Laggy Flight Simulator X - General

I'm a bit stumped here. I am an avid Flight Sim X player, and a pilot. When looking at various youtube videos, I see a lot better graphics than what I have, even though mine are maxed out 100%. Here are the specs of my gaming PC: AMD 4000+ 3GB DDR2 RAM Asus M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition Evga 8600GT [B]Games I play (mainly)[/B] Steam games MS Flight Simulator X CoD 4 Wolfenstein (The new one that just came out) Various other shooters... The only one that struggles to run is Flight Simulator X. Given my specs, what should I improve (cheaply) to allow FSX to play smoothly? I mean I think it's a CPU problem. That being said, how about this for a CPU? [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103210[/url]

How many planes do you have downloaded?

[QUOTE=The golden;17787163]It runs like molasses even with the default amount of planes.[/QUOTE] Yeah it does, I only have a couple on top of the default ones with the Acceleration expansion.

don't know if you do, but Flight Sim X can bring a Quad-Xeon board setup to it's knees

That game eats up your PC like a motherfucker, even now, 2(or is it 3)years after it's released.

I just don't know what I need to get this to run right, I'm looking on YouTube and I see people with lower specs than me running it perfectly... Rain reflecting off the runway, the wings flex, etc... Mine is alright, but doesn't have any of the eye-candy effects... Everything is 100% maxed out.

My machine runs it at 20 FPS if i get lucky. 5200+ 2.7Ghz 3 GB RAM 9600 GT M2N-E SLI

[QUOTE=The golden;17800776]As far as my knowledge goes, you can't. It's either shelf it, or play it at bare minimum settings, which it then just preforms like Flight Sim 2004.[/QUOTE] So how do the people on YouTube get it to look amazing? I can find a video if you'd like, to show what I mean...

Turn off or set very low all traffic settings.

to run it halfway ok, you need 6 quad core CPU's, 128GB of ram, and 25 ATi 5870's

So what are settings that maybe I am missing or something? I see like "Target Framerate" is set at 20, that's default... Should that change?

[QUOTE=The golden;17787163]It runs like molasses even with the default amount of planes.[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN1XBbC83_k[/media] Related, yet unrelated video, also including "Dr. House" near the end.

It's not laggy, you idiot, it's framedrop.

Play with the settings a bit. As for people saying that FSX is a resource hog, it really isn't. Sure, it get's quite steamy in places but it runs perfect on all high on my E6850 and dual 9600GTs.

[QUOTE=-Xemit-;17844700]Yes, it limits the FPS to 20.[/QUOTE] So bump it up to maybe... 40?

turn down the graphics makes the game less fun but worked for me

[QUOTE=faze;17784741]I'm a bit stumped here. I am an avid Flight Sim X player, and a pilot. When looking at various youtube videos, I see a lot better graphics than what I have, even though mine are maxed out 100%. Here are the specs of my gaming PC: AMD 4000+ 3GB DDR2 RAM Asus M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition Evga 8600GT [B]Games I play (mainly)[/B] Steam games MS Flight Simulator X CoD 4 Wolfenstein (The new one that just came out) Various other shooters... The only one that struggles to run is Flight Simulator X. Given my specs, what should I improve (cheaply) to allow FSX to play smoothly? I mean I think it's a CPU problem. That being said, how about this for a CPU? [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103210[/url][/QUOTE] Core i7 makes everything visibly smoother. FSX is very much a CPU bound game.

[QUOTE=Hunt3r.j2;17873554]Core i7 makes everything visibly smoother. FSX is very much a CPU bound game.[/QUOTE] Really? How so? Seemed pretty graphics intense to me...

because it's doing a lot of physics calculations.

[QUOTE=mike;17876887]because it's doing a lot of physics calculations.[/QUOTE] Ah, hence that whole "simulator" thing. Durr.

i mean, you're entirely right, it is a graphic intensive game too. but there's a decent amount of physics. and other planes. and so on.

So, the majority is CPU based? Alright... Well if I need a new CPU, how about this? [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103210[/url] I want to stick to AM2 since my $350 dollar mobo is AM2, and I like this motherboard... And I don't want to rebuild the PC...