Flight Simulator X does indeed ROCK on new hardware!

So after my experience with FSX on my old system, I decided it was time to upgrade.  I went from an overclocked Athlon X2 3800+, 2GB of PC-3500 DDR ram, DFI LanParty Ultra-D motherboard, to:

- Intel Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz
- 2GB Corsair XMS2 6400 DDR2-800
- DFI Infinity 975X/G motherboard
- Gigantic Big Typhoon cpu cooler
- Antec P180 "silent" case

So far I've only been able to overclock to 3.19GHz, seems to be a FSB wall on the Infinity motherboard.  I'd love to hit 3.6+ GHz, but 3.2 is good for now and I don't feel like taking the whole thing apart again.

Unfortunately it won't let me activate again, so I'm going to have to call and explain my upgrade and do telephone activation I guess.

I first tried it on Vista RC2, but I couldn't get sound out of my Creative sound card (I think they're still working on drivers).  So I reloaded XP Pro and tried it on that.

It is AMAZING!  Out of the box defaults selected by FSX were all High with Ultra High for Aircraft detail.  It did reduce the terrain mesh complexity, but thats ok.

It is totally unreal experience, the entire world is ALIVE.  Flying into Philadelphia International runway 9R at night, the landing light system on the edge of the runway reflects off the water!  I turned on heavy thunderstorms and set the precipitation all the way up, and you can see the reflection of the water on the runway and ramp!

My framerates are great now, it defaulted the slider to 20fps, and I do indeed get 20fps consistently pretty much everywhere.  It drops to 17fps or so momentarily when approaching cities but then goes back to 20.  But the important part is that it is totally smooth, playable, no stutters or pauses at all.

The other cool thing I read is apparently the Deluxe edition comes with the SDK on it, and it supports C#.  I haven't installed it yet, but I can't wait to write my first add on!  I already have 2 major software products in development outside of my day job, but I really want to write my first FS add-on.  Maybe I'll actually post some code in the Sandbox

Oh yeah, apart from the sound card issue, Vista RC2 absolutely rocked on this system too!


Edit: Here's a screenshot of the reflection effect:



Screenshots don't do this game justice at all though, it is amazing in actual flight, waves in the water, etc.

z33driver wrote:

So after my experience with FSX on my old system, I decided it was time to upgrade.  I went from an overclocked Athlon X2 3800+, 2GB of PC-3500 DDR ram, DFI LanParty Ultra-D motherboard, to:

- Intel Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz
- 2GB Corsair XMS2 6400 DDR2-800
- DFI Infinity 975X/G motherboard
- Gigantic Big Typhoon cpu cooler
- Antec P180 "silent" case

So far I've only been able to overclock to 3.19GHz, seems to be a FSB wall on the Infinity motherboard.  I'd love to hit 3.6+ GHz, but 3.2 is good for now and I don't feel like taking the whole thing apart again.

Funny, you make no mention of your GPU, arguably that's the most important component of any gaming rig, I doubt "upgrading" from an already beefy Athlon X2 3800 would boost your performance.

z33driver wrote:

Unfortunately it won't let me activate again, so I'm going to have to call and explain my upgrade and do telephone activation I guess.

Pwnt Now do you see why we, the legitimate customer, dislike activation, especially for constantly-installed software like games?

z33driver wrote:

It is totally unreal experience, the entire world is ALIVE.  Flying into Philadelphia International runway 9R at night, the landing light system on the edge of the runway reflects off the water!  I turned on heavy thunderstorms and set the precipitation all the way up, and you can see the reflection of the water on the runway and ramp!

Reflections are nothing. Environment-map reflections have been around since DirectX 7, and world-reflections in DirectX 8. HLSL programs for reflection are freely available on the web too.

z33driver wrote:

My framerates are great now, it defaulted the slider to 20fps, and I do indeed get 20fps consistently pretty much everywhere.  It drops to 17fps or so momentarily when approaching cities but then goes back to 20.  But the important part is that it is totally smooth, playable, no stutters or pauses at all.

I game quite a lot, and I don't consider 20fps "great", not by a long-shot. I find a game unplayable unless I get at least constant 50fps.

z33driver wrote:

The other cool thing I read is apparently the Deluxe edition comes with the SDK on it, and it supports C#.  I haven't installed it yet, but I can't wait to write my first add on!  I already have 2 major software products in development outside of my day job, but I really want to write my first FS add-on.  Maybe I'll actually post some code in the Sandbox

They're brining-back two-tier FS products? I bought FS2000 Professional back in Christmas '99, I don't really know why considering it was £30 more than Standard.

z33driver wrote:

Oh yeah, apart from the sound card issue, Vista RC2 absolutely rocked on this system too!

A non-functioning soundcard is a pretty big issue. And "rocks!", "rock", or "rocked" in IT's context is just sad. Learn some modern hip-speak

IRT screenshot-doesn't-do-it-justice: Make us a FRAPS movie then

Great, now you've made me feel like flying...

*closes VS2005 and starts FSX*

Sorry w3bbo I neglected to include the GPU.  The card is the same, BFG 7800GT-OC 256MB.  I forget if its GTX or GTO or just GT.  Its the one they overclocked to like 550mhz or something.  I paid $600 for the card when I got it almost a year ago.  And now it is like old skool technology and worthless.

I'm debating whether to buy the new NVidia 8800GTX that is coming out next week (actually you can order it on ewiz now), or wait for the ATI card next year.  I will probably wind up buying it, because I am a tech addict.

I can't wait to see FSX with the high color range and DX10 stuff.

20fps, 50fps, as long as it is a smooth flying experience that is what is impressive to me.  1-3 fps on my previous setup wasn't cool.  The X2 3800 was a neat chip but FSX is a GHz monster (and I also had one of the original versions of the X2 3800+, apparently there were like 3 or 4 different ones that I saw on the Tom's Hardware CPU chart).

Also I started looking at the SDK and it seems awesome on the surface, the level of control and stuff you can do with it is a lot more extensive than in the past and you can do it with C#.

W3bbo wrote:

IRT screenshot-doesn't-do-it-justice: Make us a FRAPS movie then

I've never heard of FRAPS, but I just googled it and downloaded it and it looks really cool.  I am going to make a movie now.

Ok, I finally successfully made a couple of videos with FRAPS.  FRAPS and FSX don't seem to play nice together, it keeps freezing my machine if I leave it recording a video for too long.  Maybe it would be better if I had it saving the video to a different hard drive?  Right now I have RAID0 with 2 SATA 3gb/s drives.

Here is my attempt to embed the video:

Here is a link to the video on YouTube: PHL RWY 9R with rain

Another video (this one should be higher res):
Philly flyby

That sounds great. I might get Flight Simulator X when I get my new computer as my current one seems to have problems with the driver, and I can't find the correct one. This results in no 3D at all for my computer (unless running Linux), and therefore makes games frustrating to play as you find yourself looking at the frame rate anxiously the whole time.

Angus Higgins

FSX seems to be very CPU-limited. I have a Core 2 Duo laptop with low-mid range video (ATI x1400) and can crank the settings up without much problem.

DigitalDud wrote:

FSX seems to be very CPU-limited. I have a Core 2 Duo laptop with low-mid range video (ATI x1400) and can crank the settings up without much problem.

Yeah from the way it's behaving on my system I also get the idea the CPU is limiting it, not so much the video (got a 6600GT). Maybe I should bite the bullet and shell out for an Athlon64 X2 4600+ or something, I've been wanting to get a dual-core CPU anyway (got a Athlon64 3000+ now).

EDIT: But since I don't overclock, it probably wouldn't be enough.

While you could say that I am "pro Intel" , there shouldn't be that big of a difference here.

I'd say the difference is likely attributable to some mobo/chipset/driver/bios issue or missing cpu patches (you had all the various AMD X2 fixes installed?).


Critical statement "But the important part is that it is totally smooth, playable, no stutters or pauses at all."

That alone will lead me to suspect it's the missing X2 patches, but bios updates sometimes fix this type of stuff too.

androidi wrote:

While you could say that I am "pro Intel" , there shouldn't be that big of a difference here.

He didn't specify how much the original X2 was overclocked. But a default X2 3800+ runs at 2GHz. He overclocked his new CPU to 3.2GHz. Now I know AMD and Intel clock speeds aren't directly comparable, but it's still quite some difference.

androidi wrote:

I'd say the difference is likely attributable to some mobo/chipset/driver/bios issue or missing cpu patches (you had all the various AMD X2 fixes installed?).

What are these X2 fixes? If I want to buy one, I'd like to know.

Sven Groot wrote:


What are these X2 fixes? If I want to buy one, I'd like to know.

All I know is that somewhere in amd.com there are patch or two that fix issues like the poster suggests he had. I do not know if those were already included in Vista and if the issues were fixed at some point with updated cpu stepping. Better ask from AMD guru.


Yeah I guess if the AMD was stock clocked there could be a bigger difference from that perspective but any glitches and irregularity in graphics make the difference feel a lot bigger when comparing to platform without those issues.


edit:

I'm fairly sure there were 1-2 other fixes from amd.com but here's atleast one that should do something. If OP was running Vista on his old system then this would be already included I'd say.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

Here's more comprehensive AMD X2 software installation guide:

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=64936

And bunch of software that apparently tries to fix the issues...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html

I had the hotfixes installed from the AMD site.  The hotfix just adds the /usepmtimer to the boot.ini.  The cool'n'quite driver from AMD wasn't necessary because I disabled that in the BIOS.  I had the 3800+ overclocked to 2.8ghz.

I think this game is a gigahertz freak.  The "doing more in less clock cycles" thing with AMD doesn't seem to really apply to FSX.  I almost have to wonder if FSX would do better on an old single core Pentium 4 Extreme running at around 4 GHz.

I bought a new Northbridge cooler today but I still can't get this board to go higher in FSB so I can up the GHz.  There must be some magical combination of BIOS setting but I haven't found it yet   I might try another motherboard and watercooling or the Cool It Freezone TEC cooler.  I think FSX would like watercooling.

Also another big difference between the original X2 3800 setup and my new setup is the memory.  I had plain DDR on the AMD board, and I have DDR2 on the new one, with the 667 divider it is running at around 900MHz with 4-4-4-10 timings in the BIOS.

You, sir, have too much money.

I've been doing some tinkering with my machine. I haven't gotten any special cooling equipment and budget RAM and whatnot so not exactly meant for overclocking, but I managed to OC my CPU from 1.8 to almost 2.2GHz, and all seems stable. Since the CPU is multiplyer locked I've increased the mobo bus speed to 240MHz, and decreased the RAM to DDR333 mode (so it still runs at DDR400 speed because of the increased base clock). Any higher than that and Windows refuses to boot.

The speed difference in FSX is noticeable. I can now play it decently with everything on medium high except for scenery which I've set slighly above medium low.

I've also tried overclocking my GPU, but aside from making it unstable it didn't help much (strange about the instability since my video card has a fancy cooling rig (bought when the previous one died), could be the PSU is reaching its limits).

It definitely seems the CPU is limiting it more than the GPU. As long as I don't increase the the resolution or turn on FSAA or something, changing the video settings does very little for performance. I can turn water effects to their highest (very pretty, that) and it still runs the same. Scenery density makes a lot of difference. If I set the scenery to medium high and try to fly through downtown Tokyo it's a disaster, 5 fps at most. With less scenery the game runs ok (but there's some cars driving on water since the bridge they're supposed to be on is missing, wtf?)

FSX also takes force feedback to a new level. Taking off from dirt strips is very hard. In the "Amazon Trek" mission you have to take off from a dirt strip with a Grumman G-21A Goose, and I could barely hold the joystick! My desk was vibrating so hard some stuff fell off it. I didn't even know my joystick's motor had that much power! In FS2004 it vibrated a little, maybe comparable to an electric toothbrush. This is more like a jackhammer.

z33driver wrote:

My framerates are great now, it defaulted the slider to 20fps, and I do indeed get 20fps consistently pretty much everywhere.  It drops to 17fps or so momentarily when approaching cities but then goes back to 20.  But the important part is that it is totally smooth, playable, no stutters or pauses at all.

20 fps is "smooth" and "without stutters"?  On an overclocked system?

Sorry, that is absolutely pathetic.

Just to quote that u said u game quite alot.... Well just a couple of things really....

No.1 Flight Simulator is not a game. (Hence its name)
No.2 If u can hit 50fps in FSX, u must have the fastest machine in the world.