zenTera

Right, that's why I did this testing for you. No sense in buying a dualcore for games only, especially for LockOn. But if you do more than gaming with your rig, then it's a great one.

Thanks, will have a look there.

Lucky guy, how did you get them for free?? Ok, will try that. Hope my BIOS allows it. Luckily I heard of this problem before, so I ordered 2*1 GB sticks.

Hi everybody, yesterday I received my latest (and surely) last upgrade for my machine, the FX-60. Had a 4000+ singlecore before. Just thought to share some little results I benchmarked, for those who plan to upgrade or not. First, my machine specs: -AMD FX-60 (dualcore) at stock rates, no overclocking (yet) -ASUS A8N SLI Premium -XFX GeForce 7800 GTX with 512 MB -2 Gigs OCZ Platinum EL 3200/400 at 2-3-2-5 1T -Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum The rest doesn't matter, except: no RAID for the HDD's The tests were done on a rather clean Windows installation, only games on it and McAfee Firewall, graphics drivers are 81.89 from XFX. I tested 3D Mark 2006, PC Mark 2005, LockOn and Pacific Fighters (guess some of you play that, too). In brackets you can see the results I had with the 4000+ Let's go: First is PC Mark 2005, selected all tests, everything else at factory settings (including resolution 1024x768). overall performance: 6265 (4352) CPU: 5331 (3483) graphics: 7054 (7055) HDD: 4815 (4579) memory: 4901 (4318) Next is 3D Mark 2006. Also, select all tests, rest on factory settings (resolution 1280x1024): overall score: 5388 (4680) shader model 2: 2250 (2243) shader model 3: 2264 (2260) CPU: 1715 (957) Pacific Fighters: resolution 1280x1024 (changed manually), perfect mode in OpenGL, water and forest on 3. Used two tracks for FPS-testing. Kamikaze02: -average 50 (48) -max 150 (137) -min 6 (6) The Black Death: -average 50 (48) -max 102 (96) -min 17 (8) And now for LockOn FC: resolution 1280x1024, AA and AF maxed out, no mirrors, no civilian traffic, water high, shadows all planar, everything else maxed out, no mods or tweaks. I used the old MIG29 Intercept track for testing. No overall FPS, don't know how to show that in LockOn and I don't have Fraps or something. I know, the track isn't compatible with FC, but that has nothing to do with performance, only with the MIG's always getting killed. I've used some points in this track from the beginning to test new drivers and so, so I've got used to it through the years and stuck to it. So, here are the points: -beginning of track, in cockpit: 63 (62) -rolling on the runway, external view: 34 (24):icon_excl -moment of takeoff, external view: 48 (36):icon_excl -watching the MIG from the front after takeoff (external view, of course): 57 (44):icon_excl -looking out of the cockpit to the right, down on the clouds, after breaking through the clouds: 45 (45) -first sight of the Hercules: 43 (42) -first sight of the F-16 from behind: 36 (36) Notice the ones with exclamation mark, that's strange, eh? Seems that external views near the ground seem to be very processor intensive, whereas this doesn't seem to matter when in cockpit or above the clouds with no ground objects visible. Is that improvement only the speed of 2600 over 2400? Or is it a small use of dualcore? I don't know, but these three FPS are really strange. So, conclusion: Both games run only on one kernel of the FX-60. This one running at 2600 instead of the 2400 of the 4000+ seems to give a very slight boost in FPS. If you only want to play: don't get this highend dualcore CPU, it's not worth the 3x price over the top singlecore, the 4000+, at least not for games that only use one processor. Well, let's hope someday they will make use of dualcore, if not Black Shark, then maybe Green Lizzard or Pink Flamingo or whatever;) . If however you use your rig a lot for applications, too, then the FX-60 is great. The 4000+ pi**ed me off with that. Example: had IE and Outlook running in the backround, also a music DVD running, wrote something in word, started to print the text, and: boom! The DVD began to stutter, opening a menu or writing more text in Word took biiig looong time.:mad: Never had these problems with my former Intel 3.4 HT. At first I thought I had installed something wrong, but the problem vanished yesterday with the FX-60. Lot of progs and processes running parallel without any probs. And it's fast, yeees:icon_supe Had not too much time to test, but everything seems to open and work noticeably faster. Started to recode a Video-DVD-project of mine again with Pinnacle Studio: Much faster than the same project with the 4000+. For me, it was worth the upgrade.:p I try to attach the MIG track for those of you who want to compare but don't have it anymore (think it's gone with FC), hope the file ain't too big. So, just wanted to give a little contribution to the forum, because I received a lot of it from some of you guys. By the way, any idea how to start to overclock the processor in an easy and safe way? Multiplier or what? Will I have to change voltage or something too, or even the RAM timings? And would Cool'n'Quiet still work? Any ideas from the hardware gurus would be appreciated. Have a nice evening:icon_jook (or whatever time you have) Tom P.S.: If needed, I might test some other scenes from other tracks, if that are interesting points for you to compare. But, please understand that I haven't got too much time, so I can't do extensive testings. I hardly find time to play LockOn:( And P.P.S.: Excuse me, if I should have made anybody jealous about my machine:redface: Great one for sure, but it will be my last one for the next years - from summer on my little son to come will eat all my computer money. Demo-MiG29-Intercept.rar

Thanks for all your answers. Well, Monnie, I thought you had a singlecore and upgraded to a dualcore, hence my question to you. X2 to FX-60 should work, as they are both dualcore. Just wandering if Windows will have problems with an upgrade from singlecore to dualcore - well, I'll see the next days. My FX-60 should be here tomorrow or on Friday. Really hope I can do without reinstalling everything. Last time this really cost me about two months until everything was fine again. Although I usually also like to start from a fresh install, I wouldn't really like to fight all the problems again, e.g. importing my mails and adressbooks from Outlook, which always is a pain in the a** Thanks Tom

IRONHAND just a word from me, who spends a lot of his spare time in this forum, although I don't post too much: THANK YOU!!! I've downloaded most of your tutorials throughout the last years. They all are absolutely great. Unfortunately I don't have too much time, be it watching your tutorials or flying myself. But sometimes it happens that I want to fly some minutes for myself and end up just watching one of your tutorials again and again and not even pluggin in my joystick. Real fun to watch them, and sure great for everybody to learn things about LockOn. It's a shame that all your hard efforts are spoiled with every update of LockOn due to lacking compatibility. But please keep them coming! And that's the chance to say another THANKS to RUGGBUTT your idea of converting the tracks to video files is also greatly appreciated. Would be nice to watch all of them tutorials regardless of your LO/FC version. Thanks for your efforts again. And TO ED: NO THANKS AT THIS POINT You really should consider to bring out the next titles on DVD - be it Black Shark, Green Monkey or whatever - including all those training tracks with voiceover as tracks and as videos. I'm sure nearly everybody would pay some bucks more for this without doubting for a second. BTW, Ironhand: I experienced some problems, especially with some of the latest tracks. When I copy them to the 'Demo'-folder everything is fine, but if I put them to a different location, the voiceover will not work. Sorted it out by copying the files to the Demo-folder, so it's ok for me, but still curious if I did something wrong? Regards Tom

Hi MonnieRock, just saw in your sig in another thread that you have the FX-60 with the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium. Is that still a wish or already real?:rolleyes: Didn't you have the FX-55 or 57? Reason for my question is: I'm thinking of going from the 4000+ to the FX-60, too, with the same motherboard. Which BIOS do you have? Just upgraded to 1011-001 (beta), this should work fine, right? Did you have to do a fresh install of Windows or was it just changing the processor and everything else worked fine with the 'old' setup? Just wondering, because FX-55/57 are singlecore and FX-60 is dualcore. Wouldn't really love to install everything from the scratch again, took me two months the last time to get everything installed and adjusted when starting by zero. Thanks Tom

One simple solution to many problems: I myself made two partitions on my HD and installed Windows on each of them. So I have C: for all my applications and G: for games. During startup I choose whether I start the gaming-Windows from G: or the apps-Windows from C:. Drive C: doesn't bother if there's Starcrap on G:, DVD-burner working as it should and everything else fine. And on G: I have a real clean Win installation with just games and a firewall for online-gaming on it, not the millions of backround processes you usually have running and eating your performance. Well, and if the burner wouldn't work (haven't tried, because there is no burning proggi on G: of course), I wouldn't care. Burning, Virus-testing and everything is done from C:. Maybe everyone with issues of bad performance in gaming or with drives not working probably because of any copy protection like Starcrap should give this a try. The second Windows-install itself doesn't eat that much HD space and I've never had any conflicts between the two Windows installs - apart from restoring backups with DriveImage, which took me a long and painful way to figure out how it works (but that was something between DriveImage, Norton and the NTFS-filesystem; once you know how to do it it works without problems).

Thanks for your quick reply. As I plan to do a lot of video and photo editing in the near future, I guess I won't be wrong with dualcore - well, we'll see.

Hi Evil-Scotsman, I know you have a dualcore cpu and 'some' hardware knowledge. In another post (can't remember which one) you mentioned that you had to do some setup/tuning to get things to run well with your dualcore cpu. Two months ago I bought a new rig with an AMD 4000+. Unfortunately I didn't know at that time that they would bring out the FX-60. So I plan to upgrade again. Do you think it's worth to go from the 4000+ singlecore to the FX-60 dualcore (not only for gaming, but for gaming too, especially LockOn of course)? And did I get that right: You need to force some programs, LockOn e.g., to run on only one core? How do you do that? Some special setup or utilities or what else? I'd like to have the FX-60, seems to be great, but I don't want to get any problems with my applications and games. And, of course, I don't want to end up with a machine that is slower than the 4000+ I have now. Thanks in advance for your answer Tom

What motherboard do you have, especially which chipset? Especially the earlier X-Fi's are known to have problems with nVidia nForce4 chipsets. Many motherboard vendors made BIOS updates available to sort these problems out. Also, Creative used to update the firmware of your X-Fi if nothing else worked. Read a lot about that at the Creative forums, because I wanted one, too. Don't know if they sorted out the problem meanwhile or if I just was lucky, but my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium has an nForce4 chipset and my X-Fi Platinum runs without problems up to now.

There are two screws at the bottom of the handle which seem to fix it to the metal rod in the middle. Wouldn't it be easier to loosen them, slide the whole handle down for some millimeters and tighten them again? Don't know if this kind of 'height adjustment' is possible, but if so, it would have the same effect. Anyway, I won't try it on my X-52, because I'm glad with it's spring tension. What I hated much more was the strong tension of the X-45. You really had to screw it to a base plate to prevent the whole base of the stick from moving up when moving the stick.

Don't really understand what you did. How can you launch FC after reformating your system without installing it? The program should be gone after a reformat. Or do you have your Windows on C: e.g. and reformated this drive while you installed FC on D: e.g.? Then sure some registry information is missing, but can't tell you which. If so, I would do the following: 1. Make a backup_1 of your complete FC directory 2. delete the complete original directory 3. Do a clean install of FC 4. If you have saved your activation key, apply it now; if not, you will have to activate FC one more time 5. At this point the latest: save your registration with the utility you find on the FC download page and make another backup_2 of your FC directory (just not to spoil this activation, too, in case something goes wrong with the next steps) 6. overwrite the FC directory with your backup_1; LockOn should run now, including all your mods, adjustments etc. 7. apply the patch, and take care it's the right one for your version of FC (download or disk version)

Holy crap, I once did a parachute jump myself - incredible feeling! But them guys in the 'insane' vids could as well leave their chute in the plane when they jump out.

Whoa, finally ED listened to us. Didn't we always want a middle-east scenery? Can anybody give me the coordinates for a sightseeing to the Shpinx? ;)

Scrolled through the forum again and found one hint I overlooked the first time: start Lock On, when in the main menu exit immediately and start up again. Very crazy, but I just tested it and it seems to work. Will do some more testing - fingers crossed. Still a bad bug, but who cares, if the workaround is that easy. (See my thread about the very bad (memory) bug)

Scrolled through the forum again and found one hint I overlooked the first time: start Lock On, when in the main menu exit immediately and start up again. Very crazy, but I just tested it and it seems to work. Will do some more testing - fingers crossed. Still a bad bug, but who cares, if the workaround is that easy.

Has anybody ever wondered, why the "demo-mig29-intercept" track is no longer in LockOn? I'm afraid I found the reason: anybody playing this track with AA and/or AF turned on would realize, that FC is no longer working with it as soon as it comes to overcast clouds. I posted in the "thunderstorm-thread" yesterday, that FC crashes to the desktop with a mission I made with thunderstorms. I was pretty sure this might have to do with thunderstorms and AA/AF, because I have them set on full with my new machine, whereas my old machine had AA/AF always turned off, and I had no problems with thunderstorms (except FPS, of course). So, today I wanted to find out and did the following: copied lockon.exe to lockon2.exe and created a new "Lockon2" profile in the nVidia settings with AA and AF manually disabled. And now weird things started to happen. First fired up the new lockon2. Ok, my FPS in the menu screen jump from 870 to 1250, AA and AF seem to be off. Start the MIG29-intercept-track (saved it from of the former versions, I like this track for FPS testing). Crankled lines, everything seems fine, the track runs with no problems (and no AA/AF). Run my mission I created yesterday: Everything fine, masses of rain, lightnings and fog. Just to be sure, I quit lockon2 and run normal lockon with full AA/AF. nVidia panel seems to realize it, because the menu screen gives me 870 FPS again. Run the mig29-track, it loads up to where the mission should begin - crash. FIRST FIND HERE: The problem is not related to thunderstorms, it seems to be overcast. As soon as you have thick clouds and AA or/and AF turned on, FC crashes. Well, but the story goes on: just to test it out, I start up lockon2 again. Everything fine, 1250 FPS at the menu screen. Start mig29-demo - CRASH! WTF? Load my selfmade mission - crash. Quit lockon2, start it again, 1250 FPS, load mission - crash! SECOND FIND: LockOn seems to keep something in (graphics?) memory that stays there, even after quitting or puts a pointer in awrong direction without pointing it back or something like it (I'm not a professional programmer, but from what I've programmed up to now it really looks like that). And now the strangest thing: At this point I decided to restart Windows to clear anything residing in memory. So, Windows starts again, I start lockon2 again, then the mig29-track - CRASH! What's going on here? Last try: I power down, wait some seconds, then switch the PC on again. Start lockon2 and the mig-track: everything runs fine (without AA/AF). So does my mission. Try normal LockOn again with this track and AA/AF enabled: crash again! So wtf is going on here? It really seems, that ED introduced some bug with FC (1.1 or 1.11, I can't tell) so overcast clouds don't work with AA/AF. Or does it even exist from the beginning and me is the only one who never realized it because I never had AA/AF on? Don't want to start flaming, but to me it looks as if they knew about this problem and instead of fixing it deleted the demo-track with overcast clouds and hoped nobody would find out about this bug. And chances are good that nobody finds out. I guess many of us who have LockOn from the beginning did once try to fly a mission with overcast and lightning and fog and all the goodies, just to find out that the FPS made it unplayable. So I'm pretty sure, that most of us have perhaps AA and AF on, but avoid to fly missions with overcast, because we like it better to fight with reasonable FPS in a sky with no or only a few clouds than having a nice bad weather experience slideshow. Ok, please tell me when I'm wrong! Does anybody of you, especially with newer nVidia cards, have AA and AF turned on and can still fly with overcast, rain and thunderstorms? If so, maybe you have anything else turned down (haze or I don't know what) and can give me a hint? My system specs: AMD 4000+, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB with 81.89 drivers, 2 Gigs of OCZ-RAM and Soundblaster X-Fi. In LockOn everything maxed out despite water on high, visibility range on medium and shadows to all planar. Clean installation, no mods or something. As described above, I have made a nVidia profile for LockOn with AA at 8xQ and AF at 16x. Works flawlessly, nice FPS, nice eyecandy - as long as it doesn't come to overcast. So, if I'm wrong and somebody can tell me where my mistake is and how to work around it I would be thankful for any hint and would then apologize to the devs in advance for this thread. But if not (and I'm afraid ED is aware of this problem and wanted to cover it instead of fixing), then I really excpect ED to look into this problem. Frustrating to have the top-end of graphics card and then have to go to crappy graphics again just to be able to fly. Oh, before I forget: I know that mig-track is not compatible with 1.11 but this cannot be the problem. Tried different missions, too, (e.g. the how-to-land-in-bad-weather-track) as well as new self-created: the crashes occur everytime when you use bad weather or overcast together with AA/AF. I would appreciate any word of the devs here!

Any news on this? Just found out that I have the same problem. Created a small mission with thunderstorms and fog, but no way to play it. Like the other ones posted: the game crashes to desktop after the loading screen. I guess this has to do with AA or AF, because I didn't have this problem with my old machine, where I didn't have any AA or AF. With my new rig (with Geforce 7800 GTX 512 and 81.89 drivers) I run with full AA and AF. Clean install, no mods or something. Up to now it worked flawlessly and gives real eyecandy and good FPS in normal wheather, but with this thunderstorm problem I'm really disapponted. Also tried to load older missions with thunderstorms, but same sad result. It seems that this is definitely a bug in LockOn, as ATI users seem to have the same problem like nVidia users! Would be nice, if someone from ED could give any comment on this problem!

Yep, Merry yChristmas to everyone. And I hope for you, that you - despite me - still find some time to fly over these days instead of only having to sit, eat and talk with some (family related) people you only see once a year.

WTF is this? BE CAREFUL WITH THIS LINK, IT HAS SOME INSTALLER IN IT!!! For me a pop-up window appears which pretends to have found system errors and wants to install a prog called Winfixer. I'm sure bSr.L()Csta didn't realize this before nor did he even intend it, but anyway guys: it happens, so be careful with that link!

The problem is, that the card is not working properly with boards that have nForce4 chipsets. It is sometimes not recognized by the system. Sometimes people say they have multiple "unknown devices" in the system after a coldboot. Furthermore the autoupdate with the ASUS board will no longer work; autoupdate will tell you that you've got no ASUS board. Only things I heard, couldn't reproduce myself because I don't have the X-Fi. But look over at Creative's forum, there's a thread about that problem with about 350 postings (and still no solution:icon_evil ). Which card do you have and when did you buy it? Problem is supposed to happen with Extreme Music and Platinum Edition, not with Fatal1ty and I don't know which other one (the real expensive ones, they have that special X-RAM or so?). Maybe you've got one of theses top cards or you've got one of the newest where Creative has maybe updated the firmware of the card (they used to flash the firmware for you to get the card to work with nForce4 boards)?

Wow, that fireface seems to rock, but it's way too much for me. I won't do any professional recording, it's just that - if I have an idea at home - I could build a simple drum pattern, record a bassline and then plug my guitar in and play my part and record it. So I could easily present my ideas to my band next time we practice, and they would know how I want the song to be. Guess the X-Fi would be fine for that. It's supposed to have a very small latency, and that's what I still want to have. I hate to beat the strings and hear the sound only half a second later. And: YEES! The package was my XFX card. Picked it up today and immediately brought it to my pc-dealer to build it into my rig. Hell, still two ridiculous parts missing (cardreader and floppy). Hope they get the parts tomorrow and I receive my machine before the weekend. I will do some testing and give you a feedback - after I installed everything properly and dried my pants;) But please don't expect it to be too soon. Got a lot of work atm, and when I get my machine I will surely use most of my spare time not to do any benchmarks but to play LockOn:rolleyes:

WTF...I'm just getting my new rig: AMD 4000+, 2 Gigs of fast OCZ CL2 RAM, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX with 512 MB...and you really want to tell me seriously, that - while bombing a large city to dust and having 30 aircraft doing AA over my head - I will not be able to reach an average FPS of at least 350 ??? (with everything maxed out of course and water on hyper perfect that is) :icon_wink :icon_jook

Yep, in another thread MonnieRock already told me he has them working, besides the auto-update of the BIOS not working any longer. Just wanted to get a clue if somebody else has this config running, because most people seem to fail here. Creative used to update the firmware some time ago if you returned the card to them. But it's pain in the a** buying a "cheap" card and sending it back to the manufacturer before you can use it. Ok, somehow I'm insane: instead of deciding not to buy a crappy card from a manufacturer without too much customer-care, I just hope they'll fix the problem soon, be it Creative or ASUS. I want that (Platinum) card, especially 'cause of the drive it has got. I could integrate it in the tower instead of having to crawl behind the computer or having another external device on my desk. I could plug in the phones and my guitar from the front, could change volume with a turn of a knob and so on. Think there was the like with the Audigy 2 or 4, but it seems they are off the market since the introduction of the X-Fi. And yes, I'm not a serious "producer", but I would like to use music programs with drums and bass patterns e.g. and play and record my guitar simultaneously. With my onboard sound this is not possible due to a much too big latency. The X-Fi with ASIO should work fine here (at least I hope so). BTW:Seems I've got my XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 :p Today our postman tried to deliver a package and collect a lot of money while I was on work; this can only be the Beast. Gonna fetch it from the post office tomorrow evening and bring it to my computer dealer. Hopefully they received all the other missing parts in the meantime and maybe the weekend will see the first flight on my new machine:rolleyes: ...but with onboard sound instead of X-Fi:(