Simple trick for better stability and FPS

[zenTera]

Hi all,

bought my new computer in November 04, set it up with all desired and undesired programs and of course my favourite FlightSims like FS2004, Pacific Fighters and best of all LockOn. And I was really disappointed. I had a P4 3GHz before with a Radeon 9800 XL (special version for "Aldi"-PC), which showed as a 9800 PRO with the ATI-drivers. Then I bought the new "Aldi"-PC with 3.6 GHz and a 6610XL (again a special version of nVidia 6600, don't know where's the difference between 6600 or GT).

Well, as I said, I was really disappointed. I hoped for better FPS, but not only didn't they show up, the games even crashed a lot. No chance to play a selfmade dogfight mission in LockOn 'till the end, always ended up in a bluescreen.

Another curious thing: I play without AA and AIF (at least I thought so), at 1280x1024 I personally feel I don't need them. But I encountered a problem with heatblur; as soon as I went under 500 km/h (or mph?) and heatblur came in, I used to have a slideshow with - let's guess - 0.5 FPS. But absolutely curious: This only happened when flying the Eagle - the Russian birds had no problem with heatblur.

 

Enough said, here's my solution, which is so simple, that I'm somehow ashamed to post it, but anway, maybe it helps someone:

 

1. I simply created a new partition on my HD with PartitionMagic and did a fresh Windows installation on this drive. There's nothing on this drive except a fresh up-to-date Windows XP Home SP2 and my flightsims. The only drivers running are TrackIR, Saitek X52-software...and since today Starforce . So at startup I can choose between my "normal" Windows config for application programs etc. and my FlightSim-Windows. And since then I really got better FPS in all flightsims, and it's really stable...haven't had a single crash since then. Ok, I'm still a bit unsure about going online to play in Hyperlobby someday without having my Norton Internet Securitiy running in the background .

 

2. As an ATI-User I'm not really familiarized with nVidia drivers and options. I simply used the standard options when I got the new PC with that nVidia-card. If you go to the driver's options for quality and performance, it says something like "by application" (don't know exactly, 'cause I've got the German version) and you see a greyed out option for "off" up to "2x..", where "by application" is checked and the greyed out options for AA and AIF are set to "Off". The solution to my F-15-problem: I unchecked "by application" and put AA and AIF to none. So now I can fly the Eagle at 100 speed with heatblur and without stutters...and there's no visible change in eye-candy.

 

Okay, these were simple ones, but maybe this can help one or the other of the community.

BTW: I still don't understand, why that AA+AIF+Heatblur made problems only with the Eagle, but not with the Russian birds .

 

Regards

Tom

[bflagg]

It's a know problem when you have AA on along with Heatblur.

Set your ati setting to custom and adjust or do as I and shut off the heat blur.

If I remember right, it kicks in about 175knots and slower... (at least in 1.02)

[coldcrew]

norton was probably the biggest reason for your performance hit. Any antivirus app that scans open files causes games like lomac to experience lower fps since it is intercepting calls to read files.