FSX Slow Performance

[sunilraj1999]

Hello,

I have FSX SP2 and I have had slow performance/ low fps at even small airports. Even at Kahului Airport in Hawaii, USA, I get 10-17 fps, and at Honolulu Intl, 5-10 fps. I have Ultimate Traffic 2 with low traffic settings, FSDreamteam Hawaiian airports, FSDreamteam GSX, and FPS Limiter v0.2, where I set the max. fps at 35. I can get 30-40 fps at small airports (ex. Lihue, Hilo, Kona), but after flying for 5-10 minutes, the frame rate always drops to 10-17 fps. When landing, there are frustrating 1-2 second pauses.

Other info:
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.40 GHz
Windows Vista
Memory: 3070 MB RAM

FSX Settings:
Filtering: Bilinear

Level of Detail Radius: Medium
Mesh Complexity: 47
Mesh Resolution: 38m
Texture Resolution: 1m
Water Effects: Low 2.x
Scenery Complexity: Very Dense
Autogen density: Dense
Special Effects: Medium

All default FSX air traffic is 0%
Airport Vehicles: Minimum

Low car/boat traffic

I have also tried Bojote's cfg tweaker, but I didn't see much improvement. What can I do to make FSX smooth?

[OpieThePug]

Reduce level of detail radius to low. Set Autogen and Scenery Complexity to Sparse. That should tie you over until you decide to purchase this.

[torkermax]

Prior to spending 15.00 on something that many claim does nouthing to increase performance. You may want to try this, Its a must for FSX. Specialy for your system.

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

[sunilraj1999]

I have tried http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html, but I barely see any improvement. I tried different settings and was flying around in an Aircreation Trike, and after 10 minutes of flying around Kona airport with only 2 ai aircraft, the fps dropped from around 30 fps to around 15 fps. Does anyone else experience this drop? Sometimes with larger aircraft (ex. Overland 737), frames drop even further. Could it be the scenery? I even cut Ultimate Traffic 2 traffic to 0%, but saw no fps increase. What really irritates me is the drop in fps after flying. Landing is always the worst when fps drops to 5-10 fps. Anything else I could possibly do?

[mallcott]

Sadly, the computer specifications you state are the reason. There is only one solution.

BUY MORE COMPUTER.

[OpieThePug]

I own the XTREME FSX PC BOOSTER V2 tool and I must say it helps a lot. $15 is not that much if you want to get 60 fps.

[sunilraj1999]

I was searching around and I found some decent settings. I reduced the scenery complexity to normal, autogen to sparse, and worked with some other sliders. Without using FPS limiter with the internal limiter set at unlimited, I got 30-50+ fps in small airports but 15-25 fps in Kahului. It seems to be a little better than before. I have to wait and see if the fps will drop, though. I will try the xtreme fsx pc booster.

[cianpars]

Hi Sunil,

Your problem is clearly that your hardware is not really up to FSX. Your system is similar to my last system so you are going to need to keep the autogen and the scenery complexity no higher than medium.

FSX is much more CPU dpendant than GPU dependant and it is your CPU holding you back rather than your GPU.

You could try using the usepools=0 setting, not usually recommended for 512 meg graphics cards, but I use it OK so long as I don't ovr push the sliders to much. I think that may work well for you (but if FSX crashes too often, you may have to revert to usepools=1).

Really, the best thing you can do, I think is have a go at overclocking your CPU a bit. Google overclock and your CPU and see what settings and overclocks others have been getting. Even a 10% to 20% overclock will make a difference, just don't go the whole hog all at once and download 'Coretemp' to keep an eye on how hot thngs are getting.

Personally,I wouldn't waste my money on fsx pc booster as if you take the time to search/read the forums, all of the tweaks it contains can be found (subject to a bit of trial and error here and there).

Other than that, you can research theservices Windows is running in the background and perhaps some of the non Windows services you are running and try to trim them down to a bare minimum. Run FSX with your antivirus off (provided that you are not on-line) and turn off any other scanning, anti-malware, etc. services you may be running.

Run task manager and post a screenshot of it here, so we can see what background processes are running and perhaps suggest some that you can trim. My Windows 7 is only running with 2 services (plus quite a few associated with my antivirus). I bet you are running 60 or 70 (which can cripple a low end system).

IAN

[sunilraj1999]

I uploaded some pictures of task manager and I have 50-60 processes running. I tested out fps limiter set at 40, but even at 15,000 ft with a payware 737, I was getting 25 fps, but I expected more at such a height with little traffic, etc. around me. In the cockpit, I was getting up to 60 fps. But, as usual, as I began to descend and turn, the fps dropped to 25 fps in the cockpit and 11 fps outside. So thank you if you can recommend any proccesses I should cut and increase fps. (I am not an expert with things like how to overclock, etc.)

[cianpars]

I can see only about 30 of your processes from those screenshots. Go to run, then type services.msc which will bring up the services console.

I would certainly disable the adobe update and bonjour services. I have also run all of my systems without ALG with no ill effect.

I also disable the search indexer (though it makes searches a bit slower). Up to you whether you feel you need to keep the i-tunes helper.

You also have antispyware and antimalware processses running in the background which may well affect fsx performance if they are trying to scan files fsx is using.

I don't use the windows sidebar- you can disable this if you don't or leave if you do.



If you have an apple mobile device, you may need to keep that service running, if you don't then you may disable or switch to manual.

You are running a lot of services i can't see though.

If you do disable services, create a system restore point first and/or note down what you have disabled in case any problems arise.

Blackvipers site will give you all the lowdown on the services if you want more info.

IAN