FSX - SP1 released and intial reports are good.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Hi Guys,

MicroSoft have released the Service Pack for FSX today. Initial reports from members of many of the community forums seem to be good and there is a vast improvement in FPS on all types of CPU's.

Download it from here:

FSX - SP1

You will have to click through the site trying to ask you to join FSinsider

Good luck, I will try it later when I get home and let you know what I think.

[EHM-1358 Tim]

Does this update support dual core?

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Yes, Dual Core & Quad Core support is included as well as the standard performance upgrades that will improve performance on all PC's regardless of how many cores they have!

[EHM-1703 Philip]

OH AND WHAT A DREAM IT IS!!!!!

I have FSX locked at 25FPS with all sliders set to high with the exception of Autogen Scenery which I have at normal! It is a completely different beast now. I must admit, seeing both bars on MY CPU monitor in the red makes me feel ecstatic!!!! this is the first real workout my CPU has had! Now all I need is some decent video drivers for my 8800GTX and I will be turning that Autogen setting up!

I hope that those of you who were so disappointed with FSX get the chance to look again and see what a different kettle of fish we have now, of course, single core  CPU's will still struggle with all sliders maxed but it really isn't necessary.

[EHM-2101 Tarik]

3ghz intel pentium 4 CPU
1024Mt RAM
nVidia 6600 GT
Vista Ultimate


So should I try FSX with this update with that computer ^?

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Tarik,

To me that set up sounds good enough for FSX, you will probably have to turn the autogen and water effects down though. If you want to test it, I think you can still download a demo from fsinsider.com but i think you will also have to download and install the SP1 patch, I'm not sure.

[EHM-2101 Tarik]

Philip,

I have bought FSX already and also flied with my friend's computer. I'll install it now to my computer, download SP1 and tell then how does it work.

[EHM-0588 Paul]

Has been a while since I did some flying but with my new computer and sp1 I gave FSX a new try.
With setting set to high I now have a stable framerate and realy love the view I now have with those 3d cockpits looking at the traffic on the highways.

I now have a 8800GTX with dual core 2,66GHz processor running on Vista Home Premium.

(btw I was cursing at Vista because it gave me lots of problems closing system programs and blue screens but it turned out to be a bad memory bank and now everyting runs smooth :> )

[EHM-2029 Sotiris]

Originally posted by EHM-0588 Paul

I now have a 8800GTX with dual core 2,66GHz processor running on Vista Home Premium.
 

Hi Paul,

what kind of frame reates do you get with this set-up? It is more-or-less what I'm planning to buy.

Also, for any computer gurus out there; does using a quad-core processor help or is it solely the job of the video card to provide the goods?

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Well after tweaking my system a little (overclocking the CPU mainly) I now get 25fps locked at all but the busiest of areas. (Lowest is about 16fps with a lot of traffic)

I am running:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (overclocked to 3.11ghz both cores running at about 45degC)
BFG Nvidia 680i SLI Motherboard
BFG Nvidia 8800GTX with 768mb Ram
2gb Corsair XMS2 6400 Cas4 RAM
2 x Samsung Spinpoint 250gb HDD in RAID 0 config.

Since SP1 FSX is now dual and quad core compatible but I rarely max both cores out so I don't know whether the raw CPU power of a quad core would improve performance. MS have said that FSX will utilize quad cores if they are there so there must be some performance benefit  but I really think that the GFX card is now the bottleneck as the Nvidia Vista drivers are still pretty flakey. (I also hear that the new ATI 2900 series cards are no better) From what I have heard the E6600 CPU will clock up almost as well as the E6700 so I suggest save some money and go for that if you are going dual core!

[EHM-2029 Sotiris]

Cheers mate!

I know it's off topic (a bit) but for the savings of the quad-core I could go for a dual Nvidia and a physics processor. Dell keeps banging on about the benefits of a physics processor but we're not killing monsters in some doom-like cave so I'm not sure if and how much benefit that would bring.
The dual nvidia though is a definite goer.

Thanks for all the help

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Sotiris,

Neither PhysX, SLI or Crossfire are supported by FSX so you will only see a little bang for your buck! I am not saying there wont be a performance upgrade but you should really research which will benefit you the most before you spend your money!

Cheers,

[EHM-0588 Paul]

I have my framerate locked at 20 fps now and I haven't seen it drop ever below 19.9

I might even be able to run higher framerates but I don't realy see the point in that. With 20 fps I was very able to finaly do the red bull trial.

O.K. it took me 7 minutes to finisch but that was my first run on that