Low Frame rates

[boeingaviation]

Hi folks,

Just upgraded to Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

Looks nice and everything but poor performance on my Flight Simulator 2004 game. With XP I was getting a solid 39fps with all sliders maxed out; Windows 7 I get 15-29 varying constantly, mainly hangs around the 20fps mark.

Here's my specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16ghz
Kingston HyperX DDR2 800 4GB
Geforce 8800GT 512mb PCI-E
Seagate 500gb SATA2 HDD/200gb SATA 2
Asus P5KPL/1600 Mobo

Can anyone offer me any suggestions as to how I can increase my frame rates?

Many thanks,
Chris

 

[osholt]

Turn off Windows Aero, it's always draining your GPU's power. There is a guide on how to do this at Disable Aero on Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek .

Also because you're running 64 bit your 32 bit application isn't running natively and will thus not run quite as fast as if it were on a 32 bit PC.

Also as you are new to the forum I thought I'd let you know, swearing, fighting and general rudeness are not permitted on this forum and if it carries on you will eventually get banned.

Oli

 

[boeingaviation]

I have disabled aero buy disabling the service and still only getting 25fps locked at 30. Is it possible that my Graphics Card is to blame?

 

[archie123]

Turn off Windows Aero, it's always draining your GPU's power. There is a guide on how to do this at Disable Aero on Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek .

Also because you're running 64 bit your 32 bit application isn't running natively and will thus not run quite as fast as if it were on a 32 bit PC.


Oli

eh?


what drivers are you running? have you tried setting power management to prefer maximum performance in control panel make sure your cards not downclocking? Your game should and will run as well in 7 as it did in Vista

 

[boeingaviation]

I was running Windows XP, not Vista. I can't handle playing Flight Simulator (main game I play) at under 25fps, just too jittery.

I haven't tried setting the maximum power on my graphics card (where do I do that?).

Cheers,
Chris

 

[archie123]

I was running Windows XP, not Vista. I can't handle playing Flight Simulator (main game I play) at under 25fps, just too jittery.

I haven't tried setting the maximum power on my graphics card (where do I do that?).

Cheers,
Chris

sorry i meant XP , moving from XP to win 7 with onboard graphics can cause serious gaming issues , however as you have an 8800 it should be ok , what im trying to say is its not the OS causing your problems

Now i assume you know what your doing but just incase are you sure you have your ingame settings exactly the same as you had in XP? and what driver version are you currently running? , could you do me a favour and if not alreay done install one of these....

32 BIT NVIDIA DRIVERS 197.13 WHQL

64 BIT NVIDIA DRIVERS 197.13 WHQL

dunno which os you have 64 or 32

there's loads of other stuff we can try , diagnstic software for checking your cor/mem speeds ingame make sure there ok but lets get the easy stuff out the way first

btw the setting i mentioned is in the NVidia conrol panel under 3d settings but leave that for now

 

[smarteyeball]

Turn off Windows Aero, it's always draining your GPU's power. There is a guide on how to do this at Disable Aero on Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek .

Considering Flight Sim disables the DWM, which in turn disables Aero anyway - this has zero impact on performance.

The Flight Sim series has always been heavily CPU dependent as opposed to being GPU dependent.

I'd look at trying to lighten/disable background tasks/services that are utilising CPU cycles as well as ensuring your drivers are up to date (the ones posted by Archie)

 

[boeingaviation]

So I went into the Nvidia control panel, but under 3d settings I can't figure out which setting archie means by "prefer maximum performance". There is a setting which allows you to select texture filtering to be either, quality/high quality/high performance/performance.

 

[not so gray matter]

Turn down all of the graphics options in game. For most people, NVIDIA's default settings allow the game itself to control whether you're using a high resolution, and quality of textures, decals, etc.

Go into the Graphics Options of the game and turn down the resolution, texture quality, turn off anti-aliasing and turn down anything else you can think of. If that doesn't help, you may want to run a benchmark program to find out if it's related the to the game or your computer.

Futuremark - Benchmarks

 

[Heroxoot]

depending on the game, Geforce 8800GT 512mb PCI-E may be your issue.

 

[archie123]

depending on the game, Geforce 8800GT 512mb PCI-E may be your issue.

im sorry but thats not very helpfull is it? have you read his original post?

So I went into the Nvidia control panel, but under 3d settings I can't figure out which setting archie means by "prefer maximum performance". There is a setting which allows you to select texture filtering to be either, quality/high quality/high performance/performance.

Forgot that for now mate have you installed the drivers i linked you too?

also as Smarty has said its a CPU intensive game you may have some CPU intensive tasks running all the time , resulting in low framerates ingame , could you hold down ctrl and alt the press delete once then seleck the task manager option , open the processes tab take a screen shot of it and post it up here

 

[boeingaviation]

Here ya go! BTW Thanks for everyone's help thus far, it's great to know there's so many people out there willing to help and let's hope we get the issue resolved so I can enjoy my game on Windows 7

 

[smarteyeball]

That actually looks pretty normal process wise. However since the background tasks are scheduled and/or dynamic it's not always easy to catch a culprit (providing there is one)

One possibe cause may be ESET. Try turning off the resident scanner if it's enabled to see if it has an impact.

Another thing to try, would be to set the affinity of fs9.exe to utilise both cores. (right-click on the process, select only one core, ok it and then re right-click and select both cores again)

I noticed with FSX, that it would max a single core and give choppier play until I reset the affinity to 'even' out the load. It's not a 'stellar' improvement, but it did smooth play out somewhat. From memory, FS9 and FSX weren't designed to take advantage of dual/multi cores.

The other less desirable, but perhaps necessary move would be to lower a few details such as draw distance, ground texture sizes, cloud density etc (it's been a while since I had it installed, so some of those settings may have different names.)

 

[Heroxoot]

depending on the game, Geforce 8800GT 512mb PCI-E may be your issue.

im sorry but thats not very helpfull is it? have you read his original post?

How isnt it? Its an old GFX card. Newer games would get low frame rates if the card isnt able to keep up.

 

[smarteyeball]

How isnt it? Its an old GFX card. Newer games would get low frame rates if the card isnt able to keep up.

As a general rule yes, but:

The Flight Sim series has always been heavily CPU dependent as opposed to being GPU dependent.

Whilst a faster card would certainly help to a varying degree, bare in mind the OP had no real problems with framerates with that same card in XP.

However, since Seven has more general 'overhead' usage on the CPU (more background services etc), manages memory differently etcetera, upgrading to a newer card for great improvement isn't as clear cut in this case.

Simply put, the game loves high CPU clock speeds since it does the vast majority of the work.

When the FS series was developed, they 'planned ahead' for longevity and expected that CPU speeds would exponentially rise to match projected performance.

However, this did not play out exactly as planned...



*************************************************************
Another thing you can try Boeing in conjunction to updating your video drivers would be to make sure you have the latest DirectX End-User Runtimes (February 2010)


Download details: DirectX Redist (February 2010)

*NB, these may have little to no impact, but will certainly not hurt to try.

 

[archie123]

depending on the game, Geforce 8800GT 512mb PCI-E may be your issue.

im sorry but thats not very helpfull is it? have you read his original post?

How isnt it? Its an old GFX card. Newer games would get low frame rates if the card isnt able to keep up.

because mate if you read the original post you'll see he was playing the game fine with the same hardware just with a differant operating system

 

[archie123]

i have a queston.............what are you using NHancer for? what are doing with it? custom profile?

the two nvidia services you have running "driver helper service" you can disable them if you like also i dont notice any "stereoscopic driver" instances running , have you disabled that service? (you dont need it unles your using the 3D galsses im just asking cos if you had the latest drivers that service would be running , and you need the latest drvers )