Stutters - at my wits end

[wcpa 0]

Desperately looking for some help here. I am experiencing terrible stutters in FSX, and I can't seem to do anything to get rid of them. About six months ago, this very same computer was running FSX just fine. I averaged about 25-30 fps with the PMDG MD-11 with medium-high settings, and would get near 60-80 FPS with the default aircraft. The FPS were always very smooth. I took a break from FSX for a few months, and now after coming back I am experiencing terrible stuttering. With the PMDG aircraft at KIAH, I will get 25 FPS...then it drops to 5....then 30....then 3...and so on. Stuttering occurs even with the default aircraft. I have tried EVERYTHING I can think of to get rid of the problem, but to no avail. Here is a list of things I've tried: Virtually every combination of settings in the FSX.cfg (Bojote's online tuner, deleting the FSX.cfg and letting FSX regenerate it, etc.)Tried limiting FPS with an external limiterManipulated virtually every setting in ATI Tray ToolsTried FSX with all sliders at zero...get over 100 FPS with default aircraft, but stutters that bring it down to 5 FPS.Uninstalled FSX, reinstalled. Tried different hard drives.Clean W7 install. Installed FSX as the only program on the drive.Opened my computer case. Cleaned it meticulously. Removed RAM from slots, ensured it was clean, reinserted. Like I said, this computer used to run FSX with steady FPS. I have no idea what could be causing these stutters, especially after completing wiping the HD and starting from scratch with a new W7 installation. My specs: AMD PHENOM II X4 9650 3.4 GHZ (not OC'd)WD RAPTOR 150GB 10,000 RPM SATAII (FSX drive)500 GB SATA II 3.0 GB 16MB 7200RPM4 GB DDR2 PC6400 MEMORYTHERMALTAKE MaxOrb GAMING CPU FANASUS M3A78-T AM2 790GX HDMI ATX AMDTHERMALTAKE TOUGH POWER 750 WATTATI RADEON 4870 PCI-E 512 MB DDR5W7 64-BIT Thanks for any suggestions!

[cianpars 1,165]

Typical casuse of stuters are graphics settings too high. However with your system, I doubt that is the problem. Another thing that can cause them is a fragmented disk. Optimise with Mydefrag (that's a very good free defragmentation program). Could be background processes (particulary virus checkers and anti spyware progs). 1. The affinitymask tweak (set to 14) cured my stutters. Remember to turn hyperthreading off though. 2. Usepools=0 may also help. IAN

[clarkresponse 3]

One thing I came accross to improve my stutter problem was to get rid of ATI Tray Tools. I use Catalyst Control Center (CCC). I use Catalyst Version 11.8. Now what has me stumped is the setting listed as "Tessellation". Once I set that to application controlled, whenever I flight a default aircraft everthing is butter smooth from start to finish. You may want to test that setting. I am also using Bojote's online tuner. I don´t use any external limiter but, since Bojote´s mod is designed for unlimited framerate setting why not max everything except water and road traffic. So far everthing flows smooth for me. Only with default aircraft. Quality wings may give me a few stutters only from forward view. I´m still trying to find a solution to that.

[yankeegolf3 51]

hi,did you try to shut down every unnecessary processes? Game booster can do it for you.http://www.iobit.comit is free

[Benjamin J 751]

hi,did you try to shut down every unnecessary processes? Game booster can do it for you.http://www.iobit.comit is free

Look out with that kind of stuff! They can break aircraft functionality because they may shut down services that actually are needed.

[Dougal 165]

Look out with that kind of stuff! They can break aircraft functionality because they may shut down services that actually are needed.

Yes indeed... took me ages to realise why my PMDG JS41 wouldn't work, some time ago. I'd closed a service called 'Flexnet', having no idea it was part of PMDG licencing system.

[Guest jahman]

Yes indeed... took me ages to realise why my PMDG JS41 wouldn't work, some time ago. I'd closed a service called 'Flexnet', having no idea it was part of PMDG licencing system.

Of course, the PMDG software in question could also have been programmed to respond with a meaningful error message if the required service was not running instead of just not starting. Cheers, - jahman.

[wcpa 0]

Thanks for the suggestions! Tried the bufferpools suggestion and the affinity mask setting, and haven't seen any improvement. Defragged the drive with Mydefrag as suggested. I don't have a tessellation setting in CCC, so I wasn't able to test that out. There are no unnecessary programs running in the background. This is on a fresh W7 install, so there are no programs on the system except for FSX and Firefox (and CCC, except I had the problems before I installed that). I just can't seem to wrap my head around why these problems are still persisting after all software that could have been conflicting has been wiped from the drive. The only thing I can think of is there must be some sort of hardware issue, but I don't know where to start looking.

[Benjamin J 751]

Did you do any hardware replacements or modifictaions? Also think of stuff like overclocking.

[yankeegolf3 51]

Look out with that kind of stuff! They can break aircraft functionality because they may shut down services that actually are needed.

I've never had any problem but your mileage may vary...In any case it does not damage anything. There is also the microsoft autoruns program in which you can manually disable the unnecessary processes.http://www.filehippo.com/download_autoruns/

[wcpa 0]

Did you do any hardware replacements or modifictaions? Also think of stuff like overclocking.

Nope, didn't change anything at all. I know next to nothing about overclocking and have always been wary of it, so I've never experimented with it.

[Noel 4,492]

Yes indeed... took me ages to realise why my PMDG JS41 wouldn't work, some time ago. I'd closed a service called 'Flexnet', having no idea it was part of PMDG licencing system.

I don't know. It seems to me Game Booster only turns standard Windows services off that are not critical. Others such as Flexnet and for example nVidia Stereo 3D driver (if not using of course), or any installed 3rd party services, are not disabled by Game Booster, and when I want them disabled rely on msconfig.exe or Task Manager. I will typically turn Windows Update and Windows Defender off using Task Manager and that is after running Game Booster. Haven't really verified my belief though Noel

[KL Oo 699]

Are you running FSX over a network?

[Paul J 349]

A much better application than Game Booster is "Alacrity" by Ken Salter. It gives one complete control over what gets stopped, started, which program(s) you want started - like TrackIR, ASE, etc.. http://alacritypc.kensalter.com/ and yes - it's free.

[wcpa 0]

Are you running FSX over a network?

Nope, no network involved.