I have a system with a Q6600 quad core processor. I downloaded SP1 , but is there a program or somewhere in fsx to actually see if it is utilizing all 4 cores.
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I have a system with a Q6600 quad core processor. I downloaded SP1 , but is there a program or somewhere in fsx to actually see if it is utilizing all 4 cores.
Open Task ManagerQuote:
Originally Posted by Fairford
View -> CPU History -> One Graph per CPU
Launch the app you want to watch and check your graphs.
:D
FSX will initially use all 4 cores as it loads, but since it was not written for multi-core, it will not fully use them. At the time FSX was having its base structure laid, multi-core usage was not very mainstream.
This has been addressed in the next version of MSFS.
I cannot understand why we are having such power pcs, as FS never take advantage of them:sad:Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyT
I had a P4 Hyper Thread with 2GB ram, but also Fs9 did not support HT technology.
Now the same with FsX.
So, we are just following the technology, without the profit we could have from our systems.
Lets wait for the Fs11 to see......:?: if there is a change for better
Hi Brad.Quote:
Originally Posted by BHawthorne
You have been very helpful to me regarding my new pc build, and I expect to be using the Q6600 processor with hi spec m board. One of the main reasons for the build is so that I can use pcie graphics ports for extra views which I can't do at the moment with basic pci port and single core. Do you think this will work? For the pcie cards, I was thinking of geforce 8500 gt 512mb - or do you think that this is unnecessarily heavy for the job?
Always grateful for your comments. Hope you don't mind me breaking into this thread.
TONY
The better the card the longer it will last before you have to buy an upgrade. The 8500 is better than the 6200 and when they make the 12000 then it will be better than the 8500. Get the mostest card you can get for the money you can spend. You will never buy a card that is too heavy for fltsim stuff.
Regards,.
Brian:p
Hi Tony,
I have just built a new PC based on the Q6600 so maybe I can be of assistance. Here's my build.
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P M/Board
Q6600 CPU Moderately overclocked to 3.0Ghz
Asus Arctic Square Heatsink/Fan (a must if you overclock)
4gb Corsair RAM DDR2-800
620W Corsair PSU (don't skimp on this)
Asus GT8800 512 Video overclocked (Main)
Gigabyte GT8500 512 Video (Second)
500Mb Seagate Barracuda HD
Vista64/MSFX/Ultimate Defrag
If you can buy an 8800GT video card. It uses the faster G92 processor and rivals the previous 8800GTX. The 8500 is quite low end for what you want. Having said that, FS requires CPU power more than video. Priority would be CPU, RAM, then Video, but as we all know, there are many, many other factors that end up playing a part. On my system, I have frame rates locked at 25FPS and it doesn't shift in most areas I fly. At Sydney (a known high scenery area) I get around the mid teens in the Flight1 PC12X, but that's with 6 screens hanging off the PC and sliders at about 75%.
Something similar to the system above will give you a great start and fairly future proof as the motherboard will take the new 45nm chips just being released. It's only DDR2 but serious testers on the AVSIM forums indicate the difference isn't a lot between DDR2 & DDR3, certainly not worth the high extra cost at the moment. Give it 12 months though!
Ken.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDT 200
Thanks Brian.
Do you think I will get smooth left and right views from PCIe graphics port using the dual head 8500 - without effecting the 3togo front view? I am wondering if frame rates could be a concern? I will be using a high spec board and processor.
Rgds
TONY
Hi Ken.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kennair
Your PC looks awesome!! I have a pretty good understanding, but have not built a computer yet. There is a company here (UK) called Novatech that offers what they call a "barebones" deal which involves them fitting a motherboard, processor heatsink and fan, ram and psu into a suitable case leaving the customer to finish the installation. The hard bits are done by the company, and the price is VERY reasonable.
There's a couple of deals that appeal to me, and I hope you don't mind me mentioning them here for your comments?
Deal 1 - AMD X2 AM2 6000 Dual Core 2gb
667mhz Dual Channel Hiper 420w PSU MSI nForce 570
SLi Motherboard
Installed memory 2X1024mb 667mhz PC5400 240 pin DDR2
Graphics 2 PCI Express x16 slots
Expansion 1 PCIX1.
3 PCI - £285 assembled in a case.
Deal 2. - Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2048mb
800mhz DDR2 Heatsink & Fan nVidia 6801 SLI Mothrboard.
Installed memory2x 1024mb DDR2 800mhz PC6400 240 pin
Graphics 2XPCI Express X16 Sli
Expansion 2X PCI Express X16
1X PCI Express X1
2X PCI - £434 assembled in a case
Of course, there is more tec spec, but I thought you might have an opinion on the basics. If I can use this company, it would be a lot easier for me as a novice!
Thanks for your time.
Regards,
TONY
Computer company's site http://www.novatech.co.uk
Tony,
This is a subject that you will find a thousand different opinions on, so this is just mine, which is gathered from others who I believe to have experience in the field far greater than me. Basically you get what you pay for. If the deal seems too good to be true it probably is, however it isn't so much the case for PC hardware. If you are willing to do some investigating (and if you're into simming then you are use to this!) you can get yourself a system that will satisfy for the next 5 years or so. A very good piece of advice I read from an experienced hardware simmer on Avsim stated "if you can't get a 10 fold increase in performance from an upgrade it's not worth the extra expense". Many enthusiasts talk about a CPU upgrade that will cost them an extra $500 but give an extra 5 FPS increase. Up to the individual whether that's worth the cost (I'd say not).
Now, with the cost of hardware today being so competitive and sometimes reasonably priced, upgraders are in an ideal position. BUT, you have to know what you're looking for! For example, the system I spec'd, was built for $1600 AUD. Not a bank-breaking amount by anyones language, and it has the capacity to upgrade in the next 12 months to the newest processors (at a more reasonable cost).
To get to your Bare-bones system specs, definitely go for the second deal utilizing the Intel Q6600 and the 800Mhz RAM. I use to be an AMD fan but these days Intel has it over AMD when it comes to processors (that of course may change in future and ultimately is only my, and the general, opinion). Go for the motherboard that will accommodate the fastest processor, plus the ability to have extra PCIE cards. You need to map out exactly what your sim will require such as the number of monitors which will determine the number of video outlet etc.
So in a nutshell: Get a good quality motherboard such as Gigabyte, Asus, MSI etc. preferably of the P35 variety (best value currently), with 2 x PCIe slots (doesn't matter whether both slots run at 16x as the second video simply hangs off the first and SLI doesn't offer a lot with FS. The faster RAM the better, so get the 800Mhz. 2Gb RAM should be a minimum for simming and will assist FS greatly. Get an aftermarket CPU heatsink and fan if you intend to overclock, which is a cinch today. Here's a LINK to overclocking the Q6600 which I used successfully. Get a name brand power supply of at least 600W to accommodate the components and overclocking.
The second deal you mentioned fits into my recommended category so you won't be dissapointed. As for the graphics card, FS is more dependent on CPU than GPU so video memory isn't as important an issue, however if you intend running multiple monitors, memory is an issue, so again it depends on your setup. However, the 8800GT is far and above the better deal these days both price-wise and power-wise, so don't go for the 8500 as your main video card, instead use it as your secondary card. As for hard-drives, many advocate RAID but I have opted for a single fast drive as my system is dedicated to simming and will do no other task. Again it's up to your requirements as to what you decide on.
As for operating system, if I wasn't looking to use 4Gb of RAM I would have stayed with WinXP as it is rock solid and there's no issue with driver/software incompatablites, so for you looking at 2Gb of RAM get WinXP Home or Pro (doesn't really matter sim-wise). Vista offers support for DirectX-10 but you can probably do without that for the moment. Having said that I have had no issue with Vista64 (SP1) and all its upgrades so far, and it runs FSX beautifully.
The computer store I deal with will build my personal system for $100AUD if I wanted (which I didn't cause it's fun!!) so getting the pro's to build it for you isn't a huge expense. I would get the second system pre-built and configured ready to load all your favourite FS system and addons and watch it fly when you load it up!!! You won't be dissapointed.
Regards,
Ken.
Hi Ken.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kennair
Thanks very much for the extensive reply. Your time is really appreciated by me, and no doubt others wishing to run from one PC. I will be getting the 2nd deal pre-built, and feeding view monitors from the PCIe cards, and instruments from a PCI slot.
Thanks again.
TONY.
Tony, just a word of caution. I tried to run my system initially with the 8800GT plus a 6200 PCI card that I had in my old system however FSX refused to run with this card installed. It said that it didn't support "Shader" technology and then closed. I went out and bought the cheaper 8500GT card which does have shader support and it worked fine. I don't know why this error came up as it didn't on my old system running an AGP card along with the PCI card but it might be worth keeping in mind.
I now have my TH2GO running off one port of the 8800GT and my main instrument panel off the other. The centre avionics display runs off one port of the 8500. The co-pilots panel is simply a VGA split of the pilots screen so no need to tie up a video outlet for that.
Ken.
KenQuote:
Originally Posted by Kennair
I'm still on 2004 - hope this doesn't spoil my plans! As a matter of interest, I have a Matrox G450 4 head PCI card that I am hoping to use on one of the PCI slots for instruments - but I will have a few PCIe slots to use another card in if it doesn't work. Here's hoping though I need to watch the cash, or have divorce papers served on me!
TONY
When I bought my system in November, I had FS9 in mind.
What would be considered a mediocre system at best by todays FSX standards, it's a smoking system for FS9, and would have been considered a top of the line system back when FS9 was released.
It's still a dual core processor that has no use for FS9, but it's getting harder to find pre-builds that don't include a dual-core but still have enough ram and HD space.
I have no idea which of my programs are taking advantage of the dual-core processors, but it really doesn't interest me in the least.
All I wanted was a fantastic system that would run FS9 at near max settings and all of the add-ons without an 8fps rate, and now I have that.
I've never seen any FS program run before buying this computer that didn't stutter and stammer on an approach to a major metro area, or else flying with virtually no scenery at all.
Hello again!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kennair
Just saw your website - terrific! I notice that you say that it's possible to run TWO 3 to go units from one dual head card giving 6 views! This would solve the outside view requirment no problem! It would be possible to use a 3 to go for front views, and a 2 to go for left and right views?
Do you think the 8800GT would be required, or would the 8500 cope. I understand that the Matrox units are not too demanding?
Just had to come back to you on this - hope you don't mind.
TONY.
BSW,
You can assign FS to one of the CPU's and your add-ons to the other one. This will speed it up even more.
Tony,
As BSW said in this thread, a basic system today will get you a smokin system for FS9 so I would try the 8500 particularly if money is an issue (when isn't it?). The only problem running two TH2GO's is that you are trying to get your system to drive screen resolutions that are up to 3840 x 1024 each. That represents a lot of video muscle, and although the TH2GO seems to be less resource hungry than simply have 3 video outlets on one card, it still puts a drain on your system. Exactly which part plays the most part I'm not quite sure, but I suspect it will the the CPU (again).
If all you are doing is running FS9 and not looking to go to FSX anytime soon, then a basic system will suffice and save you money. Running two TH2GO's is another matter and one that I haven't fully tested as yet. If FS9 is your only sim then you don't really need an 8000 series card at all. You could get a 7900 card (if they are still available) otherwise go with the 8500 (or perhaps an 8600 if you can stretch it) and see how you go.
Ken.
Hi Ken, I have had exactly the same experience as above and am about to buy the cheaper 8500GT as a solution possibility today!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kennair
What sort of frame rate impact (if any) are you getting on the TH2GO with this configuration?
I am not very concerned about using the second output of the 8800GT.
I have built a Garmin 1000 PFD and MFD that I want to drive individually off both ports of the 8500GT. The rest of the instruments are SIMKITS.
I would indeed welcome your experienced comments in this matter!
Bill.
Hey Bill,
Can I see that G1000 you built? I want to build one but I'm having some issues with it. I'd love to see yours. Front and back please. Build pix if you have them.
Thanks!
Hi Andy,Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyT
I hope you can make some sense of this lot!!
I have lots of other photographs.
I am in the middle of documenting the G1000 but have been temporarly overtaken by some other events but will complete it soon.
Incidently Bill Stack has written an excellent manual on the operation of the FSX G1000 that is well worth purchasing!
Dave Cunliff in Texas and Leo Bodnar in the UK are the two people who really made all this possible with their technical expertise, exrtraordinary help and collaboration.
Many thanks to them both!
I have now a completed PFD and MFD that are both driven by the FSX G1000 assignments support software and they really work well.
Bill.
Attachment 568
Attachment 570
Attachment 571
Attachment 572
Very nice Bill.
Keep up the good work!
Bill, (I think this thread has been hijacked somewhat :))
That panel is outstanding. I am constantly amazed and inspired by the ingenuity of builders in this forum. How did you make that bezel with switches? I take it you are using a stripped 19" Widescreen LCD? I would really like to do similar for my Next Gen PC12 to simulate the Honeywell Primus displays.
As for the 8500 video card, if you have a similar system to mine you shouldn't see a great effect on frame rate if you are using the TH2GO off one port of your main card. Having said that the G1000 optioned aircraft are very resource hungry and you wil notice a drop. I found running the 3 screens off the TH2GO was far less of a drain than running 3 separate video card outputs. As far as running a second card is concerned, in non-SLI mode the second card simply acts as extra video ports and doesn't necessarily play a role in video performance, so theoretically you could run any old card that suits. I found the "shader" issue which precluded me from running the old PCI card (as you did also) but a quick $90 fixed that. As for frame rates, as I mentioned earlier, I have mine locked at 25 and with the TH2GO plus two other screens I get consistent 25's everywhere except high impact scenery around major airports where initial testing revealed mid-teens with some ever-so-small stutters. Certainly very flyable and most scenery sliders at High and Very High in FSX. My next project is to load up FS9 and watch it burn!!
As I am to understand (and I am no IT guru, just researched lots) additional video cards simply act as extra video outputs and it is your main card that does all the pixel crunching, so the extra monitor, and therefore FS windows, you have running will impact on the main card and your CPU. Conclusion: Get a fast CPU/Motherboard and the best GPU you can afford. As I have said earlier, todays cheaper 8800GT rival the more expensive 8800GTX as they use the newer G92 processor used in the 9000 series cards being released, so money can be saved and performance maintained. Gad, what a world we live in!
I hope that helps and keep up the inspiring work,
Ken.
Hi Ken,
Many thanks for your "technically rich" reply that is indeed most useful!
Apologies if this thread is hijacked and would be most happy to move wherever you consider best as this sort of topic confusion makes searches difficult for others if not for ourselves from time to time - point well made!
Something that is bothering me and I wondered if you have experienced it is does the PCI graphics cardcard that you are using utilise some of the system RAM? I found that mine were and am now doing a search for some cards that do not.
I have been looking at a cheap PCIE x16 option from NOVATECH that might do the trick!!
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?NOV-85GT1
Bill.
Bill,
The short answer is I really don't know. I'm sure all hardware on the motherboard utilize some system memory but whether this has an impact or not, I couldn't say. Given today's motherboard bus speeds and RAM size I wouldn't think it would have a huge impact. I've not heard of particular video cards that don't use system RAM against others that do, but as I said, I'm no expert.
I think you stand the best chance of minimising impact by using a video card that is PCIEx16 and ensuring the motherboard slot also runs at x16 (and is configured to do so in the BIOS). Most motherboards that have two PCIE slots will only have one run at full x16 speed, with the other running at x4 or x8 (one exception being the ASUS P32N). Having said that I beleive this only plays an important part if running SLI or Crossfire (neither of which are utilized by FS). Again, fast CPU's and tons of RAM will cure most ills. Windows in particularly benefits as it is so full of holes it needs speed to skim over them :)
Unless you're able to get hold of a whole swathe of cards and test them side by side, you really are stabbing in the dark. One very useful resource is Toms Hardware's VGA Benchmark tests as they do just that. FS is tested as well using a host of current and past cards so you can see exactly how they compare. Some very interesting results indeed, but they only test under certain conditions, none of which might reflect your system setup, but at least there is something to gauge by. In the end you've just go to take the plunge and fly! (reminds me of my first solo).
Ken.
PS. You've avoided my question though; how did you make those G1000 bezels?
Ken, Apologies for not addressing your question regarding the surround /bezel.
I have used 10.2" touch screens and discarded the touch electronics/interface. I chose these particular touch screens (approx £100UK each) as the touch panel provides an excellent barrier to finger damage on the screen and these types of screen also give a very good viewing angle.
The original bezel suited the button layout that controlled the original touch screen setup configuration on the righthand side so I removed the switch pcb and relocated it internally on the lefthand side internally no longer making these buttons externally available. This pcb has an infrared interface so I made that available through a little hole in the front lefthand side which allows me to setup both screens using a single infrared controller.
I used plastic padding to fill up the holes I no longer needed and drilled some more hole to anchor the pcb via the front with countersunk 3mm screws that
engaged with the spacers on the button pcb. These were also filled and smoothed. Sprayed the bezel matt black and I used LETRASET to inscribe the panel. This was then sprayed with a clear laquer.
I made a pcb from stripboard with buttons and substituted it to control the
G1000 functions. Also added to this board were the single "range" rotary encoder and the "page, group and cursor" pushbutton rotary encoder.
These had their own little special stripboard pcbs.
The twelve "softbuttons" on the bottom were mounted on a stripboard that was specifically sized to fit between the bottom of the bezel and the screen.
This required some non trivial milling of the original bezel to get this button assembly to be positioned at the right height behind and relative to the front of the bezel to achieve the correct button potrusion.
This became a simple task for subsequent bezels. I have built four.
If I had chosen a 15" monitor it would have been much simpler and easier as I would have just added 1" to the right had side, done some plastic padding and that would have been that!
I will dig out some pictures to clarify this monologue and send them to you!
Bill.
Bill,
I am also working on a G1000, the hardware part is as good as finished. Only thing left to do now is the software interface part.
Wat is the software that you are using for the G1000 and can it be interfaced with keyboardencoders like Hagstrom ?
Thanks
Hi Marnix,
The Hagstrom rotary encoder board and the their keyboard emulation board is one solution! I also have built a G1000 with that cofiguration.
My preference is the Leo Bodnar board with rotary encoder support as and when Leo makes it available. Leo's solution is one of the best I have encountered and I have a very high regard for his technical skills and products. You will need to contact Leo personally.
You will need to build your own diode matrix board (which is easy enough) and can be seen in some of the pictures.
Dave Cunliff in Texas did the editing of the G1000 screen and he is a member of mycockpits.com.
Dave is also most knowledgeable and helpful in sorting out this type of coding and has done a splendid screen version of the GPS500 in FS9 also.
The software to drive the minimalistic G1000 is availabe in FSX and also the assignments.
I would advise this configuration of the G1000 as it is much more easier to familiarise oneself with and allow you to really explore the benefits of the instumentation.
Bill.
I once had GTX 8800 SLI which wasn't working out so well with FSX . I sold one of the cards and then moved to a Intel Quad core, and I must say I had alot more performance with the Quad than I had with my "two core duo" and minus one card.
Now, I have learned my lesson and I know now for a fact, that processor speed is the key and a good graphics card is the way to get more FPS and good render in this simulator environment with every thing at realistic levels in FSX as in traffic and also other enhancements, at the moment I'm able to spike up the levels of (Sat) terrain etc up to the max while leaving the traffic up at high withour the exception of boats etc.
So all in all, if our looking for good performance, get a serious CPU and serious standalone graphics card and some good memory and you`ll do fine. Don't fall into the trap I did as into thinking SLi/ Crossfire will boost up your FPS with FSX
The other members here know what they are talking about and I can tell you for my own experience that they speak the truth, so don't waste you money on these SLI / Crossfire stuff. Get your self a serious CPU and a decent card.
My two cents on the matter.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by oal331
See this for how FSX utilizes multi-cores:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archiv...tel-quote.aspx
Regards,
Henry
I upgraded the MAXIMUS Extreme system with SP1 yesterday and am really impressed by its content and performance.
I have however noticed that my user-specific data used by Windows SuperFetch just vanished causing a small but measureable performance penalty.
Today this has begun to reverse itself and as I use the system SuperFetch is refilling it's cache.
I have now downloaded and installed the newly available NVIDIA 174.74 BETA Driver on an 8800GTx and there is indeed a welcome observable frame rate improvement.
I will start benchmarking shortly!
I have had some crashes on other cards on other systems so the stability of this release has yet to be determined. I guess this would indicate some caution if it is being considered.
Bill.
Hi Henry,Quote:
Originally Posted by andarlite
the link does not work for me, can you copy/paste the article?
Thanks
Eddie
Quote:
Originally Posted by oal331
Here's his homepage:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/default.aspx
Highly recommended blog as Phil Taylor is a PM for FSX development.
Here's the article:
Today Intel announced their new 2.93G QX6800 Quad Core processor here.
As part of this press release, Aces Studio participated with a quote about our improved multi-core support in SP1. The quote stated
“The latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator* X, Service Pack One (SP1), due out later this month, is a great match for the extreme multi-core processing delivered by the new Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor”
and
“Flight Sim X SP1 greatly increases multicore utilization and will scale as more threads are available leading to reduced load times as well as frame rate improvements and greater visual complexity during flight. The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft is pleased to work with Intel to provide our end users with a great gaming experience."
And I wanted to take some time and explain what this means for FSX and FSX flyers.
Our multi-core support will take advantage of both 2 and 4 cores today, and more cores in the future when they become available via a config setting. This is for both Intel and AMD processors.
At load time, we run the terrain loading on threads across the cores. This can result in reduced load times, the actual percent reduction can vary but it could be reduced by as much as 1/3.
At render time, we run the terrain texture synthesis on threads across the cores. During flight on multi-core machines, as terrain and terrain textures are loaded you will notice significant multi-core usage. As all tiles are loaded, the multi-core usage will fall off, this is expected. As the terrain is re-lit, approximately every minute, you will see multi-core usage increase. As you bank and load terrain tiles, or as you fly forward and force a load of more terrain tiles, you will see the multi-core usage increase.
At render time, we now perform more extensive batching of objects to reduce our API Draw calls. The batch rebuilds are also performed on a thread and scheduled on cores.
For those of you on single core machines, we did do some performance work to benefit you as well. The batching work will help even on a single core. Plus we made some changes to animations to make them perform better and we modified how we draw trees to reduce API SetTexture calls.
So we really tried to hit all the wickets with our performance work. I still don’t want to make any final FPS gain claims, and will stick with my conservative 20%. We expect it to be more, but we need to get Beta2 out and see where we are.
As far as the release date for SP1, we need to get Beta2 out and see what remains. The last day of April is still possible, but any significant Beta2 bugs will cause us to fix them and delay – we want SP1 to be right for the community and are not tied to a date.
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.
Posted: Monday, April 09, 2007 3:43 PM by Phil Taylor
Regards,
Henry
Great article, thanks for posting! Totally proves the point about this thread.
Henri,
thank you very much for the copy. That was a very helpful article.
Eddie
Very interesting, thanks for the info. Henry, much appreciated. :)
Excellent link but the story is a little more complicated for the end-user than what Phil Taylor explicitly states.
We all have to ask ourselves if we have a "Hyperthreaded Enabled Processor" and a motherboard with a "HT Technology enabled Chipset" installed to take advantage of the performance improvements and throughput gains that Phil Taylor describes!!
By examining the BIOS this can quickly be determined as Hyperthreading is enabled in the BIOS. If the line does not appear you do have not a Hyperthreaded Processor!
I discovered last year that I had to wait for a suitable cost effective processor to become available.
I would draw your attention to the following link to Intels site that might well be most helpful to those who want to take advantage of all the hyperthreading facilities in SP1.
http://www.intel.com/products/ht/hyp...c_requirements
Hope this helps!
Bill.