FSX running slowly

[Tweek]

Within the past few days, as the title says, FSX has started to run slowly, in the sim, and even on the menus. When flying, it's just jerky and it struggles with any scenery (reduces the FPS pretty drastically), and on the menus, it seems to take about 10 seconds to simply accept a change (ie clicking 'OK' on any window, or just highlighting an aircraft on the selection menu).

The only thing I installed between the time it was fine and the point I noticed it was 'DDS Converter 2', which I've installed before with no problems. Since then, I've tried several spyware scans, a defrag of the FSX drive, and a system restore to a time it was definitely running fine. To no avail.

The only other thing I can think of was when I was messing around with the textures on the T-6 the other day (see http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=313), although I can't be certain it was running perfectly before I started tinkering with these. I did reinstall the T-6 on several occasions during this time though, and I did notice that the installations were hardly running at a cheetah's pace - perhaps because the T-6 has over 600mb worth of textures).

Seeing as they'll come up, a few basic specs:
WinXP SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo 2 E6750 @2.67GHz
ASUSTeK P5K MoBo
ATI Radeon HD 3870 512Mb
2Gb DDR2 RAM (Corsair something or other)

For the record, nothing is overheating, and no hardware has been added or removed before or since it started playing up.

[bazzar]

Hi Tweek,

You are running a system which would be considered minimums for something like FSX. Anything from an internet connection and browser type to a native system function having been changed or acting oddly can result in catastrophic effects on FSX.

Increasing the ram so you can "muscle" through these probs is usually the way to go.

Have you checked ram usage? What is FSX using now you have changed things? What are the big memory soakers that you are running? Maybe kill some of the ones you don't need and try again.

Isolate the machine from any network and the internet and see what happens.

Complex scenery such as airports and definitely clouds kill FSX performance dead on systems that have minimum memory.

Sorry, but there's a million reasons why performance drops with this sim.

Good luck with it.:engel016:

[GypsyBaron]

If you've been moving/editing 600MB of textures, you might consider
a defrag at this point.

When I did some mass BMP to DDS texture conversions a few
weeks ago I started having severe stuttering in FSX.

I defraged and also did some other hard drive rearrangement that
seemed to clear things up a bit.

Anyhow, it can't hurt.

Paul

[CBris]

Me too.

On a fresh installed system and FSX, I could lock out at 25 FPS and fly FS9 portovers over FSAddon's Vancouver+

Now I sometimes get sub 10 FPS over a default FSX Vancouver. I get BSODs on "IRQ" and memory problems.

I know I have bad RAM, a couple of dead and dying sectors on the HD and a VERY cluttered set of three 250GB hard drives. Defrag helps a little bit.

Mind you - I have been working my system hard this year. I have added many GB of paint project files, there have been a fair few betas with more than the regular install / remove of the project software. My registry seems to have eaten poorly prepared Fugu fish and is suffering severe bloat.

Also... Do you use memory sticks - different ones - a lot? Each time you plug in a different USB device, you get another entry in a table or somewhere.

I know my cure involves RAM, a new master HD and a fresh reinstall of OS and software.

You might consider checking that your hardware is still good.

Or simply a good cleanout, delete unused files (all the internet temps and all the tmp and bak files) and then defrag anew.

Last time I defragged - 6 million+ files on 3 HDs!

[Lionheart]

Same here.....

Slower.. and FS9 is crashing as well.. all defragged and cleaned..

[Tweek]

You are running a system which would be considered minimums for something like FSX.

Well it ran as smooth as silk before hand, on the same specs, so I know the hardware is satisfactory, although as has been said, something like the RAM or the hard drive could be playing up. It's the fact that it just suddenly started running like crap that has got me!

I was running at extremely dense autogen and scenery complexity (with a config edit of 1200 trees and 600 buildings per cell), but even if I reduce the autogen to absolutely nothing, it still runs in the same way - stuttering every few seconds. I've no doubt that it should run flawlessly with no autogen.

As for defragging, I've tried that already, but it didn't make an ounce of difference unfortunately.

My CPU usage is ranging from 25-75%, just on the free flight menu, so I know something is wrong there. If it can't handle the menu, then there's no much it can handle!

I suppose it's reassuring to know I'm not the only one with such troubles. I don't know, perhaps something within FSX itself has corrupted, and maybe it's time for a complete reinstall. The fact that everything else on my computer is running ok would lead me to that, but I may go and check with something less intensive, like Strike Fighters, to make sure it isn't having an effect on all games.

edit: Well Strike Fighters is running a whole lot better than the FSX menu... :d

[bazzar]

For what it is worth, some recent "upgrades" to software are causing havoc with performance in FSX and other progs like MAx. Browsers are classic offenders so if you have installed upgrades to whatever internet browser you use, you might want to revert to the old one and see if it makes a difference, or better still, cut loose from any kind of network and have your internet on a cheapie or oldie machine. You can pick up absolute bargains for the cost of a single add-on these days and they are quite capable of running most internet requirements. The performance gain on the main PC is tremendous.

[harleyman]

Same here.....

Slower.. and FS9 is crashing as well.. all defragged and cleaned..



Oh Man.............. NOOOOoooooooooooooooo :banghead:

It must be a self distruct built in..... :d

[Lionheart]

Mine has now become so slow, that FSX is running at 4 to 10 FPS, FS9 crashes after 10 min's, and Gmax crashes several times a day....


Everything was fine 3+ weeks ago.


I do remember allowing one single update 'once'...

:banghead:


Think about it.. A Quad core, 3 gigs of RAM, what was one of the best graphics cards a year ago (nVidia 8500GT), and FSX is running at 10 FPS with minimum sliders... lolololol... Almost makes me want to throw something through the window.

[Cazzie]

You guys are giving me the heebies. I do have a pretty nice system, 4-GB Corsairs, two 8800-GT SLI, AMD Dual 3.3 MHz, etc. I get 20 fps (set there) in DX10 and 24 fps (set also) in DX9 mode with very custom settings (Sliders mostly one notch back from far right and autogen at normal). The less weather the better and keep visibility at 30 miles max.

Caz

[CBris]

Mine has now become so slow, that FSX is running at 4 to 10 FPS, FS9 crashes after 10 min's, and Gmax crashes several times a day....


Everything was fine 3+ weeks ago.


I do remember allowing one single update 'once'...

:banghead:


Think about it.. A Quad core, 3 gigs of RAM, what was one of the best graphics cards a year ago (nVidia 8500GT), and FSX is running at 10 FPS with minimum sliders... lolololol... Almost makes me want to throw something through the window.

I think it may also have something to do with "who" is at the PC. A lot of us are working on FSX and addons. Modelers, scenery jocks, painters even beta testers. We really put even the most up to date systems through some real hard paces.

When I look at the IO action my PC goes through during a paint; all those GB of textures on my HDs; all the research data... My Bushhawk master folder has around 25 GB, 12400 files, 950 folders - and I jettison older files as I go along.

But all that IO does things...

[Tweek]

I'm currently totally reinstalling FSX, in the hope it'll solve the problem. It might not work, but it needed a clean out anyway, so a fresh start can only be good.

Fingers crossed!

[Tweek]

Ok, I think I've found the problem. I timed two installations of the same thing, one to the F drive (my FSX drive) and one to the C drive. The installation to the F drive took 1 min 30 secs+ (I didn't bother to time any further), and the installation to drive C took 14 secs. I think a new hard drive is in order!

It would certainly explain why only FSX is running poorly, and installation times related to FSX are slow.

[Lionheart]

I think it may also have something to do with "who" is at the PC.


Hey CBris,

You're probably right. I build all my PSD graphics stacks at 2048 pixels square, and who knows how many layers are in each stack, all hovering in Gmax, (when I do have Gmax running). Just PS can really run up the bill in memory.

I was watching the system resources run while having FSX run, to see if I could spot what was killing my frames, (bad roque program or something), and found that FSX was running way over 1,000,000 Million (million) megs... I have caught Gmax doing this a couple of times also. But FSX? Goodness.. And that was with normal scenery. And FS9 should be no where near that, but its close. Close enough to be crashing to desktop.

arrghhh..... We do pay for this hobby...



By the way, that plane of yours is really looking sharp! Amazing textures and mapping.

:ernae:


Bill

[CBris]

Thanks Bill. Also 2048's

I have been practising.

[Lionheart]

Well, I found out what was going on with both sims. (FS2004 was crashing after about 10 to 20 min's of flying, no matter what or where).

With FSX, even though I had so many adjustments and fine tunes and tweaks done to my FSX Config file, I decided to rename it and let FSX remake one. That did really good and brought me back up to 20 FPS from 4-9 FPS. Its not the best to look at, but its running smoothly once again, which for me is very important.

Then, I went in to find out why FS9 was crashing. I decided to view it through Resource Manager, using the new vista (cough cough) Resource Monitor screen, and believe it or not, I found the wildest thing going on. Every full second, 1,000 Kb or 1 Meg would be added to the memory being used by FS9 when it was running. (I had the Bucker Bu-131 sitting on the tarmac, small airport, engine off). That darn thing went from perhaps 200,000 megs to 1.6 million megs in just a few min's. No wonder it was crashing.

So.......... I went into Addon Scenery and looked around. I found that my new German scenery package had stacked from being reloaded. (The cars that come with the scenery were not showing up textured in it, so I had reloaded, redownloaded, reloaded again and again, and somehow, it was reloaded in the Addon Scenery area many times, (five). I turned off all the German scenery (unchecked them) and the memory issue came to a stop and hovered at one level.

So now, I have FSX runnning smoothly and FS9 isnt crashing. :d

So much for conspiracy theories. :kilroy:

(Gmax is still crashing though.. arrghh).


Bill