Performance

[Rondon]

Hi guys, I'm new at the forum and I wanted to know whats the best pc configuration to run fs2004 well, because I have a gforce 5500,
256mb RAM, windows XP.

[Rondon]

Sry I forgot this part. I can't land at the big airports like Los Angeles, Chicago, NY, London...

[olseric]

Start by turning down some of your settings and then save up your pennies and buy another stick of RAM.

That's where I'd start.

[ivo]

whats your processor speed? Also, you might want to check out this guy http://www.fs-gs.com . He might get better performance from your machine.

What kind of frame rates are you getting?

[Airliner]

Can you tell us your full specs?

CPU and speed
Board
Ram
Video Card
Sound Card
etc.

FS9 is VERY CPU intensive. After that, you want at least 1GB of ram (I went from 512MB to 1GB and it was like night and day)
The video card is actually very secondary to these. I went from an ATI Radeon 9200, 128MB AGP to a blazing ATI 9800XT, 256MB AGP
and saw a minute difference in performance. Then, I swapped over from an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2.09GHz to an AMD64 3000 @ 2.0
GHz and I get, consistently 25-30 FPS almost everywhere with nearly everything maxed out. Processor power, FSB speed and Ram are
the number 1 priorities with FS9. After that, Vid and Sound cards can play a role in slowing things but not nearly as much as the others.

[alphaone]

FS9 is very CPU and RAM intensive (expect to see this change with FSX). It is also important to have a fast GPU if you want to have all the eye candy
turned up. Even though the GPU isn't the most important part of running FS9 well, it is still important. Sorry to say this but, the FX5500 is terrible in that regard. If you want a relatively cheap performance boost in that area, try hunting down a 9800Pro, it should help a bit. A ram boost will also make a huge differece. FS9 is a beast of a program, and requires a computer that is up to the task to run it with any sort of enjoyment for the user.

FSX will be much more optomized and will use the system's resources much more efficiently and effectively. It will also be multi threaded so it will
be mult processor friendly, and it will take advantage of the latest hardware and software advancements, and ones coming down the pipe (direct X 10, Vista, next-gen CPU's and GPU's, etc.)
Also, contrary to popular belief, Direct X 10 will probably make FSX run even better, as well as look better. I've read that what would take 1500 API
calls in Direct X 9 you can do in 150 calls in Direct X 10. That's a lot less work for the system to get bogged down in. The future is good.

If want an example of a system that runs FS9 well here's mine. It runs it well, but I'd certainly like it to be better. I'm just waiting for the next gen Intel cpu to come out (Conroe, for those of you in the know) so that I can build my new system.

Amd Athlon XP 2400+ mobile overclocked to 2.5GHz
ATI 9800Pro also overclocked slightly to 400/350
1.5GB RAM
And the rest of the trimmings that make the system. the ones above are the guts though.

Here are some examples of what that makes the sim look like, and run well for me:






Hope that helps answer your question. I hope I wasn't too thourough



Post Edited ( 07-08-06 10:24 )

[kingfisher-blue]

At present I am running FS9 with a Intel Pentium 2.6 CPU, 1.5 Gig RAM, and FX5700LE Nvidea Graphics Card. I have FS Passengers,
Radar Contact 4, FS Navigator, Just Flight Spifire, Traffic 2005 and 6 Volumes Just Flight British Airports. I also have some Just Flight
scenery addons not currently installed as most of the time you are to high to see anything anyway so I just don`t bother about them to
much. I am finding that all in all it runs pretty well and I don`t have many problems so am not looking to change anything except for getting
a second monitor. Hope this helps you decide, cheers, John.

[Joeflyer]

I have a AMD 2.2 Ghz CPU, 1 G of RAM and a GF 6800 Xtreme 512MB(which I upgraded from a GF 6600 256MB recently), and got a
drastic improvement in sim performance with all sliders nearly maxed. I currently have the FPS locked at 30 and will get an average of 25
FPS using the frame hog Captain Sim B757. With the 6600 I was getting a max of 15 FPS, so adding the 10 FPS with the new card was
well worth the $$. With all other aircraft(payware and default) I can set the FPS to unlimited and will see 40 FPS easily. I would never see
that kind of performance with the 6600.

[Rondon]

Ok my specs are:

Intel Celeron CPU 2.53Ghz
NVIDIA Geforce FX 5500 128MB
256MB RAM
Realtek AC97 AUDIO
Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2
(where can I found my mother board type?)

[Rondon]

AHHH!!! My settings in fs are:

Terrain mesh-----------60%
Terrain Texture---------Medium
Terrain Detail-----------Land only
Water Detail-------------High
Special Effects----------Medium
Scenery Complex------Normal
Autogen-------------------Dense
Daw/dusk scenery-----On
Extended Terrain-------On
Lens Flare----------------On
Sun Glare-----------------On

Virtual Cockpit-----------High
Reflections---------------Off
Aircraft Shadows--------On
Land Lights---------------On

Cloud Sight Distance--60mi/96km
Cloud Draw dist.--------40mi/64km
3-D cloud------------------30%
Simple clouds------------On

Target Frame Rate------25
Render To texture--------On
Transform & Light--------On
Anti Aliasing----------------Off
Filtering---------------------Bilinear
MIP mapping---------------4
Hardware render light---6
Global max.-----------------Medium