Run!! I am back again! hehe - FS/GAME System

[FlyingMasterChef]

Yes, scary as it sounds, I am back again. I had NOT planned on taking another break from FS and designing... however, my computer had other ideas. It fried... Now I am stuck using an old Mac and an old pc...both limited to 1gig memory.. so they are pretty much useless for anything fast and fun...On the plus side, I am having a blast playing some old school games on both platforms.. 7th gues, lighthouse, shivers, journeyman project, Starwars Racer, and Myst trilogy.. And some great DOS games....

But alas, my heart wants Flight Simulation. I have spent well over 1500.00 on FS9 and FSX goodies.... and they are just rotting on my shelves... So, time to just build a new computer..

My question is, however, with technology and computer systems changing almost monthly, and needing to do this on a budget (may have to piece it over a few months, but that is ok...) I want to know what any of you have built. What motherboard is a great start? What processor is great for FSX (want full slider and multi-monitor ability) as well as some of the newer kick ass games... Best graphics board now? I know ATI and Nvidia go back and forth as to the best, but I also know that for a while there, ATI had the clear advantage when it came to FSX. But that was a few years ago.

Definitely need SATA ability as I have 4 SATA drives and want to use them.

And what is the new BIG DEAL.... quad core? 8 core? 16 core?? I did read about a year ago, a review where they bench-marked many 'GAMES' computers... and SOME dual core computers ran just as good as quad core. And some quad cores rand BETTER than some 8 core computers...

Yeah, I have been out of this game a while.. Sad, since I used to build systems for people all the time. 3-4 a month for several years.. but that was back in the days where P4 was king.

Like I said, I have no problem buying parts over several months....so I very much appreciate any and all suggestions.

Thanks,

Greg

 

[scruffyduck]

You are welcome as always Greg

 

[robystar]

Hello Greg,

Nice to have you back on the forums (to liven them up).
Depending on what you want exactly, I can only tell you that with my (at least) three year old low end PC: Pentium D915 2.8 Ghz, Nvidia Geforce 7300SE, 4 Gb RAM and a SATA 200GB harddrive (plus external 400Gb for downloads storage) and tweaking settings, I have a steady 10-15 fps in most places. Settings: FPS limited to 20 FPS, traffic at 70%, mesh 1m, scenery complexity high, lots of AI.
Mostly I am building new scenery with Sketchup, inventing new effects, embellishing airports with ADE, using MCX to convert FS9 craft for use in FSX, change their flight dynamics for carrier landings and stuff, and some more things.
Guess my present rig is worth no more than 200 US$, but it suits my purposes.
For what it is worth.

Roby

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Greg:

Be sure to pick up a copy of the latest Computer Pilot Magazine (Volume 15 Issue 2 - March/April 2011) while it is still available on newstands.


"Benchmarking FSX - Performance Summary and Recap" by Doug Horton is an extremely informative "must-read" treatise about running FSX on current and recently available computer hardware.


The only part of the findings in the above article which I believe merits further explanation, is that Doug's tests do not seem to confirm Phil Taylor's assertion that "data-loader fibers" spawned by FSX since SP1 could utilize up to an additional 255 CPU cores and (I presume) offer some additional "perceptible" benefit to FSX functionality.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/04/09/fsx-sp1-news-intel-quote.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/15/performance-work-in-sp1.aspx

http://www.fsbreak.net/podcast/2009...s-fs-bloggers-network-pilotshop-tv-retur.html


However, Phil Taylor did also qualify his assertions about FSX and multi-core CPU utilization:

"As far as practical limits on number of usable cores; currently SetThreadAffinityMask only allows explicit scheduling of threads on 32 cores (the mask is a dword) on Win32. So thats our effective limit on number of cores. But as soon as there is a way to explicitly schedule them, we can handle 256 cores."

And Phil also clarified the distinction between FSX utilization of "real cores" versus virtual cores spawned via Hyperthreading:

"Note - hyperthreaded is not multi-core. Our current plan is to treat HT machines as single-core since we noticed extensive collisions between threads which caused stutters."


As I read Doug's article, it seems unclear as to what testing he may have done with an explicit...

"[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask="

...statement in FSX.Cfg, and it appears he may have assumed such affinity masking performed automatically since FSX SP2 was superior to any empirical "AffinityMask tweak" tests he may have previously attempted (but not published ?).


But... you be the judge; Doug quotes his statement about "affinity mask setting" with FSX from his article above in this thread:

http://www.flightsimulatornetwork.c...ps-multicore-environment-1?xg_source=activity


...and some additional technical details relative to independent test protocols run by an end user in light of Doug's methods and findings are here:

http://api.ning.com/files/xVZk7bbxJ...EDpDfaWOH/RickUFSXmark07BenchmarksFinalV1.pdf



I'd be interested in what others think about that aspect of FSX SP2 performance tweaking via use of explicit scheduling of threads on either 4 or 6 cores in current multi-core CPUs by use of an (explicit)...

"[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask="

...statement in FSX.Cfg.

PS: Some info I've found thus far via Googling for FS running on a I7 6-core CPU with and without an explicit "AffinityMask tweak" in FSX.Cfg:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/279479-intel-six-core-i7-980-x-vs-fsx/page__st__120

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/279479-intel-six-core-i7-980-x-vs-fsx/page__view__findpost__p__1810187


Happy Hardware Hunting !

GaryGB

 

[bobbyjack]

Hey, Greg

Things haven't chanced all that much. There still isn't a rig out there that will run FSX full sliders, everything on, and heavey add ons.

However, the sandy bridge cpu's are a step closer. Plus, they are cost evective.

As usual, your wallet is the limit.

Good luck.

Bob

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

Thanks all..

Roby: Would I do that? hehe

Gary: Will grab that as I must renew my subscription...I let it slide after 8 years because money was tight and couldn't play.. Will get the back issues I have missed as well. I will be reading all the info you gave.. THANK YOU for all of that.

Along this issue... Jon, Arno, others.... would it be possible to have a small section of the forum here for this very topic? Where people can post their exact system specifics, settings, cfg file info, benchmark info, framerates, etc... Also, people could get information on articles just like Gary posts... I think this would be a great asset to the site and all of us that use it and look here for information on not only development, but all things FS..

Greg

ps.. glad to be back.. I love reading all the new posts and catching up with what everyone is doing.

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

system type (64 v 32 bit) and OS 7????

I was just thinking about the new system I will be building... Now I am really wondering.. Since I am sure it will be a 64bit computer...and probably run win 7.... (which I tried really hard to hate with a passion, but using my moms computer with it...I actually really really like it..) will FS9 work? Will FSX work? Will all my add-ons and design software work???

Oh, this could be a serious nightmare... Anyone have thoughts on system software with fs and add-ons, design software??

- Greg

 

[jdhaenens]

Welcome back Greg. Sorry to hear of your computer plight.

For Bobby and Gary: I have found a computer that will let me fly FSX with all sliders maxed out with the Vertical Reality FA-18 in New york City. The minimum framerate was 15. With more realistic settings (my settings before the upgrade) the minimum framerate was 22. BTW, scenery shadows were on as were all the other bells and whistles including anistropic filtering

I just built it last weekend. Specs follow:

ASUS Rampage III Extreme motherboard, Intel 990X Nehalem (Gulftown) processor, 12 GB of Corsair Dominator memory (triple channel config), two ATI 5870 Video cards, and my old SATA II drives.

Overclocked to 4.2 GHZ on air (Zalman CPNS9900 Cooler).

NO Affinity mask (all 6 cores work without it) and HT disabled.

Down the road, I will probably replace my HDDs with SSDs, but am getting what I want now without.

The whole package cost me about $3K to put together and it runs 3DS MAX, Photoshop CS-5 and all my other design stuff like a breeze..

Cheers
Jim

 

[gsnde]

... Now I am really wondering.. Since I am sure it will be a 64bit computer...and probably run win 7.... (which I tried really hard to hate with a passion, but using my moms computer with it...I actually really really like it..) will FS9 work? Will FSX work? Will all my add-ons and design software work???

Hi Greg,

I am running FS9 and FSX with Win7 64bit since more than a year and it is a very satisfying experience.

In FSX I use e.g UTX, FEX, the A2A Accusim B-17 and Instant Scenery to name a few heavyweights. All without problem. The same goes for the bunch of developing tools, most of them home-based here

None of the sims, addons or tools are installed in %ProgramFiles%, which is key for running flightsim smoothly on a modern system.

I have a now already old Core2Duo and a even older GeForce 9800+. Memory is 6 Giga. I am sure that the hardware components you can buy today are even more powerful.

Enjoy the selection

 

[bobbyjack]

Greg

Yes, FS9 and FSX work in W7. As does ADE and most developement software I can think of. I have heard of some problems with a few add ons.

Jim.

I have always found it dissapointing that one can spend that kind of money and still be dragged down to 15 fps. I realize the action is OK, it's just the principle of the thing. I can't begin to justify anything close to that kind of outlay for a computer. On the other hand, I would drop that much and more in an instant, if I had it. On the other hand, since I don't run any add ons, I can poke along just fine with my creaky old Q9550 @3.4, gtx260 rig.

Bob

 

[PakMac]

I was just thinking about the new system I will be building... Now I am really wondering.. Since I am sure it will be a 64bit computer...and probably run win 7.... (which I tried really hard to hate with a passion, but using my moms computer with it...I actually really really like it..) will FS9 work? Will FSX work? Will all my add-ons and design software work???

Oh, this could be a serious nightmare... Anyone have thoughts on system software with fs and add-ons, design software??

- Greg

It is wise to install FS, SDK's and any other program that reads and writes to FS outside of the Program Files / Program Files(86). Best place is the root of the drive, C:\.

David

 

[jdhaenens]

Looking at it from a hardware aspect, I'm pretty sure my new machine will fufill the minimum requirements for "Microsoft Flight".

If you think about it, Flight Simulator is a big rendering engine with environment, aircraft, and addons as variables. In addition to transforming motion onto every pixel on the screen, it also has to make the weather, show the radar, move the GPS unit, clear you for the pattern, make smoke when you land, light up things at night (motion transform with variable lighting conditions) and do all this for a half dozen different points of view...almost simultaneously. I don't know if you've ever rendered a scene with any of the popular rendering machines, but it takes a while for a single frame.

The complexities are amazing, but to do it 15 times a second in downtown NYC is satisfying.

I'm very, very lucky. I have a very good day job and a Navy retirement coming in that allows me to have the discretionary income to spend.

I am running Windows 7 Pro 64 and FSX is in the program files (X86) folder. The only problem I have is not with the OS, it's with Google Earth who (I believe) changed the .kml file parameters so I can no longer use FSX KML.

 

[robystar]

Hi again, Greg,
"Roby: Would I do that? hehe"
The point I was trying to make is that it serves no purpose to purchase high end hardware when you do not know how to use it or whether it is essential or not.
I am rather conservative in my spendings as the money does not grow on my back either.
I would love to have a more powerful PC but am not inclined yet to spend lots of money on it without being certain of the outcome. Besides, my FSX visual experience is satisfactory in as far as I can fly heli's with enough FPS to not crash and (although I sometimes have to pause FSX to let textures become clear again) the game is fluid.
No, I am not advising you to buy such a rig, but only wanted to point out that with lots of tweaking, a not so expensive PC can do the job, depending on your threshhold for enjoying the game.
I guess most of us have no huge bank accounts and if I understand you right, neither have you, so I'd say: go slow, configure your own PC, make sure you have a good motherboard, a fast (at least dual core) CPU, a good graphics card and fast RAM memory. Then start tweaking!
Once again, for what it is worth and from what I read on the internet and my own experience.
And as such, I am waiting for others to contradict my words.
And that is exactly the fun of it all!
And from what I understood:
Hypertreading serves no purpose;
Quad core or more serves no purpose either;
With sp2, no need to define affinity mask;
Nvidia GPU is preferrable to ATI because FSX was tested on Nvidia GPU.
And some other things I forgot.
(As for Jim's GE problem: yep, I experienced the same but you can easily use a previously made KML and cut and paste the new coordinates into it and compile under a different name.)

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

LOVE all the info I am getting...will most certainly help me and I am sure others.. As I am self employed and responsible to keep my employees paid and happy, I have little discretionary income... HOPE that changes soon...but alas, owning your own business is NOT always what some think it is...hehe

Do you all think that some of the new "gaming" systems are a way to go...ie, the motherboard is MADE by the graphics company... ATI or Nvidia..

As far as drives...any thoughts? I have ALWAYS put FS on it's own drive. I would NEVER put any software on the boot drive (C) as that is asking for trouble in 99.9% of cases. I despised software that requires me to install it on the C drive...ie. doesn't give a choice of where to put it. I alwyas have a D drive for ALL applications, and a F drive for my flight sim. G drive for other games. Is this now a bad thing??? What speed drives are you all running? I THINK all of mine are 7800rpm but I am too lazy to look and make sure of that... I know they are not lower...just not sure if I ever bought a faster one or not..

Greg

 

[gsnde]

Greg,

For Windows computer the system default is that applications are installed into the "C:\Program Files" (%ProgramFiles%) folder. That in it self is not a bad thing at all. If you look at OS and applications, you might say that office programs or tools are just an addon to the OS (oh addons we do know... )

That this has become an issue starting from Vista onwards is that many/most coders did a bad thing that was not foreseen by Microsoft (but neither it was prohibited!). They write software that stores either the program settings (*.ini, *.cfg) or the data generated by the program (or even both) in the same folder structure where the program files reside.

Microsoft has closed programmatic access to installed programs and their files (*.exe; *.dll etc.) the same way they hardened the protection of the OS itself (%WinDir% = C:\Windows). Both are identically attractive for all male-ware that aims to multiply.

But settings should be placed in %AppData% (from W2K onwards) or the registry - otherwise you will have issues when you have to store different settings per application in a multi user environment. And user data should always be strictly separated from programs and settings.

I therefore have "My Documents" always on a different partition. That is easy to backup and restore in case you have to rebuild your system.

I allow programs to install in C:\Program Files on my laptop and office computer. I don't do so on my flightsim system (separate installation (dual boot) on my office computer). Because nearly all tools will compile or change binary files the OS has to assume something bad is happening. Therefore it stop things and we are unhappy.

Long story, but I thought it was time to shed some light on the how's and why's

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

Martin,

I used to be a total geek when it came to computer systems, hows, whys, etc.. Life got involved and owning own company, kids, etc...all took precedence. I am still very anti idiot MS system...however, I am a realist, and to do some of what I do, I must use it. Apple, on the other hand, is the ultimate system if you want ease of use and stability. Why? Because of NO REGISTRY!!!!!! This is THE single worst thing MS ever came up with. I get the reasoning behind it...but did they not think that real people may ever use their system?? Aside from the fact that 90% of all problems on a pc is because of registry errors, problems, destruction (virii), etc...

As I have said for years.. . Take a PC, and a MAC... install photoshop (I own it on both my Mac and Pc... Now, decide you want to move it to your new 1.5tb drive you just bought. On the PC... you must uninstall, clean the registry (over 300 separate entries will NOT be removed by the uninstaller, and over 70 will remain no matter what cleaner you run..you will have to hand delete...) then you must reinstall on the new drive. Now, do the same on a MAC.. Grab the Photoshop folder, and drop it on the new drive. Done. And it all works!!! Amazing..hehe

As far as where to put files... I have D:\Program Files set as my default installation location. And D:\ ProgramData and D:\Documents and Settings all set as defaults.. I learned this trick while digging into how exactly windows works years ago. Many articles on the why's and hows..and one consensus over many tech articles and many people was that you should never keep programs that are not off the system installer on the system drive. Thus, I don't, and when I set up systems for others, I change it all on theirs as well. Some things still go there, and nothing you can do about it...but it is what it is... With ONLY the system on the drive...it started as about 7 gigs when I first installed..and without any programs living there, it has grown itself to over 12 gigs.. The drive is partitioned to 15... If it ever gets to that point, I will format and start over, cause that is just ridiculous.

Greg,

For Windows computer the system default is that applications are installed into the "C:\Program Files" (%ProgramFiles%) folder. That in it self is not a bad thing at all. If you look at OS and applications, you might say that office programs or tools are just an addon to the OS (oh addons we do know... )

That this has become an issue starting from Vista onwards is that many/most coders did a bad thing that was not foreseen by Microsoft (but neither it was prohibited!). They write software that stores either the program settings (*.ini, *.cfg) or the data generated by the program (or even both) in the same folder structure where the program files reside.

Microsoft has closed programmatic access to installed programs and their files (*.exe; *.dll etc.) the same way they hardened the protection of the OS itself (%WinDir% = C:\Windows). Both are identically attractive for all male-ware that aims to multiply.

But settings should be placed in %AppData% (from W2K onwards) or the registry - otherwise you will have issues when you have to store different settings per application in a multi user environment. And user data should always be strictly separated from programs and settings.

I therefore have "My Documents" always on a different partition. That is easy to backup and restore in case you have to rebuild your system.

I allow programs to install in C:\Program Files on my laptop and office computer. I don't do so on my flightsim system (separate installation (dual boot) on my office computer). Because nearly all tools will compile or change binary files the OS has to assume something bad is happening. Therefore it stop things and we are unhappy.

Long story, but I thought it was time to shed some light on the how's and why's

 

[gsnde]

Greg,

my view on things is influenced from corporate environments. Although different from a home computer in some ways (non-administrative accounts, no flight simulator installed ), they still have much in common.

On a business computer you usually have your data on a server homedrive, and your applications installed on C: together with the OS. One reason for this is that if you need to restage a computer you have to to reinstall your applications as well. Because when you (re)install Windows on a fresh formated C: partition, your applications on "D:\Program Files" are all unknown. All needed registry entries are missing. All DLL and OCX files that should reside in the system folder are missing. All configuration is gone.

So you have to re-install anyway, just that you point your installation path to D: instead of C:. So no difference from this angle.

Some people separate OS and programs for performance reasons. In case your D: partition is on a separate hard disk this can be true. I have all flightsim files on a separate disk (not partition!). This way file reads in the simulator are not disturbed by the constantly happening reads and writes of the operating system.

But if C: and D: are partitions on the same disk then you most likely add extra time, because the drive has to constantly jump between the two logical partitions and reposition the heads to follow the reads and loads of system and program files.

Anyway, everybody should handle this according to his vision and liking.

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

I totally agree Martin.. And yeah, while my programs are on the D drive (partition) I don't remember the exact reason...but I know at the time, it all made sense.. And yes, another reason I despise the registry... When I have to reformat, and I have several times, all the apps (well, most of them..not all) are pretty much useless until I re-install them again. Again, another plus for my MAC... And when you uninstall, you simply drop the folder in the trash, and EVERYTHING is removed..

As for my flight sim...it is always on a totally separate drive. I partition it with FS on the outside and all my fs extra apps (design software, add-on apps, etc..) on inside partition. I will always keep it that way...

Greg

 

[jdhaenens]

The point I was trying to make is that it serves no purpose to purchase high end hardware when you do not know how to use it or whether it is essential or not.

...guess I'd better give back all that finite element analysis software...sigh...

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

Hello Greg,

Nice to have you back on the forums (to liven them up).

Roby

Roby, hehehe My comment of "would I do that" was for this quote... I forgot to hit the quote button. OOPS!! I meant, would I do that (liven them up) hehe.. I mean, have I ever been known to cause any controversy or strife.... hehe It's not like I speak my mind or anything.

- Greg