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Simviation Forum › Current Flight Simulator Series › FS 2004 - A Century of Flight › How to improve performance

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How to improve performance (Read 762 times)

Aug 7^th, 2004 at 11:27am

Selbio Offline
Colonel
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

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Posts: 503

Is there any way to improve performance. FS run fine but when I'm flying near a real big airport with a lot of traffic I get lower fps ~ 13.4-15. I get good fps everywhere else.

System Specs:
AMD XP Barton 3000+
512MB DDR PC2700
160gb hard drive
Onboard Realtek AC'97
Windows XP Home Edition
ATI 9200 with 128mb of ram/128bit memory bandwith.

Going from an onboard V-card to that ati was a big difference. At least my system does not restart or lock up anymore.
I remember there was a line for those that use the Geforce 4 ti series of cards that needs to be in the cfg file. It was something like [DISPLAY.Device. on Win2k/XP] I remember when I had my ti 4200 and it did improve performance a bit. Is there a similar line for the ATI video cards or anything else I can do to improve performance around big airports?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,&&Selby&&

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Reply #1 - Aug 7^th, 2004 at 11:56am

X56SB Offline
Colonel
im steelx

Posts: 785

you can look at the post still have bad quilty in the fs9 fourm. it should help ya

C-17&&&&http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y50/X56SB/c-17.jpg

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Reply #2 - Aug 7^th, 2004 at 12:42pm

ozzy72 Offline
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Madsville

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There are several little things you can do to gain that edge.
Defrag your HD regularly.
Make sure no background programs are running (you can terminate them with a handy program called EndItAll).
Turn your AI down a little. I find there is little difference between 75% and 100%, but it frees up a few FPS.
Don't set your target framerate higher than 30, it wastes resources.

Ozzy Wink

Wink

There are two types of aeroplane, Spitfires and everything else that wishes it was a Spitfire!

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Reply #3 - Aug 7^th, 2004 at 6:58pm

Selbio Offline
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

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Steelx I looked at that thread and read it but I was hoping to find a code to put in the cfg file like there is one for the gf 4 cards.

ozzy,
I have windows XP running with only 15 proccesses that are neccesary. I do defrag ferquently. I use PAI ai which for some reason works better on my pc. I got extra fps after installing them and removing the default m$ ai.
I remember back when I had my GF 4 ti 4200 with 64mb of ram the line to replace in the cfg file was [DISPLAY.Device.Win2k/XP] this gave me about 5-6 extra fps.

Thanks anyways to both of you.

Best Regards,&&Selby&&

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Reply #4 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 1:18am

MattNW Offline
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Indiana

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Quote:

There are several little things you can do to gain that edge.
Defrag your HD regularly.
Make sure no background programs are running (you can terminate them with a handy program called EndItAll).
Turn your AI down a little. I find there is little difference between 75% and 100%, but it frees up a few FPS.
Don't set your target framerate higher than 30, it wastes resources.

Ozzy Wink

Wink

Hey Ozzy, have you tried FSAutostart? It's a task killer made especially for MSFS. It'll kill tasks, programs and it defragments your memory as well as launch any other programs that you usually run with your sim.

In Memory of John Consterdine (FS Tipster)1962-2003

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Reply #5 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 1:48pm

Jared Offline
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Uniontown, Ohio

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Also another 512 of memory would significantly increase performance...

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Reply #6 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 4:13pm

4_Series_Scania Offline
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He who laughs last, thinks
slowest.
Stoke on Trent England U.K.

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Quote:

Also another 512 of memory would significantly increase performance...

But not as much as a better card than the lame 9200... Wink

Wink

Posting drivel here since Jan 31st, 2002. - That long!

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Reply #7 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 9:53pm

Selbio Offline
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I'll get me another stick of 512mb. I'll have to keep the card for sometime because I just got it less than a week ago.

Best Regards,&&Selby&&

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Reply #8 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 10:05pm

Shadowe Offline
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Embarrassed

OUCH

&&Home Airport: Bristol, Tennessee (KTRI)&&Most Common Hub I Fly Out Of For Livewire: Atlanta, Georgia (KATL)&&Current Location: Atlanta, Georgia (KATL)

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Reply #9 - Aug 8^th, 2004 at 11:33pm

Selbio Offline
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I disabled the sound and got about 5-8 more fps. Does this mean that if I get a pci sound card liek a SB Audigy I'll get better performance?

Best Regards,&&Selby&&

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Reply #10 - Aug 9^th, 2004 at 5:01pm

noen Offline
Lieutenant Colonel
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Posts: 5

the 9200 is a horrible card for 3d.

it is 100% garaunteed the bottleneck. And no you wont see any major increase in performance from a new soundcard, they all use 8-12% of your cpu.

get a Radeon 9600xt (~150 bucks), radeon 9800 pro or nvidia geforcefx 5900 (both ~200 bucks).

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Reply #11 - Aug 9^th, 2004 at 10:28pm

Selbio Offline
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As much as I'd like to change the video card, I gotta keep this one for awhile. The card isn't the best but it is way more than the onboard I had and for $51 it performs pretty good, it plays every game I throw in there. FS9 is the only game I have problems with, it just seems to be a real pain in the rearend.
The only time I experience low fps is when I'm about 10nm from a real busy airport other than that I'm in the high 20's and 30's locked at 30. To be honest my current setup performs on par with my old system which was an AMD XP 2600+, 768ddr pc 2100, Nvidia Geforce 4 ti 4200 and rest of the hardware.

Best Regards,&&Selby&&

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Reply #12 - Aug 10^th, 2004 at 11:09am

Gary R. Offline
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If God is you're co-pilot,
switch seats.
PA, USA

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Well, I'm about to trade my 7200 for a better card. I was going to trade up to the 9200 but I know its a bottleneck and for about $20 more for the trade I can get a 96. I'm real tired of running fs9 with most of everything turned down or off just to get 16-20fps. I'm very bummed that I just put this thing together after Christmas, see below, and I saved on the vid card and I'm not doing much better than I would have with my p-3 800 that I had before. It really is more about vid cards than processor speed and ram, isn't it?

AMD 2800xp on gigabyte vt600l k7 triton overclocked @ 2.3 ghz, 768 PC 3200, 128 DDR 6600GT AGP, 60 gig,5200 rpm maxtor, 160gig 7200rpm WD, Sony FD Trinitron 19

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Reply #13 - Aug 10^th, 2004 at 11:33am

JBaymore Offline
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Funkycowboy,

In my experience, unfortunately it is NOT more about the video card. FS2004 is a VERY demanding program on most aspects of the computer system IMHO.

I think there are four areas that it is demanding in.....

a fast CPU to calculate all the math it takes to simulate all the AI and your aircraft's performance and such
a honkin' video card to quickly render all that lovely eye candy
fast RAM to process the all the stuff that the CPU is calculating
and a fast andf wide data pipeline thru the components to get all the information from one place to another

You might even want to add a fast HD to that list too..... to get the scenery data out of there quickly enough to keep up with the video card.

So really...... it needs a GREAT machine to get all the "promise" that is packaged into the MS marketing hype for this program.

BTW...... I had a 9600....... and quickly upgraded it to a 9800XT. The 9600 just didn't do it for me at all. Even that 9800XT does not give me the performance that I really want (see specs below). I gotta' upgrade the mobo and the processor, I think..... that 533 fsb is killing me.

The place it all "matters" to me is on short final at a large international airport in a large jet with lots of AI around. And in that situation...... you need a killer machine, I think.

Don;t get me wrong.... I still love this program in spite of the performance demands. Eventually I'll get it "right" Wink

Wink

.

best,

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

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #14 - Aug 10^th, 2004 at 2:45pm

noen Offline
Lieutenant Colonel
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Posts: 5

your ram doesnt matter THAT much, its only used to preload textures for the video card and for data lookup tables for the physics and ai engines.

you are correct that the bus speed and processor speed do make a big difference,

hard drive will really only help in preloading the levels, unless you have a raid setup, then you might see a little improvement in-game.

Assuming you have a 2ghz+ Athlon XP or Pentium 4 (533 or 800mhz bus) the biggest bottleneck is going to be the video card.

And going from a 9200 to a 9600 is a much bigger jump than the 96 to 9800.

Just make sure to stay away from the 9600se, get the Pro or XT.

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