• 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.

FSX on a MAC

For those curious about the Mac running FSX...


Someone recently (in the past 2 weeks) was saying that setting your frame rates higher allows the sim to run slightly smoother. Well, I tried it on the Mac and sure enough.. I set it at 36 FPS. The thing runs it extremely well, lol.. Here I thought 20 FPS was pretty good.


I am still learning alot on this rig, and have been so busy with work and design and errands, etc, that I hadnt had a chance to experiment with the settings much. Tonight I did and I am glad I did. :d I didnt think that extra 16 FPS would make a difference, but it sure does. It seems as though the system doesnt fight as hard to run, and the fluidity when looking around is quite nice..

(You have to understand, I havent been able to run FSX smoothly before, so you can understand how I felt to see FSX running smooth at a constant 36 FPS... Eyes as big as quarters, gray eyebrows unfurrowed and pointing straight out of my forehead, the hair on the back of my neck auto-shedding and floating to the ground, sweat beading up and dripping off my palms onto the Saitek joysticks, the glazed look frozen as my mind bathed in a semi-Narvana like trance, beholding the nicely filled autogen world of FSX, complete with cars on the highways... :d ).


:faint:


Bill
 
Bill and other Mac owners,

I have a really dumb question: do you need to defrag Mac hard drives?

Kevin
 
I have watched with great interest the salesmanship of the MAC side of the house. As I said earlier I have access to MACS at work usually the notebook but yesterday I had the MAC server to myself. I shut down all the systems attached and loaded FSX on it to see just what 2 killer 3.2 GB Xeon Harpertown 45nm processors would do with FSX.

OK, yesterday evening I ran FSX on this Mac Pro server which belongs to the doctors I service on my network:


Mac Pro
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
4GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
(1) Nvidia 8800 GT thin graphics with 512 MB memory (no SLI available)
(2) 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1 on a MAC PRO Raid Card
(2) Opitcal 16x double-layer SuperDrive
The Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel) -nice monitor by the way!
Mac OS X Server v10.5

Her costs(I know this because I looked at her invoice on the server: $8278.00

I set up the same way as my computer which is:
X-48 Gigabyte DQ-6 with an E8600 OC'd to 3.8
2 150 GB 10,000 RPM Raptor in RAID 1 config
4GB PC2 9600 OCZ
1 ATI HD 4870 OC
Windows XP 32bit
24" LG Monitor

My cost was a little over $1500 with the monitor

All the sliders were set the same as my sliders in FSX. I have no tweaks not even in the FSX.cfg. I set everything to MAX except Autogen at Very dense and traffic at 80% for GA and commercial, cars 50, ships 40, boats 40

I set FSX to run at 40fps at a resolution of 1920x1200 on both, when set to unlimited the MAC was no longer smooth

The MAC could not keep up the same frame rate as my system, while at times it would do 40 it usually ran around 22-34-which I admit was just as smooth as mine even with the frame rate drop. I took off from Olympia and landed at Renton. The lowest my system ran 34 over Seattle. Even with dual Xeon processors and their new memory technology the MAC was slightly inferior on FSX and cost 6x more.

No, I just can't see it guys. I was very fair on this test. I will admit, I love the MAC monitor but the 2 Xeon Harpertown quad processors which are the new 45nm hotrods are no better than the single E8600 on my cheaper Gigabyte motherboard with FSX so that would be a $8000 plus dollar waste of money.

My next test next week will be with Medal of Honor Airborne and COD 4. I do expect better results with the Xeon processors-heck for $8000 plus dollars it better do more than my $1400 rig
Ted
 
Wiens said:
Bill and other Mac owners,

I have a really dumb question: do you need to defrag Mac hard drives?

Kevin
Click to expand...

Kevin,

I cant find a way to defrag.... I was looking through the Utility tools the other night and could not find anything except a HD Disc Utility 'app' called 'Verify'.

Maybe its in there somewhere, but I couldnt find it... Good question man. I wonder if they auto-stack things proper or something, or if I will need to defrag.

I'll ask this in the Apple discussions forum and let you knwo what they say.




Bill
 
txnetcop said:
I have watched with great interest the salesmanship of the MAC side of the house. As I said earlier I have access to MACS at work usually the notebook but yesterday I had the MAC server to myself. I shut down all the systems attached and loaded FSX on it to see just what 2 killer 3.2 GB Xeon Harpertown 45nm processors would do with FSX.

OK, yesterday evening I ran FSX on this Mac Pro server which belongs to the doctors I service on my network:


Mac Pro
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
4GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
(1) Nvidia 8800 GT thin graphics with 512 MB memory (no SLI available)
(2) 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1 on a MAC PRO Raid Card
(2) Opitcal 16x double-layer SuperDrive
The Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel) -nice monitor by the way!
Mac OS X Server v10.5

Her costs(I know this because I looked at her invoice on the server: $8278.00

I set up the same way as my computer which is:
X-48 Gigabyte DQ-6 with an E8600 OC'd to 3.8
2 150 GB 10,000 RPM Raptor in RAID 1 config
4GB PC2 9600 OCZ
1 ATI HD 4870 OC
Windows XP 32bit
24" LG Monitor

My cost was a little over $1500 with the monitor

All the sliders were set the same as my sliders in FSX. I have no tweaks not even in the FSX.cfg. I set everything to MAX except Autogen at Very dense and traffic at 80% for GA and commercial, cars 50, ships 40, boats 40

I set FSX to run at 40fps at a resolution of 1920x1200 on both, when set to unlimited the MAC was no longer smooth

The MAC could not keep up the same frame rate as my system, while at times it would do 40 it usually ran around 22-34-which I admit was just as smooth as mine even with the frame rate drop. I took off from Olympia and landed at Renton. The lowest my system ran 34 over Seattle. Even with dual Xeon processors and their new memory technology the MAC was slightly inferior on FSX and cost 6x more.

No, I just can't see it guys. I was very fair on this test. I will admit, I love the MAC monitor but the 2 Xeon Harpertown quad processors which are the new 45nm hotrods are no better than the single E8600 on my cheaper Gigabyte motherboard with FSX so that would be a $8000 plus dollar waste of money.

My next test next week will be with Medal of Honor Airborne and COD 4. I do expect better results with the Xeon processors-heck for $8000 plus dollars it better do more than my $1400 rig
Ted
Click to expand...



Ted,

The nightmare story of that Gentleman in Italy that paid well over $5,000.00 USD on top of the line parts on a custom super PC for just FSX, (about a year or two ago) and ended up that the computer barely ran FSX at all, comes to mind.



Bill
 
Bill,

That is Ted's point........if a computer build is done properly with knowledge of the interaction of components two things will happen: 1. it will run FSX in a satisfying manner and 2. it won't break the bank. Just throwing money at a problem and hoping for a solution won't fix it.......(bailout)!

I have $1,800 in my system, including a 26" monitor, I built in June 2008 and I'm satisfied with the experience I have with FSX. Although the A2A B377/Accusim is now increasing my delight!!

Kevin
 
Wiens said:
Bill,

That is Ted's point........if a computer build is done properly with knowledge of the interaction of components two things will happen: 1. it will run FSX in a satisfying manner and 2. it won't break the bank. Just throwing money at a problem and hoping for a solution won't fix it.......(bailout)!

I have $1,800 in my system, including a 26" monitor, I built in June 2008 and I'm satisfied with the experience I have with FSX. Although the A2A B377/Accusim is now increasing my delight!!

Kevin
Click to expand...


Hey Kevin,

Roger that. Its a shame though that alot of people have gone through making computers that can run FSX and werent able to make it happen. Seems to be some computers can run it, some cant. Some spend alot, and some spend very little. Blessed is all I can say.

Man.. 26inch screen!!! Awesome..! I am barely getting used to me 24 inch screen. Some day, perhaps we'll all be using big plasma screens, lol.. Curved ones wrapping around from left to right. :d



Bill
 
Sheeesh....who in their right mind would spend 8k or more on a computer?!!:faint:











**ducks head behind his lcd so that his missus can't see his blushes** :monkies::kilroy:
 
kilo delta said:
Sheeesh....who in their right mind would spend 8k or more on a computer?!!
Click to expand...

The same people who would spend 9100 dollars for 32 GB DDR2 800 ram when it SHOULD cost 320...

Nice comparison, Ted. Half my computer parts are coming tomorrow!!! :jump:

I can't wait :woot:
 
There you go. :d



I dont think a lady doctor bought that computer for gaming.... I am thinking its for her work.

If you guys are saying that Apples are just to expensive and you cant work on them, and you can make computers all day long for a zillioneth of the price, and that they are just too different, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc... Then look away! Dont look at Apples, lol... Goodness... lololol....

Case closed, judgements passed, carry on.. Have a good day. Thank you for shopping at Walmart.


happy bill
 
Bill I really didn't want this to become a pissing contest as it seems some wish. I was simply pointing out that one of most expensive MACs could not keep up with a $1400 custom build unit in FSX. Now I am unsure how it will come out in games other than FSX and I will find out next week.

I am really pleased that you are happy with your MAC, but it sounded like you were encouraging others to do the same when in fact their experience with a MAC would be quite costly for less results. Now, if they can afford it,and prefer all the other things MAC does vs PC, that's fine-to each his own, but I sure as heck wouldn't buy a MAC just to run FSX. That's all I meant in my comparison.
Ted
 
txnetcop said:
I am really pleased that you are happy with your MAC, but it sounded like you were encouraging others to do the same when in fact their experience with a MAC would be quite costly for less results.
Click to expand...

Same here. However, I felt a differing opinion on the G5 and its cost was necessary.

It would be nice if the topic could be locked at the OP's request. Doesn't seem there is much more to be said. :ernae:
 
Would run great on that one. :engel016:
<embed src="http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/videoplayer/flvplayer.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" flashvars="file=http://www.theonion.com/content/xml/92328/video&debugging=true&autostart=false&image=http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/NO_KEYBOARD_article.jpg&bufferlength=3&embedded=true&title=Apple%20Introduces%20Revolutionary%20New%20Laptop%20With%20No%20Keyboard" width="400" height="355">

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard​
 
codeseven said:
Ok, I think we've thoroughly established that....

1) Some folks like PC's.

2) Some folks like Mac's.

3) Some folks like PC's and Mac's.

My original question has been answered, FSX plays just fine on a Mac.

This thread has served it's purpose and now runs the risk of deteriorating into the usual, and pointless, Mac vs PC bologna.

Moderators, as the OP I ask you to please lock this thread. Thanks


Codeseven
Click to expand...


Thanks
 
:icon_lol: I think I would actually buy that!

The Onion is a godsend. It is cool going down to Madison because we always stop and pick up the latest copies of the newspaper.
 
It's just a bit of humour... It won't hurt anyone i guess... :wavey:

... Anyway i think too this post should be closed.
 
Wiens said:
Bill and other Mac owners,

I have a really dumb question: do you need to defrag Mac hard drives?

Kevin
Click to expand...

Yep!

The OS say it automatically does it as you go along but 18 months with a Macbook proves very much otherwise and it took about 3 hours to defrag with 3rd party software.

This is with Tiger though, maybe Leopard is better?
 
I defrag the MACs on the network often. Yes inspite of what they say at Apple you need to defrag your drives even when using Leopard.

Also why close the thread as long as everyone is being reasonable. Every disagreement does not have to become a cat fight if people still respect the other's opinions and everybody has one. Leave the thread along please.

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/iDefrag.shtml
Ted
 
I feel that this thread is just fine...It seems we all have our opinions and as long as they are respectfully stated there is no problem that I see....

Personally I know nothing about a Mac..But I have learned a gread deal from this thread....

And I see that others are having good suscess with FSX on the Mac.. That is a good thing to me.....



But I can see how its getting a little long winded too......
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top