Why is FSX not running 10 times better on my new 10 times* better PC?

(* I'm exactly sure of the order or magnitude here, just wanted a catchy title).

I've just been trying FSX on my new work laptop, a top spec. Lenovo W540, i7, with 16GB RAM, and 2GB NVidia graphics card. Compared to my 2007 32-bit Core2Duo PC that I've used FSX on up till now, I expected to get much better frame rates and be able to put most if not all my FSX graphics settings on max. But I'm not seeing much improvement at all, certainly nothing worth paying for. Autogen is still the big frame rate killer. With all graphics settings at max I was getting 6 FPS.

I guess FSX simply isn't designed for multi-cores, and perhaps is unable to take full advantage of the graphics card, and doesn't need the extra RAM. I did install the acceleration pack and that didn't help.

So this got me wondering, what is the best bang-for-buck PC spec for FSX?

It's not your system, its your settings.

You need to offload some of the work from the CPU onto the GPU. Try these videos, made my sim heaps better. (except I dont use Dx10 so you can ignore those bits)

best bang for buck:

intel -k processor

i5 just as good as i7 (fsx cant make use of hyperthreading)

Good quality mainboard. Overclock possible, plenty of connectors, ATX size so heat can dissapate.

64bit OS, win7 easyest to set up, 64 for better VAS use.

8GB RAM. FSX can use max 4gb (vas restriction) 4gb extra for win. more is useless.

Videocard, nvidia, which one depends on number of screens. Videocard won't make any difference for FPS. I'm using nvidia GT430 with one display, which works fine. For three screens choose nvidia GTX***.

HDD, not important. Fast one only reduces fsx startup time. After flight starts everything has been loaded to RAM anyway.

Large case with plenty cooling fans, and ways to hide cables behind mainboard backplate, to increase airflow.

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DVD-writer. Any simple device.

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Regarding your laptop:

--Are you sure it's using the correct videocard, and not the HD4000 video that is part of the i7processor. Check fsx-settings-graphics tab.

--Heat is often a problem with laptops. When parts overheat they work more slowly. Sometimes also software is installed that throttles the CPU when the laptop gets hot, so the CPU emits less heat.

--Sometimes this throttling software can be switched off, not allways.

--It is the speed of the CPU that makes the most difference. i5 or i7 makes less difference then 2.7Ghz vs 3.0Ghz (mine (desktop) is 3.4Ghz, clocks to 3.8 when possible, and I overclocked it recently to a steady 3.9. It's a i5 3570k.)

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most pre-built's nowadays have extremely expensive SSD's and Videocards. FSX cares little about those...

Thanks guys,

>Are you sure it's using the correct videocard, and not the HD4000 video that is part of the i7processor. Check fsx-settings-graphics tab.

Spot on! I had a closer look and it seems Windows was not using the NVidia card for FSX. I've fixed it now, but not had time to test yet. Looks like the NVidia control panel can override some of the FSX settings - such as anti-aliasing - so I'll have to experiment.

FSX, as any real simulation, is dependant on processing speed (floating point operations per second). Unfortunately the CPU clocks have not been getting any faster for 10 years now, and you can only optimize the ALUs that much. Massive parallel processing doesn't help that much, as you need a ton of checkpointing processes (you want to see all the resulsts of all threads in the same frame, right?).

But when offloading some of the workload to the GPU you should see some improvement. Just dont expect wonders. With settings high enough FSX will bring any machine to its knees, even after 10 years.

interesting, I remember that up until the dual/quad cores came along, advertised GHz speeds of PCs were constantly increasing 266Mhz was good in 1997, then 1 GHz in 2001, peaking at around 4GHz with the Pentium 4.

looking at videos from orbix, and other scenery add-on providers, I wonder what systems they are running on?

The problem is that you can't get a 10x FSX improvement unless your new processor is 10x faster than your old one. As Nuitkati said, FSX speed is almost totally constrained by your processor speed. So unless you can overclock tour CPU to 20 GHz CPU (wouldn't that be great), don't expect a massive improvement by upgrading to a new system. A better GPU, faster memory and a SSD will help, but not as much as you expected.

Charlie

interesting, I remember that up until the dual/quad cores came along, advertised GHz speeds of PCs were constantly increasing 266Mhz was good in 1997, then 1 GHz in 2001, peaking at around 4GHz with the Pentium 4.

 

looking at videos from orbix, and other scenery add-on providers, I wonder what systems they are running on?

Just my 23 cents...

Yes well, processor devs needed to grow somewhere, so they grew sideways. First multicore, then 64 bit. Has a bit of the marketing crowd ring to it, as with the right application the speed improvement is minimal (like FSX).

A powerful machine (3770K / 3.9 upwards with a 780ti) will run FSX pretty good already. You start getting into trouble when raising the resolution (like for example fullscreen on three monitors in Surround, or 4K) or throwing additional processes (read 'addons') in the mix.

Tube videos: If you can afford it, a highly clocked Xeon should be pretty good, best FLOPS operation of the Intel lot. But I guess the devs are lowering the resolution for the videos anyway (and you can edit videos too...).