Built a £1000 pc for FSX and..... disappointed.

killianzz

killianzz

killianzz

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16 Feb 2011
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320
Hi,
Just recently got around to installing FSX deluxe on my computer. I had it running before on my vaio laptop and it was woeful so I decided to build a computer that could do it justice. I also just bought an X52 pro joystick for it, as I want the precision to make feather touches.

Anyway, being a game which is a few years old now I would expect it to run at almost max settings in my machine (check signature). However, the graphics don't look sharp even in the cockpit. With the settings up near max, the frame rate sticks to 10fps still with dodgy looking visuals. After looking on videos on youtube of some brilliant graphics from people with graphics cards half as good as mine I cannot help but feel disappointed. I have looked around for some quick fixes but to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing. I am downloading Real Environment Xtreme as we speak, which looks amazing but I can't help but think that it will just lag up the game even more. I've got the acceleration pack, so I think I am ok in terms of service packs. Can anyone shed some light? Its still a fun game with basic graphics and its perfectly flyable but I really do want the eye candy. Any help would be mahooosively appreciated.
 
You sure you have your system setup properly? How your 3dmark / uniengine heaven scores compare with similar systems?

You tried FSX forums? They'll know best how to tweak it for your specs, but I wouldn't expect anything but max settings.

And It depends what max settings actually means. Simulators like FSX have a HUGE scope for parameters that can potentially affect performance for both CPU and GPU (draw distance, terrain tesselation, texture quality, weather effects, cities, air traffic, ...).
 
Last edited:
killianzz said:
Hi,
Just recently got around to installing FSX deluxe on my computer. I had it running before on my vaio laptop and it was woeful so I decided to build a computer that could do it justice. I also just bought an X52 pro joystick for it, as I want the precision to make feather touches.

Anyway, being a game which is a few years old now I would expect it to run at almost max settings in my machine (check signature). However, the graphics don't look sharp even in the cockpit. With the settings up near max, the frame rate sticks to 10fps still with dodgy looking visuals. After looking on videos on youtube of some brilliant graphics from people with graphics cards half as good as mine I cannot help but feel disappointed. I have looked around for some quick fixes but to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing. I am downloading Real Environment Xtreme as we speak, which looks amazing but I can't help but think that it will just lag up the game even more. I've got the acceleration pack, so I think I am ok in terms of service packs. Can anyone shed some light? Its still a fun game with basic graphics and its perfectly flyable but I really do want the eye candy. Any help would be mahooosively appreciated.
Click to expand...

I'm sure you'd need 8GB of ram for that type of game, not 4gb....also I would try tweak the graphics settings...I've noticed in the past that I set all the settings to maximum and its just one setting thats making the frame rate drop, so soon as I turn off that one setting everything is fine, but takes a while to workout which one setting is causing the trouble.

Also try old graphics drivers and new and maybe different configs for your graphics settings also.

And make sure you got all drivers for your PC installled like mobo drivers etc and there's nothing else slowing it down in the background like having web pages open etc.

I dont know why but for me, personally, for years, if I have a webpage open with internet explorer or google chrome, when I launch a game my frame rate is 20fps, soon as I shut the webpage my frame rate maxes out at 60 fps with vsync enabled.

So I imagine millions of people out there have this same bug as me, and arent even aware of it.

Also sometimes anti-virus programs lag your games too.

Just make sure you go through everything but I do honestly believe 8GB is minimum for those sort of games these days...also memory is cheap so wont hurt for you to get some more.
 
Bit of a cheeky ask, but have you tried the latest version of Flightgear (2.4)? I haven't seen anybody who has, especially on such a good system, and i'm rather interested in how much it's come along recently. Some screenshots are amazing...
 
Looking at your sig, that shouldn't cost anywhere near £1000 unless you were fleeced.

The default FSX aircraft are rubbish mate, try some aircraft payware addons - www.justflight.com you can download some nice ones there.

You can get a excellent quality ww2 hurricane for free right now.
 
Assuming your current system is stable at that overclock. Uninstall everything and follow the guide below. Very few people have every slider maxed out so I'm not suprised at your performance to be honest.

SETTING UP FSX and HOW TO TUNE IT

FSX can utilize only a maximum of 4GB as its a 32bit program but having more will give you more head room for Windows usage and other programs running in the background.

As for payware aircaraft there are hundreds, do some research and get the type of aircraft you will most commonly fly. My recommendation right now would be to get the PMDG 737NGX if your after a short/med aircraft. Nothing comes close to this. Other larger aircraft to consider are the 757/727 Captain Sim, LVLD 767 & PMDG 747.

REX 2.0 will hit your performance. Make sure you download and install the patches in the correct order if you need to.
 
Sad to hear about your problems, I remember spending about £800 on a computer before Crysis 1 came out. I was fairly dissapointed to see that it couldn't run it at what I expected it to run at, but hopefully with the help that the community has offered you may soon be able to fly around without a problem ;)
 
I know its been a while but just want to say thanks for all the advice. I used the online .cfg creator someone suggested which helped a lot and I would definitely recommend it, although I think im going to do some extra tweaking to make it better. Real Environment Extreme has been a pretty big improvement and isn't hitting my system too hard. I also got the PMDG 737NGX which looks amazing, but it does lag my system slightly, any ideas about optimizing this add-on a bit more? The aircraft feels highly realistic and will take a LOT of practice to fly it properly. Once I've got a bit more practice on jets and do a virtual PPL (with fsx specific lesson book lol) i'll devote some serious time to it. Loving the game to be honest! And the X52 Pro is brilliant. The input is precise and no noticeable dead-zones. Drivers aren't fantastic though - classic Saitek.
 
I think the problem is that you (may have) just dived straight in started maxing out settings without really investigating what the impact would be, whereas now you have used a cfg creator to get more realistic settings.

It is a common fault I see when people buy a new computer, they just assume that they can run everything on max rather than doing the research up front and then focusing on finding the best balance of framerate and visuals. Often by maxing loads of settings, you will effectively increase visual quality by say 5% but reduce framerate by 50% compared to a few settings lowered here and there.
 
Hi,

Glad to see you are making improvements on your FSX, once you master the beast that is FSX and get some decent addons, it can become a very involving and satisfying hobby. From what I can tell from your hardware setup, you should be able to run (with the right tweaks & experience) at a smooth FPS, it is not about how much FPS but how smooth your sim is running, I tend to keep mine running smoothly at 25-30FPS only dropping below that when I push max setting and fully loaded large airports. Hence it will take time to get to know both your PC and how FSX handles itself on it, be patient and try and do some research on both FSX tweaking and 3rd party addons.

As already mentioned above, I started an official FSX thread a while back which has the main purpose of collecting useful information over time from flight sim enthusiasts on FSX tweaking/addons and other questions & solutions, plus a ton of useful links, http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18172358. It is a fair read, but if you skip past the screenshots it shouldn't be too bad. TBH, if you are patient enough to learn a complex aircraft addon like the PMDG 737NGX, then taking some time to learn more about how FSX & the world around it works, you will really find it rewarding.

Best of luck.
 
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