Fsx is a game i play a lot, and i have a lot of add ons, and when i go through deep cloud and such, it lags. I left gpuz open, and set it to show the max vram usage i come out of the game and to my surprise, it says the max usage is 450mb?? wat?? So this really is an issue of my gfx just not being good enough, nothing to do with the amount of ram it has. well this has completely changed my opinion on going for a 4gb card.
Different things will stress different parts of the card, so even if the memory amount or bandwidth isn't an issue then maybe there is a bottleneck somewhere else in the pipeline. Newer cards will be more optimised for more modern games. I'm not sure how the clouds are rendered in fsx, but I'm guessing through the use of lots of pixels. For now you could try turning cloud density or some pixel related setting down a notch or 2 and seeing if it runs any better. Most likely you'll only have to turn a single setting down a notch to get smooth framerates throughout.
well, i just tested bf3 and it is using the whole lot it seems to just be an issue in fsx :s lol, bf3 used more ram in 640x360 than fsx did in 2560x1440
it doesn't bother me that it is laggy, I was just needing to know if it was the vram causing it or just the card generally, and now I know it wasn't a vram issue thanks for your advice though
Yep, chances are I will still probably get the 4gb 670 as it will give me confidence knowing it has that there just in case. This was really just a test to see if it was the lack of vram causing low fps in fsx only, not other games, and it wasnt
It could even be a particular driver version that causes issues, Although I read somewhere that Nvidia cards work best with fsx, although 256bit AMD's weren't far behind, not sure which generation they were referring to though. BF3's high memory usage is mainly due to the amount of textures the game keeps in the memory, Multisampling AA will also have a large footprint.
yeah I heard nvidia is better with fsx as well. And yeah i like to max everything. I get dissapointed if i cant max it and often sacrifice fps just so i can haha, except bf3 where i get 9fps, so a new card is called for
FSX is not GPU limited it's CPU limited (at least on my 570). Open task manager and monitor CPU usage and you will see it max all cores in some places - mostly over cities. The graphics engine in FSX is actually pretty basic and can run on a toaster. However if you do not set up your options well you will be severely CPU limited. I would go to a dedicated flight sim forum and look for advice on setting up the options. Certain options if maxed out will kill your fps even though they do not really enhance graphical fidelity. Also if you have a lot of add ons it may be conflicts between them killing your fps and not your rig.
FSX, I believe, the clouds are particle effects, they are in X-Plane and most every flight sim. This can cause real problems when viewed up close on lower end cards(i.e. flying through a cloud in X-Plane on my '04 PowerPC Mac Mini), but a 4870 means that FSX is probably just terribly optimized, what with being Microsoft and all.
Have you got HT enabled? There is supposedly a way to even out core usage in FSX. HT doesnt help with FSX afaik. Been reading up as im in the middle of build a FSX pc.
Yeah, on many older graphics cards, poorly coded particle effects would simply destroy your framerate when extremely close to the viewpoint. I have no idea why, I never managed to find out.
MS Flight Sim, and FSX are very CPU hungry as well as GPU. Also, just because it's not using all the VRAM doesn't mean it's not stressing the GPU. What is the GPU usage during these flights? Not VRAM.. the actual GPU usage?
I totally don't understand your post. FSX will lag either cos of the CPU load or the GPU usage. It won't use very much vram because GPU's didn't have much vram when FSX was created. I have had FSX with high detail scenery become very jerky when flying low over an airport using super textures. It wasn't a lack of vram, it was the CPU that couldn't keep up. GPU usage was not even 50% because FSX doesn't use much of the features of modern GPU's. What you should do is run FSX in a window and monitor CPU usage and also have the FPS displayed in game. You may find the cpu cores are maxed out causing an FPS drop. The last thing u need is 4gb vram for a game that won't use even 1gb because even 1gb GPU's didn't exist when FSX was created. Your sig doesn't show what GPU u have. FSX with addons can easily max out an i7 overclocked past 4ghz. If that happens u will get the lag. Or it can be lack of GPU cores but I doubt that.
FSX is massively CPU and clock speed dependent. It runs best with (in my experience) with hyperthreading disabled and as high a clock speed you can get. After reading your post yesterday I did a quick test and was getting 99% CPU useage accross 4 cores (i7 920 @4.2GHz, HT disabled) and 898Mb VRAM useage on a GTX470 OC to 480 speeds and 99% GPU core useage. The older ATI cards are well known not to perform well in FSX and many users have reported issues with the new 79xx cards also when flying through dense cloud. If your running a vanilla installation of FSX with no payware addons then you should be OK even with a 4870 but if like me you run REX 2.0 and a whole host of payware aftermarket addons you'll definately benefit by getting a better NVIDIA GPU. Depending on budget though, I would recommend a GTX670 but even a GTX560Ti (or 448 Core GTX560Ti) would be a big step up.
