SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

[Sandpiper-N121PP]

NOTE!!! Do not attempt to do the following if you are unsure about how to do it!!! Please consult with a computer tech if you need assistance if you want to make any changes to your system that you are unsure about or questions you may have! It may not be the solution for you... but for me... it was the WORLD of a difference!!!

Just a little note about something that my friend Exxman told me and the men at the shop also told me about games on a computer.

I was playing like everybody here, MSFS 2004 and getting pretty good frame rates but could not set everything up on high in the settings panel. If I did I found that I got really jer frame rates and poor video performance. So I upgraded my CPU and Motherboard but was still not seeing what I expected to get. I went from a AMD XP 2100+ to an AMD 3000+ 64 *beep*... keeping my 256 meg AGP video card and 1 gig of memory. It did make a difference... but then I made another change and WHOA!!! What a difference. I... like most had my Windows XP on the C drive and my games there too. Here is the scoop... the page file was stopping the hard drive in order to do what it had to do thus creating stuttering my games and poor frame rates. This is something I totally forgot about in all of my years of working on computers. I recently purchased another hard drive ( Seagate 200 GB ( 8 Meg of Cache ) ) to put in my system. It helped out the performance but then again... I was only using the one drive for everything. Then I decided to put the old hard drive in ( Seagate 40 Gig ) as my master and the Seagate 200 GB as my secondary. I installed XP on the C drive... and then put all of my games on the D drive. Turned off the Paging file for the D drive that my games went to and left it only on the C drive. I then reinstalled MSFS 2004 and didn't even set the settings in the panel... but instead just took off from the default airport. Everything looked totally different. EVERYTHING!!! My frame rates went up by about 10 to 15... and it looked GREAT! I went to the settings panel... and instead of being in the default as I was used to... 800 x 600 16 bit and everything at medium to low... I was now in 1024 x 768 32 bit and all of my settings were on the highest they could be. My frame rates as well had jumped too as I stated. I checked out my other games I play ( Halo, Far Cry, Thief and others ) and they too were now going better and setting themselves up at higher settings as default.

So in conclusion... yes MSFS 2004 is a CPU dependant game and the better one you have the better it will help run it. More memory and a better graphics card really make a difference too. I had upgraded them all but really saw the difference when I put it on a separate drive away from the master drive. This like I said may not work for all... but it worked for me. If you do not know what you are doing to your computer then please take it to a tech to assist you if you plan on making any changes.

Below are two screen shots taken at the same place under the two different settings allowed by MSFS 2004 after I made the changes... see the difference!

Screen shot A was in 800 X 600 and at the default settings MSFS 2004 set me up with after installing it to my C drive with a XP and the Page file on it.

Screen Shot B was in 1024 X 768 and at the default settings MSFS 2004 set me up with after installing it to a second drive with no page file.

There was no change to any hardware during this test... simply moved the software off of the drive with the page file and this is the difference it made for me!

[Nexiss]

Hi thanks for this great info it could be the answer I'm looking for. one question though how do I switch of the page file on the second drive thats all I need to do every thing else is in place.

Thanks again

[Rana.V2]

Hi Sandpiper,

I would add to like something more:

a) Windows itself should be in the fastest drive.

b) Paging file should also be in a fast drive, but preferably not on the same drive as windows. If you do put it on a seperate drive, do remember to set the paging file before anything else, so you get a block of unfragmented swap file. Some defragment software allows you to defrag swap - if possible, put it near the very begining of the drive (so the head has to travel less)

c) don't have FS and Swap on the same drive.

d) Windows and FS can be on the same physical drive without any problem, provided they are in two different partition.


Nexiss,
right-click my computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual memory -> Change

[EricEsasco]

I had been wondering why my system seemed to be doing better than others at comparable speeds.CPU,ram and video card. You answered that for me. I have a modest system by todays new standards; Athlon 2500+, 512 mb ram and nVidea 5200 fx vid card. All settings at max except for the screen resolutoin, 800x600x32, and with heavy traffic in the area and clouds at realistic and heavy detail I see about 20 fps. The resolutoin makes no difference to quality but slows down the fps. If you have a high quality monitor I have found that to be the case. The difference is that I have been running two hard drives with multiple partitions (via partition magic). I started doing that so that I could have multiple operating systems on one machine. With windows XP I found the older OS's were no longer needed as it has a feature that allows backwards compatability.

Segregating the OS from your programs in seperate partitions or even a seperate drive keeps windows from fragmenting everthing as it tends to do. I highly recommend Partition Magic version 8 for this. I have been using P M since version 4 and it is one of my most valued programs now. It has never cost me any data and saved me more than once from reformatting.