First off, my info:

Motherboard: Dell, Model OTP406, Chipset: Intel X28, BIOS: A07
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 DIMMs
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
Windows Vista 32, SP2

(The first thing I find interesting is that on the specs sheet from my order, it says the RAM is 800MHz, but on CPU-Z it's telling me the DRAM frequency is 399MHz and that the max bandwidth for each slot says 400MHz - did I get ripped off? Shouldn't those numbers be 800MHz like the order sheet said? Anyway...)

Like everyone else, I'm trying to get max performance out of my system. I feel like I have a pretty good setup and should be able to run the game at a pretty high level. I do have nHancer, and my settings are:

AA: Combined, 16xS, gamma correction enabled
Anisotropic filtering: 8x
Texture filtering: quality
I also have multi-core support enabled. Those are my main nHancer settings.

I have UTX Europe installed (I do almost all my flying in Europe) with whatever the default settings are.

In the game itself, I have:
Framerates: Unlimited

For scenery:
Detail radius medium
Mesh complexity: 75
Mesh resolution: 5 m
Texture res.: 30 cm
Water effects: High 1x
Scenery complexity: dense
Autogen density: dense
Special effects: medium

Weather:
Cloud draw: 80 miles
Weather change: medium
Clouds: Detailed clouds, max density

Traffic:
Airline & GA: 100%
Road, Airport & other vehicles: 0 (I don't really care about boats and cars in a flight sim)

So with these settings, if I fly over an urban area (Paris was where I was doing my testing) my frame rates hover in the low 20's and sometimes drop to 18 or so consistently for periods of time. Over open land I get better rates, 30 and up.

The flying I like to do is in my Dakota, generally under 10,000 feet and what I really want is the best scenery I can get and a good frame rate (duh), but I really feel like I'm not getting either. The scenery is decent, but the frame rates aren't that great. I just think for my hardware I should be able to do a lot better than I do. I can jack up the scenery settings and it looks great, but once I get to an urban setting (I like to fly from major city to major city), frame rates drop to the low teens (and worse) and sometimes it just clunks out and I get the "computer has run out of memory" message and game over.

So I dropped my settings to what you see above, and like I said, even with what I would consider modest settings, the performance isn't all that great.

I guess my questions are: is my setup as good as I think it is? In other words, should I be getting great performance? And secondly, what settings would you recommend and/or what can I do to maximize my settings for the type of flying I'm doing?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Your CPU at 2.66 is "low end" for FSX!

Overclocking is needed if you want better performance.

Same with the 800 Mhz DDR2 RAM, don't expect too much, sorry!


DDR2 RAM = "Double Data Rate"

400 x 2 = 800

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM


You can adjust the following:

Reduce your water to "Low x 2" - anything higher is a waste, looks OK at low...

Mesh res. down to 10 m

Reduce cloud draw to 60 miles, and density to "high"

Change nHancer CPU setting to "single core"

Reduce your AI/GA to max. 25 % - and "Airport vehicles" to minimum.

Add this to your CFG:

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=800
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=600

For several other CFG tweaks, go here:

http://www.highflightsimulations.com/site/index.php

Get FPS Limiter:

http://www.caveofdistraction.com/2009/07/22/fps-limiter-smoother-gameplay-in-arm...

Use O&O Defrag 11 or 12.

Set-up your system as instructed here:

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

- and in particular for UTX, here (scroll down to the end)

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

Good luck!

You're welcome!

Overclocking is not that difficult.

Go slow and be careful!

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247326-29-first-attempt-overclocking-q9450

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ksS41TxvI

Mr._Ryan wrote on Mar 11^th, 2010 at 12:30pm:


Oh dude. You must overclock. Death, taxes, overclocking. All certainties in life.
NickN has a thread in the OCing forum from a few weeks ago with another guy, IdahoSurge, about OCing an i7. You should read that to get some advice and tips, even if your CPU is different. He is the tech guru we here are blessed with; very knowledgeable, and best of all, helpful. Talk to him, if he's not meditating on his next conquest. (by the way, they got 4.2 GHz on a i7)
There's another guy that has your CPU, or very near it, doing very well with FSX on his system. You should ask him, his name is NNNG. I don't get along with him, but he is supposedly very knowledgeable. Not always helpful, but knowledgeable, none the less.
I think that you should be doing better, also! The C2Q is still quite a CPU. Maybe there are some options in BIOS you can adjust (with guidance, for sure) to get better performance?
Also, you're using the 9800GTX. From what I understand, that is quite a card. You maybe should try to update drivers, or learn the one you use now and find out how to OC/OV your card? I don't know much about NVidia drivers, but they are usually really powerful for performance gains, used properly.
If your system is fairly stock (with the exception of the video card) you won't get great performance in FSX, anyway. One can do some tweaks/voltage changes/overclocking/cheating/begging and pleading, etc to get great performance on a stock machine. Really, what it comes down to is this:
How much messin will your machine really allow you to do?
I used DDR2 800 for 2 years, and got very decent performance out of it. Before you go out and buy a bunch of stuff, I'd try to get one of the tech guys to help you. Then you'll be like
Maybe even a sonic *

BOOM

*

Da end.

Mr._Ryan wrote on Mar 11^th, 2010 at 1:38pm:


Ok, better don't mess with the work PC then!

A machine for FSX only is the way to go, I have it myself, and with that you can install/re-install, tweak, get BSOD's ad nauseum..

But as you see now, with some good tweaks it's possible to fly with decent FPS...

Who want's 100% AI f.ex., and thousands of cars on the roads, and boats and whatever?

I don't...

I want to fly.

I have two:

One in Europe where I live  6 months of the year, and one in Thailand for the other 6 months!

1. The good ol' Intel Q6600 clocked at 3.8 Ghz (watercooled) - 4 Gb Crucial Ballistics 1066 Ram, Asus P5Q-E mobo, Asus 8800 GTS 640 Mb, 650 W. Corsair Power Sup. - 3x500 Gb Samsung Spinpoints (not raid)

2. My "El Cheapo" HP second hand OEM PC,  made for "The Thai Market"!
AMD Phenom 9650 Quad at 2.8 (if I can keep the room cooled down with A/C!) - 4 Gb DDR2 800 Ram, XFX 9600 Alpha Dog at 770/1920/1065, 1 Tb Western Digital Black Caviar.

These two machines are FSX only, and I get good to very good performance on no. 1 - and decent on no. 2.

So there you have it, FSX runs fine on both machines, I just turn the sliders down a bit, and add some tweaks.

Dell motherboards often lack the BIOS features that enable many forms of CPU, chipset, and memory overclocking. Before you spend time learning to overclock, you probably should find out if it's even possible on your PC. Just check if any feature like CPU HOST CONTROL, FSB, EXTERNAL CLOCK is in BIOS (system setup). If so, you can overclock the CPU, if not, you might only be able to overclock via software in a windows environment (which more often than not doesn't work). Also overclocks will void warranty if they find out, and they also can damage or kill hardware if not done properly... bla bla bla... but I highly encourage overclocking as it can give you a whole lot more performance for free.

800mhz RAM is OK but your CPU will be limited to 3.2ghz unless you overclock the RAM also.