Mulit-core in FSX?

D

DaveKDEN

Charter Member
One of the listed advantages of Prepar3D is it's use of multi-cores to improve performance and reduce terrain blurries. However, I thought that the "JOBSCHEDULER" edit in the FSX.cfg file allowed for use of multi-cores in FSX (as detailed in the following thread - although I thought the edit was for "AffinityMask=14").

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?161337-Quad-Core-amp-FSX

So, my question is - does that edit actually work? If not, is there another trick to force FSX to use all 4 cores on a Quad core processor?

I've been following the development of Prepar3D since it's initial release, but don't see any compelling reason (just yet) to make the switch from FSX.
 
Lets make this clear. FSX post SP2 uses mulitple cores, but it is not a multi threaded app. The other cores are only used for loading textures, this does distribute the load somewhat but it by all definition still a single threaded app. The jobscheduler simply puts most of the load onto another core allowing other programmes to use core 1. Nothing special. It can help but not always.
 
Correction... it CAN use multiple cores... Yes, for the texture loading you indicate but only under certain circumstances. Ie, you must set the internal frame limiter to unlimited to take advantage of that second core texture loading... it does make a big difference. Though an external frame limiter is recommended and very very effective too! the combination is a big performance shunt.

From what I've seen, the affinity mask thing does work.. somewhat... not a huge difference but with fsx... every little helps.
 
For what it's worth, I'm using FSX Booster 2013. This utility will allow you to use multiple cores, as much as FSX will allow, and make other tweaks via a simple user interface. The menu has a graphic representation of your expected performance based on the tweaks you have enabled. The software analyzes your system and offers suggestions.

It boosts my performance by about 60% across the board. Cheap too.
 
It is multi threaded to some degree in that the scenery/texture loading from file is handled in separate threads. If it wasnt you really would get a slideshow as the decompression sequence for certain BGL types is quite time consuming. However the core of the graphics engine, along with physics and gauges and such is all in a single thread. Multi threading is not exactly an easy task in a complex simulation and infact isnt always efficient since you cant have one thread writing to a piece of memory while another is reading from it. And making some threads wait for another to finish kinda defeats the whole purpose and as a result a single thread winds up being faster. That said, multi threading glass cockpits is something that can be done. It effectively leaves FSX to handle the rest of the simulation and as a result, you get performance almost rivaling some of the default aircraft (MJC Q400 is an example).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top