Speed up FSX on your current PC, and then start saving for a DirectX 10 Video Card.

I have been getting lots of email from people whom have been lucky enough to get their hands on FSX.   A lot of them have been saying "Ewww, it is slow on my machine".

I mean, come on…  what did you expect!    Microsoft were never going to release a version of the sim that would run with all the sliders maxed out on current hardware.   They have put a serious amount of graphical goodness into this version, but it is fair to say that until the new generation of video cards come to the market, you are not going to see the full benefit.

By the time FS (Nextversion) comes to the market, you will all be saying the same thing again.   I know I was when FS 2004 ACOF was released.   I have upgraded my machine twice since then.

So, some advice for the "virgin install" of FSX on your current hardware.

1.  Load the game, put all the sliders to maximum, watch the smoke rise from your Dual Core machine that you thought was "all powerful", go back to the setting screen.

2.  Turn off Autogen

3.  Turn off Bloom

4.  Go back to the game, and enjoy for a few months

5.  Save money, wait for the release of DX10 Video Cards, and then wait some more for the second version of the DX10 Cards.  Then buy one.

6.  Go back to settings and turn on Bloom and Autogen

7.  Enjoy the game some more

  14 Replies to “Speed up FSX on your current PC, and then start saving for a DirectX 10 Video Card.”

  1. October 7, 2006 at 9:52 am

    Hey Nick,

    I understand what you’re saying Nick, but where I don’t agree with you is about the “disable autogen”.
    I mean, I could run FS9 with full autogen before and I’m definitely not asking for that in FSX, they probably cranked the values up a little more. No, what I’m asking is the ability to run the game with at least sparce autogen to get the feeling that I’m not flying with flat FS2000.
    Sparse autogen is a FPS killer and I don’t understand why.

    With bloom, I understand. Post processing effects eat a lot of graphic resource. But autogen, I don’t understand at all why it could run so fast in FS9 and so slow in FSX with soo little visual difference. (in sparse mode at least)

    Just as a comparison: 60-70 with no autogen (more than acceptable) and 20-24 with sparse autogen.
    Matt

  2. October 8, 2006 at 4:28 am

    Hey Matt, your point is very valid. Autogen does something dramatic 🙂

    Actually, Jon Patch just posted a good list of settings in much more detail than I.

    http://jonpatch.wordpress.com/2006/10/07/fsx-settings-early-thoughts/

  3. Dennis Dunton(Deltanovember)
    October 9, 2006 at 2:50 am

    Nick-Matt;

    You might want to check Avsim forums for an
    autogen tweak that Matt Johnson has posted. There
    is also a work around at FS2004.com.

    Got lots of bright folks in simming and it
    doesn’t take them long once they get ahold of
    an SDK.

    Regards
    Denny

  4. Dennis Dunton(Deltanovember)
    October 9, 2006 at 3:31 am

    Nick;
    A correction to my last reply it’s Matt Fox, also
    Joe Binka has a texture resizing tweak over at
    Simouthouse.
    Matt’s can be found here;

    ://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?…d=354861&page=

  5. October 9, 2006 at 4:16 am

    I’m trying to find the specific posts and can’t.

  6. October 9, 2006 at 8:47 am

    It’s not a game – it’s a sim!! 🙂

    Best,

    Owen

  7. Denny
    October 9, 2006 at 1:19 pm

    Nick;

    Forgot to tell you what a laugh I got out of your
    original post, also would you mind if included a
    link to it on some of the forums?

    Read the following by Joe Binka, you’ll get a
    laugh out of it.

    http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=27729

    And then Joes tweak

    http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=27692

    Over at Avsim Matt’s tweaks are in the thread;
    MS Flight Simulator General Discussion Forum topic #354861, Titled “Some help for Autogen”

  8. October 9, 2006 at 1:24 pm

    Sure thing.

    Katy Pluta also has a config that works well for her, without modding anything. I will try and get a cfg file from her and post it here.

  9. October 9, 2006 at 1:31 pm

    Actually, I forgot.. Jon already posted them.

    http://jonpatch.wordpress.com/2006/10/08/another-view-on-fsx-settings/

  10. gthou
    October 18, 2006 at 9:38 am

    I have a dell xps gen 4 with 1gb of ram & nvidia 6800. I bought the sim yesterday and was very disappointed. Not with the sim, but with the speed of my pc. I even left everything on “default”, and it still ran very slow. I did a PC restore, wiped out my entire system, reinstalled, and it is still too slow to even enjoy. What is (if anyone can answer) the best graphics card out there. I also read somewhere that I should have a minimum of 2gb of ram. I’m confused. I don’t have problems with any other sim or game until this sim came out.

  11. October 18, 2006 at 10:00 am

    Hi “gthou” if that is indeed your real name 😉

    You should, with some tweaking, be able to get the sim running on your PC. But even I admit that a 256MB video card is a minimum for “good experience” (this is what I have).

    In this order, try this:

    Turn off Bloom. (10FPS on my system right there)

    DO NOT set the slider to unlimited. Set it to about 18FPS. Any
    processing after it gets to 18FPS is then directed to other things.

    Try Matt’s Autogen Tweak Here http://tinyurl.com/trw9v

    Go to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555739 and play around with those settings to get something comfortable for your system.

    Go to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555738 and set that key.
    Increase and decrease to see if you get better results

    If you’re getting stutters/”pops” during turns or when pan your view around, try adding this to your fsx.cfg (located in yourprofileApplication DataMicrosoftFSX):

    [BufferPools]
    PoolSize=5000000

    The default pool size is 1 million but sometimes (If a lot of things are drawing like autogen) that isn’t enough. Increasing it to 5 or even 10 million trades off some of your video memory against having to re-allocate these things all the time.

    Hope these help in some way.

  12. gthou
    October 18, 2006 at 1:27 pm

    Thanks nick…will try. will let you know how everything goes. thanks again.

  13. Keith Callahan
    October 31, 2006 at 1:06 pm

    I’m buying a new computer, what is the best video card would you recommend?

  14. Adam
    October 10, 2007 at 1:07 pm

    Hey we have a new HP we sale at Office Depot. Has quad core with I believe a 8400 card, and 3 gigs. We put a copy of FSX and maxed out everything. Runs flawlessly. Not bad for a machine thats less than $1000!

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