled it right away. Could it have screwed up my FSX?

Has anyone had anything like this before?

My system is:

Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz
Gigabyte P35-DS3L
2gb DDR2 800
8800GT 512mb
Windows XP Pro

How is the hard drive space?
Maybe you need to increase the swap file size.
I don't have Active Sky X. How much disk space does ASX use?
Try running a couple of defrags.

[slarente]

How much disk space does ASX use?

Very little. However, ASX does have a slight impact on FPS, but not that bad. I think that maybe there is some kind of program (or malware) that fires up from time to time and drags all the resources...

[Kiwisdofly]

How is the hard drive space?

I have 10gb free, same as what I had when the game ran fine.

Maybe you need to increase the swap file size.

It's set to 2046mb by default, but I fiddled with it and it has no impact. Infact the game reports it's only using around 1200mb when running.

Try running a couple of defrags.

The thing is that the actual installation of windows is only 2 weeks old. I formatted the drive when I put the system together.

Very little. However, ASX does have a slight impact on FPS, but not that bad. I think that maybe there is some kind of program (or malware) that fires up from time to time and drags all the resources...

Thats the thing, there can't be any malware because everything is brand new. I've even ran a few scans just to confirm and it's clean. Plus if it was malware it would have affected other games and it doesn't.

Even Armed Assault, which is just as resource-intensive as FSX runs perfectly fine. I did notice that when the slow down happens, going into the "Weather" menu crashes the game, while all other menus work fine. I'm going to try reinstalling the whole thing, hopefully it should fix it.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[Kiwisdofly]

So I reinstalled FSX and Acceleration and it hasn't helped. I'm stumped :\

[phillroath]

Perhaps I did not understand, but it sound like you decided you did not need to run defrag? If so, then do. Do it several times. Even on a clean machine after FSX install it is badly fragmented. I just added the SDK and then needed two defrags to get it all clean again.

If I did not understand, then ignore this post. : )

Phill

[Kiwisdofly]

Well, I just assumed that formatting took care of fragmentation but apparently not. Doing a quick analyze with O&O revealed I had over 70% fragmentation on my hard drive
A lot of it was in the FSX folder too.

So I defragged a few times and got that down to about 30% and no fragmentation in the FSX folder. However, the FPS drop is still happening.

[Kiwisdofly]

Okay I fixed the problem. The full story is that when I was putting together this computer (my first build ever), I did not fix the heatsink properly. This caused the CPU to idle at around 48-50C and rise to 80C under heavy load.

The reason why the FPS drop only affected Flight Simulator X was because it's really processor intensive while games like Crysis and Armed Assault rely more on the GPU.

I've gone back and made sure the heatsink is in place and now it idles at 28C and stays at around 40C under highest load.

Thanks everyone for your help, I've learned a lot of new things about my computer