FSX cpu advice

[Guest jamouski]

Hi all, I've been addicted to fs2004 and spent many hours, days, months and years tweaking it and it runs great on my system but lately i aquired FSX and trying to get it to run smooth (ish) without much success. I know you need a high end system to run it and i am aware of all the usual problems so here's the thing...my specs are:Biostar NF-520-A2 TE motherboardAMD 64X2 6000 overclocked 3.1ghznvidia 8800gt 1gb6 gb DDR 2 Ramwestern digital 500gb harddriveI've applied all the usual fsx cfg tweaks and running fsx acceleration, used ultimate defrag 2008 to consolidate all files to outer edge of drive and use ccleaner, What i want to know is is if i upgrade my cpu to an AMD phenom ii x 4 , 945 3ghz will it make any noticible difference? that is the maximum my board will accept and don't want to get a new board as my DDR2 ram will need replacing and that's financially not viable at the moment.

[jjjallen 37]

Hi all, I've been addicted to fs2004 and spent many hours, days, months and years tweaking it and it runs great on my system but lately i aquired FSX and trying to get it to run smooth (ish) without much success. I know you need a high end system to run it and i am aware of all the usual problems so here's the thing...my specs are:Biostar NF-520-A2 TE motherboardAMD 64X2 6000 overclocked 3.1ghznvidia 8800gt 1gb6 gb DDR 2 Ramwestern digital 500gb harddriveI've applied all the usual fsx cfg tweaks and running fsx acceleration, used ultimate defrag 2008 to consolidate all files to outer edge of drive and use ccleaner, What i want to know is is if i upgrade my cpu to an AMD phenom ii x 4 , 945 3ghz will it make any noticible difference? that is the maximum my board will accept and don't want to get a new board as my DDR2 ram will need replacing and that's financially not viable at the moment.

Probably better luck over here http://forums1.avsim.net/forum/325-hardware-discussions/jja

[mjrhealth 820]

Yoiu would be wasting your time. Get an AM2+ motherboard and an AMD 955 or 965, the 955 will reach 3.8 Gig just using the multiplier, a little tweaking and it will do 3.9 with a NB of 2.6 Gig which helps heaps, and with the AM2+ board you will still be able to use your DDr2 ram.

[Guest firehawk44]

I've applied all the usual fsx cfg tweaks

There ya go! That's the problem! Rename the fsx.cfg to fsx.old, restart the sim and let the config rebuild itself. Sometimes these tweaks are just not for everyone or for every computer system. Many of the latest tweaks are really for the I7 and Win7 systems. I would strongly suggest reading the excellent guide on setting up FSX and tuning it - http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041.Best regards,Jim

[Guest jamouski]

Thank's for all your advice, I have just orderd a gigabyte GA-M720 US3 AM2+ board which will take (according to the cpu support list) AMD Vhenom ii x 4 965 Black edition 3.4GHz 125w. ( another £185 I must be mad : ) I will see how that works before i even think about clocking it and buying a big freezer..Running XP 64 bit aswell.

[Guest jamouski]

Help! I got a gigabyte GA-M720 US3 board + AMD PHENOM ii x4 965 BE 125w cpu (they are compatible) and the cpu temp at idle is anything from 47-57 degrees and the stock cooler which came with the cpu is working overtime like it's life depended on it, any advice as i'm to worried to even fire up FSX......Jamie....

[EtchMcB 1]

Help! I got a gigabyte GA-M720 US3 board + AMD PHENOM ii x4 965 BE 125w cpu (they are compatible) and the cpu temp at idle is anything from 47-57 degrees and the stock cooler which came with the cpu is working overtime like it's life depended on it, any advice as i'm to worried to even fire up FSX......Jamie....

Somewhat worrying. I'm running an AMD Phenom II X6 at stock speeds (2.8GHz) and on the stock cooler, and it's idling at 23-34 degrees. Sounds like you have misapplied thermal paste on the CPU (not your fault, I know AMD put the most evil thermal pads on their Phenom coolers; I had to strip mine off and apply my own thermal solution to the cooler). I'd strip the cooler, clean the paste off with TIM cleaning fluid, and get some Arctic Silver. It's worrying that a Phenom should idle that high so I'm instinctively going to say thermal paste. Give it a try and let me know how you get on.Just for the sake of benchmarking, I'm running a Phenom II X6, 2.8GHz, on a Gigabyte GA890FXA-UD7, 4Gb 1066MHz DDR3, and an Nvidia 8800GTS (...ghetto). FSX on medium-high settings runs like a dream. I hope your Phenom works out for you, it made one HELL of a difference in my system (then again it would; I came off a Pentium 540J. Who the hell even tries to run FSX on a P4. Just NO.)

[Guest jamouski]

The guy in the shop said it's running hot and recomended i send it back so i picked it up and went and bought an Akasa cooler x 4 (BIG) + got some Antec silver paste, put it all together and when i started it up i got the blue screen of death : (...... and now it won't even start without turning it's self back off... Devestated......Just dropped it off at another computer shop so wait and see...I've mentioned that i read about Gigabyte boards automatically setting vcore at 1.4v and the phenom requires 1.325v so maybe they can play about in the bios other than that i'll have to send it back......i really dont need the heartache lol...

[EtchMcB 1]

The guy in the shop said it's running hot and recomended i send it back so i picked it up and went and bought an Akasa cooler x 4 (BIG) + got some Antec silver paste, put it all together and when i started it up i got the blue screen of death : (...... and now it won't even start without turning it's self back off... Devestated......Just dropped it off at another computer shop so wait and see...I've mentioned that i read about Gigabyte boards automatically setting vcore at 1.4v and the phenom requires 1.325v so maybe they can play about in the bios other than that i'll have to send it back......i really dont need the heartache lol...

I know what you mean. When I got my CPU, I had a motherboard issue and had to RMA it - which took a month. I only just got my system up and running last month. I was overjoyed when it worked :)After some investigation in the BIOS of my own, I found an option called "System Voltage Control" - on mine that's set to Auto and my CPU's VCore is 1.475 (worrying). This option is mainly for overclocking and there's a possibility it's not taking the new cooler into account. I'd say have a play around, but be careful. Actually, what am I saying, you've overclocked before so you know your way around. The other thing that could have been causing that was the CPU fan being set to PWM instead of DC mode, but I'm not sure that's an issue on the Gigabyte boards, or even on the Phenoms. This one has me stumped, I'm afraid...I'll talk to my housemate who also builds computers (you can imagine what our house is like, heh) and get back to you. We'll get your system running somehow! :)

[t_a_h 0]

so, you guys saying it makes big difference buying AMD AM3 X4 or X6 3.x GHz for flying FSX without problems almost all sliders walled right? my system now is only a AM2 X2 at 3GHz and will not play FSX without having a slide show at hand! FS9.1 is ok most times. Will even FS9.1 benefit from that bigger CPU?

[Guest jamouski]

To be honest i had an AMD 64 x2 6000 3Gb clocked to 3.1, Biostar NF-520 A2 TE Board, 6 Gb ram, 8800gt card W/D 500Gb H/drive but what i did do was aquire Ultimate defrag 2008 and consolidated my harddrive putting fs9 to the outer edges and applied the most common FS9 cfg tweaks plus browsed for other performance tweaks and FS9 ran smooth even with lets say FSdreamteams Chicargo O'Hare addon which is one of the more demanding ones. To be honest it even ran FSX Quiet smooth if i was flying Aerosims f-16 or the FA-18 and BAE Hawks but not the more demanding ones like PMDG's Jetstream 41. I had to change to XP 64 bit because i think that XP 32 bit does not make use of more than 4GB ram. I think you really need to use quad cores for FSX as it is THE most demanding game for processing power, I steered clear of it until now but i want a system that i know is capable of playing it so i can enjoy it, When it first came out i bought it and swiftly returned it after i got home and ended up watching a slide show i the desert lol....Jamie....

[t_a_h 0]

ok, so Ive to upgrade to X4 or even X6. What I aint get is, why MS FSX came out at a time when there was no such powerfull CPU to buy that could run FSX as the latest CPUs today.

To be honest i had an AMD 64 x2 6000 3Gb clocked to 3.1, Biostar NF-520 A2 TE Board, 6 Gb ram, 8800gt card W/D 500Gb H/drive but what i did do was aquire Ultimate defrag 2008 and consolidated my harddrive putting fs9 to the outer edges and applied the most common FS9 cfg tweaks plus browsed for other performance tweaks and FS9 ran smooth even with lets say FSdreamteams Chicargo O'Hare addon which is one of the more demanding ones. To be honest it even ran FSX Quiet smooth if i was flying Aerosims f-16 or the FA-18 and BAE Hawks but not the more demanding ones like PMDG's Jetstream 41. I had to change to XP 64 bit because i think that XP 32 bit does not make use of more than 4GB ram. I think you really need to use quad cores for FSX as it is THE most demanding game for processing power, I steered clear of it until now but i want a system that i know is capable of playing it so i can enjoy it, When it first came out i bought it and swiftly returned it after i got home and ended up watching a slide show i the desert lol....Jamie....

[Guest jamouski]

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/748/748753p1.html

[t_a_h 0]

fine, that tells me to never start fsx at all, no matter how much better cpu I upgrade...?

http://uk.pc.ign.com...8/748753p1.html

[Guest jamouski]

I'm just starting to try FSX and look at the trouble i'm having lol.....