Upgraded my MoBO and memory - Downgraded my performance

I'm hoping someone has insight into what caused and how to fix. My thoughts are the changes I made are too complex to sort the proper reason but here goes.

I installed an ASUS 970 Pro Gaming/Aura ATX DDR3 AM3+ Mobo with Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2133 MHz (PC3 17000) memory.

I used the Asus install disk for the sound driver which somehow corrupted my OS so I was left reinstalling everything. My OS before was Windows 10 which Microsoft had auto upgraded from Windows 7. Now I have a fresh from scratch install of Windows 10 and fresh install of FSX (also P3d). All my setting are set to my previous install and I added OrbX and REX, which had been in the old setup. With everything in place I tested my flight simulators. With those settings before, I had a pretty consistent 20 fps on three monitors. With the new board overclocked I was getting about half that. I removed the overclocking with no noticeable change in FPS. Besides the lower fps, it also had a bit of a stutter in the paging in either overclocked or not. Both FSX and P3d are experiencing the same issues, so I am guessing it is hardware or driver related. Unfortunately I can only guess as I am not that versed. The new install updated all my drivers but even reverting to an older tried and true Nvidia driver (353.62) the problem persisted though to a lesser degree. I am at a loss about what to try other than going back to the old slower hardware (gigabite MoBo and 1200 ram), which just seems wrong on every level.

Any PC or graphic driver guru's out there that could educate me? Oh, and by the way each Flight Simulator and the OS have their own solid state hard drive.

There should have been a CD with your new motherboard that has drivers for your motherboard chipset. This is the first thing you should install after changing the board. Nothing else until you have done that.

And, did you change the motherboard while still overclocking the CPU? I could suspect that could have something to do with your issue.

The motherboard BIOS version could also have something to do with this, but be careful here, as it is too easy to fry the motherboard if a BIOS upgrade goes wrong.

And I fail to see how an audio driver update failing can screw up a whole OS......

Jorgen

There should have been a CD with your new motherboard that has drivers for your motherboard chipset. This is the first thing you should install after changing the board. Nothing else until you have done that.

. . .

And I fail to see how an audio driver update failing can screw up a whole OS......

 

 

Jorgen

You and me both!! The driver I was trying to install was the mobo disk driver for the mother board audio. Who would have thought, huh? I was ticked! After I installed the fresh Windows 10 I tried once again with the Asus driver disk and it did the exact same thing to the new install. So in reality this is the second fresh Windows 10 install. Second reboot of Windows 10 third install sorted it and gave me audio so I threw the manufacturer's disk away.

As to the rest. The former Gigabite mother board was standard with no overclocking features - not that I can see how it would influence since the two Flight Sims were fresh installs. On the Asus I only did the auto setting for the optimal performance and that only on the install the driver disk didn't screw up and only after I installed everything. The del. Set-up screen offered it as the highest of three settings. I did not experiment with any exotic settings. In both other botched cases, everything ran fine until I tried to add the Mother board audio driver from the manufacturer's disk and I never got to overclock features in either of the tries.

Edit:

I checked the procedure for checking CPU usage on a netbook which I had forgotten that I had re-installed Win 7. With Win 10 after right clicking the Task bar, click "Task Manager". On the pop up click "More details" if that's visible. If the top value in the CPU column is zero click the heading. Unless the CPU usage is down to a few percent FSX will not run well. I've left the original for the benefit of anyone with Win 7.

Hi j,

First: Right-click on the Taskbar and then click "Start Task Manager. Next click "Show processes from all users". If the top value in the CPU column shows "0" click CPU. If the top value in the column is not in the high 90s Win 10 is doing something and you pretty much have to wait until it's not.

With Win 10 if you have the computer shut down for several days it's generally unusable for FSX for several hours.

Jim F.

You should only install mainboard drivers for that exact mainboard. Normally one for another mainboard won't even run.

Did Windows not tell you what was the error after installing?

If your old Windows (7 upgr to 10) was originally a Windows OEM disk, then it was tied to the mainboard. Using the same Windows on a new mainboard, will gve the error: "Not activated, enter serial code". The serial code won't work either, because of the same reason. That Windows was tied to the old mainboard, and can only be activated on that mainboard.

No such message?

On the old Windows a lot more drivers were installed then just an audio driver. Most importantly, the Chipset drivers.

They won't work either if you move the disk to the new mainboard. And will be very hard to replace/remove.

Usually those wrong chipset drivers will cause huge issues even running Windows, making it almost impossible to replace them with the correct drivers for the new mainboard.

Throwing the driver disk for the new mainboard away is a bad move.

There is much more on there then the audio driver.

The chipset drivers, usb drivers, and possibly overclocking software is on it too. (although overclocking can be better regulated in BIOS usually.)

The way to start using a new computer/mainboard is:

Install Windows on a clean disk.

Install the Chipset drivers, the usb drivers, and drivers for other onboard devices.

Add your other hardware drivers.

Let Windows run all it's updates. It can take a few restarts before they are all installled. I kept the pc running overnight for this as well. It took a very long time.

Then, Windows needs a lot of time to add all the files to the file index. If you attach an existing full HDD (2Tb or so), the file index needs to be built for all of that.

The file indexing runs in the background, and interferes with other processes, because it keeps accessing the disks.

It runs less fast when you are using the pc, but does keep running and interfering. If you want it to finish faster (and you do) it is again best to run the pc overnight for a few nights. Because you aren't using the pc at the time, the file indexing service starts working faster. Still, a large disk can take several days to process.

Something like file indexing can really interfere with something like FSX. Two programs fighting for disk access can cause stutters.

That should get better after a few days running.

But missing maiboard drivers, especially chipset, cause large issues and really need fixing.

With the mainboard you should also have a user guide. You can find those online on the manufacturer's site as well. In pdf form. Read that, it should have info about the drivers as well.

Also there are usually more detailed user guides on the drivers on the driver disk itself. Usually pdf files as well.

The user guide will also explain all possible BIOS settings.

Then, Windows needs a lot of time to add all the files to the file index.

Didn't the OP say that he's using SSDs? File indexing should be turned OFF, as well as other performance-harming services and settings, like scheduled defrag, superfetch, etc. SSDs are not HDs.

Don't Waste Your Time Optimizing Your SSD

One would hope Asus isn't guilty like StarTech and others, but some driver installation programs are just crappy, from fly-by-night operations in China or India. Sounds like his audio driver installer was that kind. I recently had a bad experience with a Blue Tooth driver installation, played havoc with a Windows 10 pc, lots of trouble from a $12 USB Blue Tooth device driver installer on one of those mini-CDs. Had to toss the driver CD and let Win 10 download a generic-but-usable device driver instead, to get things working.

Didn't the OP say that he's using SSDs? File indexing should be turned OFF, as well as other performance-harming services and settings, like scheduled defrag, superfetch, etc. SSDs are not HDs.

 

Don't Waste Your Time Optimizing Your SSD

 

One would hope Asus isn't guilty like StarTech and others, but some driver installation programs are just crappy, from fly-by-night operations in China or India. Sounds like his audio driver installer was that kind. I recently had a bad experience with a Blue Tooth driver installation, played havoc with a Windows 10 pc, lots of trouble from a $12 USB Blue Tooth device driver installer on one of those mini-CDs. Had to toss the driver CD and let Win 10 download a generic-but-usable device driver instead, to get things working.

Ftl Dave - Right on on the solid state drives and on crappy install disks. However after reading everyone's input, I did download the manufacturer's bios and updated the bios at start-up. I had thought the board came user ready. I thought it had been presented that way. However, doing a righteous install it did the normal and Windows refused to start yet again, so I made certain the bios was updated to the latest configuration and reformatted and reinstalled everything for the third time.

Turns out, third time's the charm. Things working fine now. I had installed "AMD Overdrive" software and in the first install doing nothing with the bios, all 8 cores would be maxed. Now it seems to be load balancing the way I was accustomed. More to the point, smooth paging and good frame rates in FSX and P3d and stable operation of the PC.

Thanks everyone for educating me. I know just enough to get in trouble. :)

"I know just enough to get in trouble." - don't we all, been there, done that, bought too many t-shirts.

Glad to hear things are working.

Jorgen