Well, the problem might have several causes.
First of all, the fact that you get  such low FPS with FS9 might be an indication of problem from your video cards, hardware or drivers-related.

Also, Having two video cards is generally a bad idea for FSX, but you surely have read that a little bit everywhere already.

Finally, you might have been way too optimistic with your in-game settings.

I think the four first steps to perform would be the followings:
- disable the crossfire functionnality, so that only one card gets used.
- search the forum for driver problems. I've seen several complains about the most recent ATI drivers, and user reverting back to an old version. I don't have the exact numbers in mind, though
- give us a summary of your settings in the video driver (AA, AF, mipmapping etc...)
- show us your FSX advanced configuration screens, so that we can see if you made any mistake there.

why did you go into tweaking in the first place? unless you know exactly what you're doing, that is not my case when computers are concern, you shouldn't need it. you bought a bigger better computer let it do the job. you should play with the game not the pc. here is my advise, you probably won't like it. go to the fsx settings main page, put back default settings. then go in personnalize, see what the program offer you as original settings and start from that.remember if you add something somewhere the program will take it elsewhere, it's like a balance.i am sure with original sttings it will give you more then 8-13 fps, if it don't clean up a little bit, this mean you have too much stuff running background. i personnaly put more realism in the plane appearence than anything else. i mostly fly in VC so i want it to look real. i dont have any xtreme terrain, mesh,weather or clouds, why should i ? if i want to see clouds i go out and enjoy the view. no pc will ever match the real world. i love flying my plane wherever in the world, i don't care if niagara falls doesn't look like the real one, there not.enjoy your pc. work with it,not against it. preaching finish. see you.

Trying to benchmark your system with a pmdg airplane (747 in the VC?) will lead to endless frustration!

Your framerates don't sound all that far fetched.  I seriously doubt that there is anything at all wrong with your hardware, but I don't know much about the 4870 card and its interaction with FSX   

I would absolutely overclock your processor to around 4 ghz, if you can, and don't expect to run everything, especially traffic, at 100 percent.  I would also recommend looking into something like GameBooster or AlacrityPC (?) which will temporarily disable unnescessary background processes.  I think if you can bring it up to a smooth 20 fps at a heavy airport, you will be happy.

When I first got my system, I was expecting it to crunch FSX like it was nothing...I had been reading too many tall tales written by people who I later found out were flying the default cessna over unimpressive terrain.  Expect certain addons to humble your system.

Thud wrote on Feb 7^th, 2010 at 10:47am:



Thanks Thud;
i tried all FPS lock settings, I'm running unlimited FPS now.

penta_a wrote on Feb 7^th, 2010 at 12:40pm:

No prob.

Hehe!

Thanks lunitic, I like your comment, especially when I hear all the headaches people have with their i7's and sttttutttterr, shhhhiiimmmerrr, pauses and what not...

I'm OK too with my 2.6 Ghz CPU/9600 GT Alpha Dog, VUF-VUF, GRRRR!!


penta_a:

Have you read and done what NickN says?:

http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1208959973/0#0

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041

If not, DO IT NOW, you won't regret it!