Getting rid of stutters!?

[Alexraptor]

Need some help here guys.
I had FSX configured near perfectly with the hardware i have a couple of months ago, then i ended up doing a few system and driver updates, including graphic drivers.
Now i have the problem that i cannot find my way back to those glorious settings.
Before i was able to have everything on ultra high, terrain mesh complexity 100%, terrain mesh detail 10m and texture detail 60cm.

It works fine in some cases but when theres a lot of autogen "combined with clouds" it gets choppy like crazy. I know i had it working before i just cant remember how.

So any tweaks in this particular area to either the fsx.cfg or settings for the Nvidia control panel would be very helpful(though the nvidia settings seems to be the ones i cant remember and possibly the primary cause for the stutters).

[NCGent]

Do you have nhancer? That helped me a lot in getting my settings right, along with nvidia control panel.

[Alexraptor]

nop no nhancer, didnt need it before either.

[stansdds]

nHancer seems to work better than nVidia's control panel.

[Alexraptor]

Problem solved... and kind of embaressing... .. i had not defragged the harddrive for quite a while!

And i cleared up the rest of the stutters with forcing vsync and tripple buffering.
But the HDD was the largest culprit.

[Alexraptor]

*sigh* its back again, and i don't have a clue whats wrong.

This is with FSX and Acceleration straight on top of it.
Settings are as follows..
Display: 1600x1200x32, Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, Advanced animations on, Lens flare off, Light Bloom off, global texture resolution Very High, Framerate locked at 30fps.
Aircraft: All settings maxed out
Scenery: Mesh resolution 10m, Texture resolution 60cm, Scenery Complexity very dense, autogen dense, Ground shadows off, rest of the sliders are all the way to the right.
Weather: sliders all the way to the right, rate of weather change is medium.
Traffic: Labels off, Airline density 25%, GA density 40%, Airport vehicle density Minimum, Road vehicles 10%, ships and ferries 10%, Leisure boats 20%.

FSX.cfg tweaks(only included the tweaks):
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=3
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+.0]
MipBias=6


That about gives a complete rundown of my FSX settings...
The stutters happen when i have clouds such as fair weather or building storms or cold fronts. However if i set the water shaders to minimum the problem clears up.
Now i know what you are going to say.... turn the settings down or keep the water shaders down if it works, which is not an option.
These settings were working just fine a couple of days ago and i need some help figuring out what is wrong now.

I have done a complete reinstallation of FSX and the addons, even testing FSX in a vanilla state before adding Real Environment Xtreme and the stutters were still present.
I have defragged with ultimate defrag every step of the way, placing FSX in the "high performance" area on the HDD.
So it seems to at least rule out the harddrive as the culprit this time which fits well in with there being no harddrive activity when the FPS drop and stutters happen.
Another thing is that the stutters and performance drops arent constant, i can look towards one direction and my FPS is nice and stable, i turn the view to the other direction and poof, stutters galore and framerate cut in half, and the scenery i am looking at does not have to be any more complex either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[txnetcop]

*sigh* its back again, and i don't have a clue whats wrong.

This is with FSX and Acceleration straight on top of it.
Settings are as follows..
Display: 1600x1200x32, Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, Advanced animations on, Lens flare off, Light Bloom off, global texture resolution Very High, Framerate locked at 30fps.
Aircraft: All settings maxed out
Scenery: Mesh resolution 10m, Texture resolution 60cm, Scenery Complexity very dense, autogen dense, Ground shadows off, rest of the sliders are all the way to the right.
Weather: sliders all the way to the right, rate of weather change is medium.
Traffic: Labels off, Airline density 25%, GA density 40%, Airport vehicle density Minimum, Road vehicles 10%, ships and ferries 10%, Leisure boats 20%.

FSX.cfg tweaks(only included the tweaks):
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=3
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+.0]
MipBias=6


That about gives a complete rundown of my FSX settings...
The stutters happen when i have clouds such as fair weather or building storms or cold fronts. However if i set the water shaders to minimum the problem clears up.
Now i know what you are going to say.... turn the settings down or keep the water shaders down if it works, which is not an option.
These settings were working just fine a couple of days ago and i need some help figuring out what is wrong now.

I have done a complete reinstallation of FSX and the addons, even testing FSX in a vanilla state before adding Real Environment Xtreme and the stutters were still present.
I have defragged with ultimate defrag every step of the way, placing FSX in the "high performance" area on the HDD.
So it seems to at least rule out the harddrive as the culprit this time which fits well in with there being no harddrive activity when the FPS drop and stutters happen.
Another thing is that the stutters and performance drops arent constant, i can look towards one direction and my FPS is nice and stable, i turn the view to the other direction and poof, stutters galore and framerate cut in half, and the scenery i am looking at does not have to be any more complex either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How many processes do you have working in the background of your OS?

[Alexraptor]

excluding the two browsers i have open at this moment(which i close when i fly) i have 27.
Been disabling as much as i can.

[Alexraptor]

don't mean to be a pest here... but :redf:

[Bjoern]

If you're on Vista, try disabling "Superfetch" and the "Indexing Service". The first is a matter of taste (it does have benefits), but the second is (next to UAC) one of the most unnecessary and resource-eating features Vista has to offer.

You can find more details on those services and how to disable them by consulting the search engine of your choice.

[Alexraptor]

I'm on XP Professional service pack 3.
Actually have disabled Indexing on this system as well and i have been through the entire list of services and disabled as much as possible.

[Bjoern]

Have you defragged your harddrive?

[Alexraptor]

Thats what i said a couple of posts ago. :whistle:

[Bjoern]

Oops!

Tried letting FSX rebuild a fresh fsx.cfg (just save/rename the old one and start up FSX)?

[Alexraptor]

Done that several times, and like i also mentioned, i did a complete clean re-installation, cleaned registry, cleaned shader cache and other settings folders created by FSX.

[Bjoern]

If you can rule out the OS and drivers as well, it would only leave a hardware component as the source of the cause.


P.S: Is your virus scanner turned of while FSX'ing?

[Alexraptor]

Never use virus scanners period.
Allthough i routinely scan with symantec's online virus scan.

[harleyman]

Have you tried lowering your:

Texture _Bandwidth _Multi from 40 to 30?
This is found in your Config under *Display*
This can help with stutters.....


You can also reduce auto-gen as it gives gains there too...

[Alexraptor]

Didn't make any difference.
I wont reduce autogen, like i said, used to be just fine where it is.

If only i could find the faulty element in this equation...

[harleyman]

Hmmm...Give me some time to again research this more for you...We should be able to find the culprit here.....


Can you name your addons? like MegaSceneries....Weather...etc..


Also is your FSX resolution set to your monitors ??

Can you also post your system specs? Vid drivers and the such..Sound?


I see you have REX...What resolution clouds you using too?

[harleyman]

Give this a test too... EDIT...This is for FS9........NOT FSX....sorry...Don't do it...Don't exceed 100 here... My fault.....


[DISPLAY]
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= 40 <--------- start at 30 and move up..But don't excede 100

Lets go the other way and see......This is where mine is set

[Alexraptor]

i already went up to clear up issues with 4096x4096 texture stutters but it didnt resolve the other stutters.

[harleyman]

What do you mean you went up to clear up the high resolution cloud stutters?

So..What other stuttering are you getting?

Try setting your clouds at a much lower resolution for a while too..Just to be sure you are not still having cloud issues...Or have you done that before? Are you using the DXT textures and I assume you have ASX ?

[Alexraptor]

that was the first thing i tried, there is no difference between the high and low res cloud textures.
And no not ASX, Real Environment Xtreme with DXT5 optimization.

[harleyman]

Have you made any Vid card driver changes before this happened?

You say defragging your HDD cleared it up once....Then it came back...

You can go to your HDD manufactures website and DL a tool to run and test your HDD for errors.....You can run DiskCheck too..


What Sound card if any do you use? Have you updated drivers for that too lately.if its creative they have known issues....