Hi.

I am having a problem with pretty low frame rates and I don't know WHY?   ???

I am running MS FS2002 Professional on a brand new setup using Windows XP (home) on a Pentium 4 box at 2.4 Gig clock speed with 512 Meg of ram, a 40 gig C drive that is only about 10 gig full (also a 200 gig E drive not used for MSFS except for preliminary download storage), a Geforce 2 MX / MX400 64 meg video card, screen resolution at 1024 x 768, 32 bit, Direct X 9, and a Soundblaster Live audio card.  All windows updates are current.... except for the one that was mentioned on this forum that slowed down the XP machine....which I deleted and got a tad better perfromance  .

If I head out into the wilds of the yukon with about one AI plane within 40 n. miles passing by at angels 12 and flying the default C172...... in an area of totally autogen scenery (no add ons in sight) ..... I am only getting about 15 FPS!!!!!!!!!  If I go into Boston with a lot of AI traffic it drops to about 10 or so.  I have it supposedly "locked" at 40.... but that seems to make no difference.

Just about all the simulation setup sliders are at full settings.  I do not have anti aliasing on (it causes video problems if I do).  Most other option check boxes are on.  I have tried bi and tri level filtering.... no appreciable difference.

I see people here on the forum mentioning far lesser machines and getting frame rates that ar FAR better than mine with the sliders also all at maximum.

SO what the heck am I doing wrong???????

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.   ???

best,

..................john

You should be getting better frames with that machine.

I'd recommend runing a BIOS ID utility (get it over at intels site) and find the exact chipset you're using (845PE maybe?). Once you have done that, download the latest drivers.

I recently had a similar experience with this sort of problem, and I saw over a 100% increase in performance. It seem my chipset drivers had become corrupted at some stage. Maybe your chipset drivers are not installed?

Ric B.

Ric,

Thanks for the info.  Never heard of chipset drivers.  Are you actually talking about the videocard dirvers?


Ozzy,

I'd say that was an option if I were on a minimal machine....... but I hear of people with much less powerful machines getting 30-40- and even 50 FPS with the sliders in the same basic configuration.  So I think SOMETHING is up that is just not right at all.

This is a pain in the butt.  I got a fast machine on purpose  .

Thanks.

...................john

Ric and all..........

So I'm now working on this.  Learned a bit in following Ric's advice.  Went to the Intel site and found some stuff that was helpful and that I had NO clue about.

I got the "Chipset ID" utility and ran it.  It said I have the 845E chipset with the 82845E memory controller and the 82801DB (ICH4) I/O controller, and that integrated graphics is "not detected or disabled" (more on that last one in a second).

The instructions on chipset updates said to download the XP home installer utility first and run it and then install the "Application Accelerator v. 2.3" update for Win XP home for this particular chipset.

I did so, and then ran a test of MSFS2002 to compare to the last test I did of frame rates .... the one which gave me only about a 15 FPS rate.  I selected a very similar scenario to the original test in the middle of nowhere with no AI traffic to speak of and no dense scenery or addons present.  I got a noticable and immediate improvement of frame rate to about 20 FPS!!!!!!!!!!!

Still not the huge improvement that I want......... but headed in the right direction.  Sorry Ric...... not the 100 percent improvement yet  .  I was hoping  .

In the KBOS (Boston) area with a lot of AI traffic around it still drops woefully to about 8 FPS.  Not great for good landings  .

The last item in the chipset ID utility has me wondering.  What exactly does that mean "not detected or disabled"?  What should I do about that?  I would bet that it has SOMETHING to do with the continuing slow frame rate.

There were a couple of graphics drivers on the Intel site ......but the chipset list for them didn't match what I have.  There was no graphics driver listed for the 845E chipset.

SO..... THANKS a lot Ric for pointing me in the right direction.  You da' man!

Now I am going to try a different NVidea driver for my GeForce 2 64 Meg MX / MX400 video card and see if that helps at all.

best,

.......................john

PS.... hope this discussion info helps others too.

Quote:



About a year ago I bought my first and last* p4 machine.
1.6ghz
384 Ram
nvidia Gforce 2 mx 200 32mb ram
WIndows XP Home Edition

Fs2002 ran just fine with all the settings maxed.

*THe reason I said last is because I now build my own computers and I use AMD XP processors.
No pun intended for the p4 users, it's just that AMD CPUs are fast as heck and cheap compared to P4 CPUs.

JBaymore read all this and try some of these tweaks, I got this article from www.pcaviator.com


"5 Windows XP Tweaks"

Windows XP is a vastly superior operating system to it’s predecessors – Windows 95, 98 & ME. It is overall faster in terms of boot time and program loading and it’s also much more stable than its predecessors.

You may already be running Windows XP and experiencing its improved performance but do you have it finely tuned for performance greater than you could have even expected?

Here are 5 tweaks to get Windows XP operating at close to optimum performance without spending a dime. As a flight simmer, you'll benefit from these tweaks.

Firstly, however, we’ll assume your hard disk is operating NTFS. If your system came bundled with XP then it most likely is. If you upgraded your previous version of Windows to Windows XP, then your file system may still be using the FAT32 file system. If it is then you need to convert it to NTFS. While this will convert your hard disk to NTFS however your cluster size will not be optimized. Converting your hard disk from FAT32 to NTFS gives you 512 byte cluster sizes which is not the optimum and will give you less than optimum hard disk performance since 512 byte clusters result in higher hard drive overhead. The recommended cluster size is 4096 bytes. If your hard disk is not using this cluster size then you should reformat your system using this cluster size which is the Windows Format default cluster size. Alternatively Partition Magic V8 will let you change your cluster size for an already formatted hard drive without requiring a reformat.

If you do not want to go through a complete reformat but do want to convert to NTFS if you are running FAT32 then go to the Command Prompt – START => All Programs => Accessories => Command Prompt.

To confirm which file system you are running at the C: prompt type CHKDSK.

The first line will tell you which file system you are running. If you are running FAT32 then to convert to NTFS enter the following:

CONVERT C:  /FS:NTFS

The conversion will take about 30 minutes. Repeat this for other hard disk volumes you may have e.g. D: drive or E: drive.

When complete, reboot your system and prepare for the 5 Windows XP Tweaks That Will Boost Your System Performance…. Out Of Site!

Note: Before you perform these steps, please ensure that you are familiar with REGEDIT. Incorrectly using Regedit could damage your Windows registry and leave your system unbootable and unrecoverable. If you are not confident using Regedit, have a friend who is perform these tweaks for you.

Tweak #1 – Disable Last File Access Stamping
By default, every time Windows XP reads a file, its stamps the file with the date and time of last access. Whilst it can serve a purpose, it is generally not required for everyday computer use. It hogs resources by writing to a file each time it is accessed. So every read operation is also accompanied by a write operation of a few bytes.

To turn this off go to the command prompt:

At the command prompt enter the following:

FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1

If you ever want to turn it back on again enter: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 0

Reboot your computer.

Tweak #2 – Turn Off Windows Indexing
While it’s great for finding files faster when you are doing a search, Windows file indexing is always working in the background indexing files and thus contributing to hard disk overhead.

To turn it off go to Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components. Then deselect Indexing Service.

Tweak #3 – Increase Your File System Cache
On a typical high end system such as a 2.4 MHz Pentium a hard disk will transfer data at around 30-40 MegaBytes per Second. That’s pretty fast! How would you like hard disk transfer bursts of around 1 GigaByte per second? You can achieve this easily using any version of Windows as it’s already part of the file system… that is file caching where data that has been read from the hard disk remains in memory so that if it is required again before it is flushed from the cache it reads directly from the cache for these super fast data access rates. That’s right it is already part of the file system but the recommended default setting (the setting you might already be using) is not necessarily the best. The default setting in Windows is to allocate more memory to programs and less to the file cache but this is wasting precious memory that could be used for file caching instead of not being used at all. If, for example, you are running a 512 Mb RAM, and you have a program or two loaded, you have around 300 MB that isn’t being used AT ALL. It’s being reserved partly for file caching and partly for any programs you might load with the priority being for any programs you might load. It will not allocate all of that memory to the file cache and it is VERY RARE that you would use all of that memory for programs.

So you could either waste that memory and have degraded system performance or you could use that memory for file caching. USE IT FOR FILE CACHING! After you make the change below, you will notice after you reboot and start using your system greatly reduced hard disk access for both read and write operations which is where the biggest bottleneck in computing is.

Performance benefits of this tweak are see no matter how little RAM you have but are more pronounced with the more RAM you have. We suggest no less than 256 Mb and more is better.

Perform the following:

CONTROL PANEL => SYSTEM => ADVANCED => PERFORMANCE => SETTINGS => ADVANCED => MEMORY USAGE. Change the option from Programs to System Cache.

Reboot your computer.

Now to see this tweak in action do this:

1. Load Microsoft Flight Simulator. It will take the normal amount of time to load depending upon your system.... anywhere from 45 seconds to 2.5 minutes.

2. Once FS2002 has loaded and you are sitting on the runway, exit the program and go back to your desktop.

3. Just wait a moment or two for all hard disk activity to stop and then re-launch FS2002. What you'll see is that the program will load in just seconds!

Why? Because it is all being loaded out of RAM and not having to read from the hard disk at all. You should be loaded and sitting on the runway anywhere between 10 and 40 seconds depending upon your RAM and processor speed. All up about 300 or more percent improvement in loading time because it is being loaded out or File Cache. With Windows XP being fairly disk intensive in general, all of your computer operations will benefit from this increased allocation of free RAM to disk caching.

Tweak #4 – Clean Your Windows Registry
A great Trialware program called Ace Utilities that will clean out your Windows registry from old, obsolete, and incorrect Windows registry settings is. You can get this at:

http://www.acelogix.com/downloads/aceutils.exe

Ace Utilities will also find and clean out all old unused temporary files from your system that other methods might miss.

Download this FREE by clicking here and run it on your system. After you have cleaned your Windows registry then reboot your system.

Tweak #5 – Increase CPU Priority
This will increase the CPU priority for programs running in the foreground. E.g. Your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002.

Run Regedit

Find This Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl\

Set the Win32PrioritySeparation to 38

The last adjustment is to set the "Launch folder windows in separate process" setting by opening the "My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box.

Window XP will open any new window (including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority. (increase stability and speed but use much more RAM than before)

Try all these tips and watch your Windows XP system performance increase out of site for both your general computing and flight simulators.

For another article that gives you further Windows XP performance improvements follow this link:

http://www.pcaviator.com/articles/article_hd_opt.htm

Selby,

WOW.... thanks for the extensive information!!!!! 

I think that many if not most of my configuration is set up as that long list you gfave mentions..... but I'll go and check it out piece by piece soon.  THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!

To keep you all updated with my progress.........

I downloaded the latest Nvidea "Terminator" video drivers  (19 meg or so....at 56K....... over an hour download  )....and installed it.  It is now version 4.4.03 dated 5/2/03.  That made a BIG change in the framerates when I am out in the boonies with little AI or dense scenery.  Now it is coming in at about 40 FPS if I let it go "unlimited".

I then downloaded the latest ASUS motherboard BIOS drivers ......just to be thorough..... and flashed the BIOS chip.  Could not see any appreciable change in framerate.  But at least I know I have the latest ones  .

However, in the dense Boston area with lots of AI traffic and city scenery and such, the framerate only improved a small tad........ where I got 6-7 before I am now consistrently getting 9-10 FPS.  Where I got 7-8 before I am now getting 10-12 FPS.  NOT as much as I wanted........ but at least still headed in the right direction.

In playing around with some OTHER factors I found that if in the FS2002 setup section on the hardware tab that if I changed the filtering to "none" that the frame rates got much WORSE!!!!!!  That surprised me a bit  .  With bi level filtering set I get the best framerates...... tri level moves it down too.  But for the sake of keeping all the tests I am doing somewhat uniform....I'll keep it at tri level for the duration of my "system playing"  .

If I could get the framerate up to about 15 in the Boston type environments....I'd be reasonably happy.  The difference between 8 and 10 FPS is VERY noticable.

I can't beleive that with this new P2 2.4G system that I can't get overall better framerates ........ even with the sliders maxed ............ it still doesn't make sense.  Not when others say they get great rates....with the same video card in a slower machine with an older processor.

So.... I'll keep plugging away and keep you all posted.  Bet others can benefit from all this stuff too.  Thanks to ALL who are reading and posting some suggestions here.

best,

.......................john

Is your Geforce video card PCI or AGP?

Thanks Selby.

I've followed the steps you've outlined and I've attained an improvement of about 5FPS in all areas.

Cheers.

Will