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I have a cunning plan...


Oldynewby

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I've had enough of trying to load FSX into Windows 10 so I'm going to come at it from a different angle by upgrading my XP pc.

 

I've had to upgrade the power supply since it died so rather than bin it, I decided to make some canny purchases on our favourite auction site and came up with a new (to me) motherboard with an Intel Core Duo 3.16Ghz CPU and 4GB RAM, 8GB extra Ram and a 500GB hard drive. Once this is in I'll be installing XP 64bit so I can increase the RAM to 8GB.

 

I don't intend connecting this PC to the internet, instead I'll be using the Windows 10 machine for downloads etc.; in the meantime I'm getting used to X-Plane 10 which, at the moment, seems to be behaving very well with all of my Saitek gear although the controls are a bit sensitive, so I might pull the trigger on X-Plane 11 at a later time.

 

So once I've dragged myself kicking and screaming into 2010 I hope to be flying my FSX/XP Canberra, Lancaster, Tiger Moth, Mosquito and Vulcan.

 

Happy days.:)

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Hello Oldynewby,

 

The improvements you have laid out for your current hardware all make sense to give a good (sob, howl, sniff) bottom end performance PC for FSX. Each iteration of Microsoft Flight Simulator requires hardware at a level which increases exponentially.

 

However, ........ ,

 

One hardware improvement/replacement solves a lot of performance issues with FSX.

 

A, or is it ,.an, SSHD. A Solid State Hard Drive. No more waiting for a mechanical Hard Disk to spool up to 7,200 rpm and trying to carry some of the load the Graphics Card inbuilt memory (RAM really) is carrying or strike a balance between RAM (Motherboard) and whatever brand/type of graphics card you have. With Graphics Cards the inbuilt memory is more precious than gold or diamonds.

 

My PC started as a fairly "ho hum" tower case with the usual things. Over time the set up looks like this:

 

AsRock FM2A55M VG3 dual core motherboard (AMD chip 3.2 MHZ dual core.)

RAM 8GB.

Graphics card, Intel GeForce GT710 2Gb RAM.

Cooling, a very large chip cooling set up with 12cm fan integral.

A Crucial BX500 SSHD.

Windows 10 Professional build 1909.

HDMI cable for graphics PC to monitor.

Primary Display 1440/800 32 Bpp

 

Windows 10 needed a lot of tweaking to bring the system requirements within range of the capabilities of the hardware. I will not go into the tweaks here as there are many good advices published and software available for smoothing out Windows 10's requirements.

 

Results;

 

FS 2004 with every slider and tweak at maximum and Terrain Mesh packs installed covering all of Australia (Terrain Mesh) and individual town/city scenery packs. About 14Gb.

 

FSX Steam Edition with almost every slider and tweak set at maximum with Terrain Mesh and round we go again. The only adjustments downward I have made are filtering set at bi-linear.

 

And, amazing, FSX SE running smooth as a politician's promises and in fact smoother than FS 2004.

 

A good SSHD here in Adelaide costs around $50.00 AUD. I do not know the cost converted into English Pounds, probably about 25 to 30 Pounds.

 

So, in all this, buy and install a Solid State Hard Drive and read up on how to strip Windows 10 of it's not needed "features".

 

Cheers,

 

Mark H.

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Hi, I also, have come up with a canny plan: 1.) I'm gonna sell off a bunch of the plastic 1/48 model aircraft that I'll never get around to building...they're all Royal Navy aircraft and some are funny looking. FSX works well on my desktop, so I'm gonna bump up the RAM to 64 Gig. 3.) I'm gonna add another Hard drive (I have 2 already both are multi TB). I'll probably wind up practically giving some of the models away, but what the heck!
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Hello Oldynewby,

 

The improvements you have laid out for your current hardware all make sense to give a good (sob, howl, sniff) bottom end performance PC for FSX.

 

How very dare you!

 

Seriously, I'm fine with that. I'm going back to Windows XP because it's tried and trusted and my FSX add-ons are designed for XP, besides I've had no end of hassle trying to get FSX to run with Windows 10 so I'm chucking the towel in as far as that's concerned. A bottom end performance will suit me fine! (Quiet at the back!!)

 

However, ........ ,

 

A Solid State Hard Drive.

 

A good point, well presented. Meanwhile I've got two 500GB drives ready and waiting so I'll be using one to prove my point.

 

Thanks for your comments Mark.

 

Paul.

Edited by Oldynewby
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Hi, I also, have come up with a canny plan: 1.) I'm gonna sell off a bunch of the plastic 1/48 model aircraft that I'll never get around to building...they're all Royal Navy aircraft and some are funny looking. FSX works well on my desktop, so I'm gonna bump up the RAM to 64 Gig. 3.) I'm gonna add another Hard drive (I have 2 already both are multi TB). I'll probably wind up practically giving some of the models away, but what the heck!

 

I feel your pain Nikolai, I've got a huge stash that I'll probably never get around to building but I've had them so long I can't bear to part with them.

 

Good luck with your memory upgrade. I assume you're using a 64-bit OS.

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May I add my fourpenoth? I ran FS2004 under XP for several years with two hard disks. I found that putting all of the scenery folders on one disk and the rest of FS9 on the other gave a small improvement in frame rates. Since then I have installed all of FS9, including scenery, onto a SSD and the performance is improved further. And for the last couple of years, the same SSD but under Windows7 (64-bit) and again slightly improved.
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Right, I've sprung for a small (128GB) SSD just to try it out. I'll eventually go full SSD but in the meantime I'll be keeping the OS on the hard drive and loading FSX and all its accessories onto the SSD. It'll be a few days coming but I'll report back when I've completed everything.
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Oldynewby Edit your icon properties set the DPI compatibility for software, and check the override. in properties set to run as administrator. run fsx do not run in full screen.

 

let know if this work.

 

I'm sorry, I think you're confusing me with someone who knows what they're doing! I know nothing of DPI compatibility and override, I'm just a mere mortal doing his best.

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I’ve been running FSX Deluxe edition just fine on my Windows 10 Lenovo laptop that I got back in 2018 which is a pretty basic PC when it comes to gaming computer standards. Waiting on a copy of FXS acceleration expansion pack(fingers crossed that works) I don't know why others are having such issues with trying to install & run FSX on a basic Windows 10 build. Keep trying, I’m sure it will eventually work. So far I can confirm FSX does install & work on Windows XP, 7 & 10 without much issues. Didn't even bother trying 8 or 8.1 as those OSs had the most issues especially with PC CD ROM games like FSX.
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Well, it's a partial success. I haven't upgraded to x64 yet but I've installed the SSD with FS9 and FSX+Acceleration on it and everything is running better than before, including FSIUPC and SPAD, neither of which have been successful in the past.

 

Frame rate is good and loading speed is very quick so I'm a very happy bunny for now. I'll still upgrade to X64 in the future as I still want to increase my RAM but that can wait.

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