• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

My First Official Windows7 Flight

F

FAC257

SOH-CM-2025
After watching and reading all the input about Windows7 and FSX over the last many weeks, I decided to take the plunge.

Originally I was going to wait until this fall and build a new Windows7 purpose built sytem and upgrade to the new OS all at the same time. The more I though about doing it that way and with the availability of theW7 RC, it made less and less sense. I decided that I'd try to go through the new OS growing pains over the next several months. By the time it's officially out I figure I'll have a better handle on exactly what sort of system upgrade I may need, if much of anything and what software may need to be replaced.

I started collecting the correct Windows 7 drivers for this old clunker several days ago and then on Thursday I went for a full reformat and upgrade to W7.

So far I'm even more pleased than I thought I'd be.

FAC



Tampa to Pensacola in the Goose with W7 as my co-pilot.......
 
cool im doing the same here
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
 
My Beta is due to expire in 12 days and I am getting ready to load W7-RC. So far for my old rig it has been great. Just a few minor hickups here and there but most of those I had in XP.

:icon29:
 
I just landed at Pensacola a few minutes ago and I'd have to say that went really well.

I have FSX & Acceleration, UTX, XGraphics and ASA already back in FSX and the average FPS during the whole flight stayed right about exactly the same numbers I was getting in XP. If anything I may have seen a slight increase in performance, but that's probably like washing your car windows makes it feel like it drives faster. :)

FSScreen shot utility up and running also.

The only thing I have left to do over the weekend is to reload my hanger and sceneries and this thing will be back up to 100% ready to go.

I thought my older peripheral hardware was going to give me a few headaches, but W7 found good drivers for anything I didn't have before the format.

The only piece of software I'm leaving off on purpose is my commercial defragger. I want to see how W7 does on it's own for a little while before I make that decision.

FAC
 
Dangerousdave

Mine is a very first generation FSX purpose built system and so far it's handling W7 far better than what I was expecting. It actually seems to be less boggy than my aging XP version of this same hardware combo.

Nice thing about the W7-RC is that it doesn't expire until after the commercial release. Hopefully that means no backwards movement during the whole transition.

I'm really enjoying this. I loved XP to death, but was also getting really tired of looking at the same old thing for too many years. Time for a face lift.

FAC
 
FAC, did you go for the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Win7? I went from XP 32bit to 7 64bit and I got a definite fps improvement and a massive reduction in loading times, of course that won't work if you've only got a 32bit cpu.....
 
I went 32 bit at least for now.

I'm not real convinced yet about 64 bit. Not just because of W7, but it just seems that over the years folks using 64 bit systems seem to have more issues than benefits when using flight sims compared to the 32 bit folks.

I still very open minded about being convinced otherwise though over the next several months. :)

FAc
 
Well isn't this the coolest thing! :applause:

You can adjust the master volume for individual applications straight from the Task Bar.

I'm doing my first W7 Accusim flight with the B77 today and was tinkering around with Teamspeak at the same time. At first I was sort of bummed because the interior sounds on the 377 were acting funny. Then I found this mixer panel by accident while exploring. Problem solved!

One of the things I was a little concerned about before the switch was a supposed problem with the X-Fi cards and W7. Makes me think now that it may have been a bit of whining before learning. :)

One of the drivers I made sure I had in hand before the format were the new W7 drivers for the X-Fi.

FAC
 
FAC257 said:
I went 32 bit at least for now.

I'm not real convinced yet about 64 bit. Not just because of W7, but it just seems that over the years folks using 64 bit systems seem to have more issues than benefits when using flight sims compared to the 32 bit folks.

I still very open minded about being convinced otherwise though over the next several months. :)

FAc
Click to expand...


If you are talking FSX only the benefits are not much greater with 64bit, I use both 32 and 64 Win7, but with other games there are some definite advantages that use the extra RAM as 32 bit limit is 4GB. FSX could care less I can run almost as fast with 2GB as 4GB with the same eye candy turned on-FSX is weird, but I love it. However if you are going to use Vista or Win7 why restrict one's self to only 32 bit especially if you have an i7Core system that utilizes 6GB and more to great advantage.
Ted
 
Hi Ted

Down the road, when I actually do a full system rebuild. I think your right, that it wouldn't make much sense not to take advantage of what's sure to be the norm in 64 bit.

This old thing I'm flying on is a first generation Striker Extreme with an E6700 as a motor. It'll overclock very easily to a 3.33, but I usually leave it alone as it does just fine with FSX at stock speed. I'm not sure any of my hardware on this thing can count as high as 64 anyway. :)

Right now with W7, I'm running both my 8800GTSOC graphics card, Nhancer and FSX at exactly the same settings as I had with XP and there seems to be virtually no difference in the FPS numbers. If anything I'll give a slight nod over in the W7 direction.

One obvious difference that I've seen is that with my XP software I got better FPS in Windowed Mode and slightly better graphics. W7 seems to be just the opposite. I'm getting significantly higher FPS full screen and the graphics are slightly better.

All still very early theories still as it's only been an official W7 flying machine for the past 24 hours. :)

FAC
 
Hi FAC,

I run FSX on windows vista just fine. although some issues once in a while with DX10 preview i get better performance in that mode than dx9 mode. It has some disadvantages like the taxiway lines flicker a lot and from the tower view the lines on the runway are drawn through the aircarft. Did you test it in dx10 preview or did you stick to dx9? i pretty much like the water effects and as said above the overall perfomance in the air.

kind regards,

Meso
 
FAC257 said:
Well isn't this the coolest thing! :applause:

You can adjust the master volume for individual applications straight from the Task Bar.

FAC
Click to expand...

Indeed it is the coolest!! Thanks for the tip. I do a lot of exploring and experimenting with a new OS but I might never have picked up on this one. It works with my on-board sound and the volume level setting for FSX is remembered and used the next time I run FSX -- bonus.

Regards.
Rick
 
Yeah, I'm figuring that many of the neat things I'm running into are Vista carry-overs of sorts. But it's all new toys to me. :)

FAC
 
4gb is the max allowed for in 32bit architecture in any OS... at least as far as I know.... 64bit on the otherhand, allows you to use over 17 billion gb of ram. But as of now Windows currently only allows up to 128gb I believe (at least for Vista though win7 probably as well... now if you can find a motherboard that supports that!)
 
FAC257 said:
Hey Meso :)

I've got a non-DX10 capable video card so I've never be able to test that feature.

FAC
Click to expand...

Are you sure? i have a 8800GTX which is dx10 compatible. But that could be indicated by the X. My brother has a 8800GTS and is also dx10 compatible...

kind regards,

Meso

EDIT:
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC - graphics adapter - GF 8800 GTS - 512 MB

Manufacturer: BFG Technologies Part number: BFGE88512GTSE
32858038-2-200-0.gif

$249.99 at 1 online store
  • CNET Editor rating: <STYLE type=text/css> .editorsChoice { position: absolute; margin: 3px 6px 7px 74px; }</STYLE><!-- We're on the MLP page looking at the product - use javascript --><!-- No stars shown at all, empty stars can give impression of 'worst score' -->Not yet rated
  • Average user rating: <!-- We're on the MLP page looking at the product - use javascript -->0 stars No reviews, write one!
<DL class=moreInfo><DT>More product information: </DT><DD class=first>Product brief </DD><DD>User reviews </DD><DD>Specifications </DD><DD>Accessories </DD><DD>Manufacturer info </DD></DL><DL class=moreInfo><DT>Description: </DT><DD>Redefine your gaming reality with the BFG Tech NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS OC PCI Express graphics card featuring the world's first DirectX 10 GPU and a powerful unified architecture that delivers an incredibly true-to-life gaming experience. Power through games at record speeds and charge through game maps with vividly realistic, sun-up to sun-down HDR lighting effects while steering clear ... Read more </DD></DL>
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top