Best FPS Add On?

[Wing Fat]

If you want to be happier with your experiance, I would look for a at least a 2.6 MGz Core 2 Duo...

I'd been thinking about getting an E6850 which runs at 3 GHz. My system is a Dell 530 which the specs say has a 1333 FSB. I've already upgraded the PSU, GPU and RAM. I don't know what's involved with upgrading the CPU on my system, I hate to start messing around with thermal compound and that stuff. I guess I'll have to do some Googling.

As I said in my first post I'm getting back into simming after a break, and I don't want to get into a situation like I was in before where I spend more time tweaking my system than actually flying. However, as it is right now with my setup frame rates are borderline, so I guess I'm going to have to do some tweaking, like it or not. In the mean time I will check out those aircraft you suggested. The Eaglesoft aircraft look tempting; the RealAir aircraft are geared more towards VFR.

EDIT: Well I turned my computer off for an hour to let it cool down then I pulled the CPU all the way out. No problem at all, so I decided to go ahead and get that E6850.

I maxed out all the graphics sliders (the only custom setting I changed was the screen resolution, which I set 1680x1050x32 to match my monitor) and sitting at LAX, runway 25R, Fair Weather, Day, using the FSX G1000 172, I'm getting roughly 14.5 FPS in the virtual cockpit (when it first loads--it drops to about 11.5 after a minute or so). That will be my bench mark for the new processor.

[bkeske]

I've replaced a few CPU's now, pretty easy, just have to be careful and clean.

I would think all you should need to do, as you believe you have a 1333 FSB, is to make sure you have the most up-to-date BIOS just to be cautious about accepting any of the newer Intel CPU's.

I have a Dell myself, a 410XPS, unfortunately the motherboard is maxed CPU-wise, or else I would have jumped on that 6850 myself.

FS is CPU dependant, as always, you will definitely get good 'bang for your buck' by starting there.

[mavrocket]

Your video card may also be a 'short coming'. After many years of running ATI cards, I switched top an inVidia 8800 GT last December, and am very pleased with it, although the drivers are a bit fussy compared to ATI's.

Take it from my experience, the video card is definitely holding you back! A 2600XT is nice for most games, but something better would help. If you are partial to ATI, you can pick up a new ATI 3870 for $200. If you would prefer something with more bang for your buck, an nVidia 8800GT would definitely do the job for less than $200. I went from an x1600XT to a 2900 Pro and kept the same CPU (Athlon 4200x2 O/C'ed to 2.6 Ghz) and it gave me a 15 FPS boost!

The CPU upgrade would also help though, but let me suggest that if you do, ensure you have a 45nm capable chipset under the hood of your computer if you are considering getting one of the new Intel Wolfdale processors. Like bkeske mentioned, you might need to flash your bios to the newest version. Hope whatever path you take it helps you enjoy FSX more, the last thing the community needs is another FSX hater to rant and rave on this wonderful forum.

[jwenting]

Not funny or helpful. Maybe you find 8 FPS acceptable and that's why you think there aren't frame rate issues, but I don't.

I get 20fps almost everywhere with almost every addon on a 2 year old PC that wasn't top of the class even back when I built it.
If you don't, there's something wrong with your settings, your system isn't lacking.

[Wing Fat]

I didn't mean to turn this into a hardware upgrade thread but...

I bought an Intel E8400 which is supposed to be identical to the E6850, except it uses a newer manufacturing process and runs cooler. I installed the E8400 which worked fine. I ran a couple of Super PI tests which gave me about a 30% better result with my new 3.0 GHz processor vs. the old 2.33 GHz. Then I fired up FSX. Good news! With the exact same settings (all graphics sliders maxed out, LAX runway 25R, day, "Fair Weather", default 172 virtual cockpit) I'm now getting about 23 FPS vs. the 14.5 I was getting before! Huge boost.

I'm still going to try and bump up the performance further with a new graphics card (I hope Microsoft's claims that FSX takes bigger advantage of graphics cards' processing power than FS9 is true). But even with just the processor upgrade things look very promissing.

[jwenting]

I can tell you that FSX does take advantage of newer graphics cards.
I moved from a GF7600/256MB to an HD3850/512MB this week and performance went through the roof.
With the same settings it went from about 25fps unlocked to near a hundred unlocked.
I've pushed up some sliders a bit (texture resolution, clouds, the big stuff) and locked it at 25.

[Wing Fat]

Something's wrong because I installed an ATI 3870 graphics card today with no FPS boost sitting at LAX. Frame rates are exactly the same. I'm going to start a new thread on this as it's way off topic for this thread.

[FSPeet]

Hi Guys

FPS is a problem in FSX. I have a document that can help with FPS. I have an ok PC concisting of an AMD 3.4 64bit cpu, 2 gig ram, and a 256mb ATI Radeon graphics card. You must look at your graphics cards transfer rate, mine is only 12 gig per second and in this document they recomend 57 gig per second. My frame rates were between 7 and 19 an after changing my settings to what the document suggests, the frame rate whent up to between 35 and 101 depending on the area you fly in. E-mail me at peet.vd.merwe@tigerbrands.com and i will e-mail this doc to you.

[worldsfair]

I run FSX with every slide maxed out, NO frame rate issue at all.

[Wing Fat]

Hey I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who recommended the Carenado Mooney, I bought it yesterday and it's awesome. Definitely no frame rate hit (in fact I could almost swear the frame rates are BETTER than the default aircraft). The Mooney is the perfect aircraft for the kind of flights I like to do (100-200 mile VFR/IFR cross countries). I've never flown a real one but the Carenado version is solid and easy to handle.

I also remembered that a few years ago I had purchased the Carenado Cherokee 180F. I downloaded it again (my download link still worked) and installed it and it works great. A nice, easy-flying, old-school aircraft. Note that the Carenado website says the 180F is FS9 only, but that's wrong as the zipped download does include an FX-update program which you run after running the main installer.

After some hardware upgrades and settings tweaks my frame rate problems have been solved, and I'm getting great frame rates with most of the sliders maxed out. I'm finally having a lot of fun with FSX! Just did two great flights, a dawn flight from North Las Vegas to Laughlin, and a night flight from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara, both in the Mooney, both very satisfying.

Thanks again.