@Dangerousdave : can we safely assume that FSX does NOT benefit from 64bit architecture ??..... ( i have FSX installed on a seperate drive, running W7/64 for the first time, FSX runs fabulous ( i7 980x,GF 480GTX,12GB Mem) but only *when* it runs.... never encountered so much BSODs/FSX locks with XP.... )
cheers,
jan
Hi jan..
Sorry i'm not Dave but i thought i'd take a whack at explaining it..
Theres a lot of things effecting FSX on a 64 bit system that can make it run either slower or faster than it can on a 32 bit system.
you see, on a 32 bit system, the machine grabs a single 32 byte instruction from the program and shoves it through the processor after going through ram ( which is where some of the complications can happen ). A 64 bit machine grabs two 32 byte instructions at once and shoves those through the processor.. So in effect, its doing twice the work in the same amount of time. However, there are possible caveats that need to be looked at and if possible avoided. Among the biggest of these is synching the ram with the cpu. Ram can be in either a synch mode or an asynch mode. usually as delivered, most motherboards are set up for async mode. What this means is that data is read into ram, and sits there for an amount of time which is called a wait state, before going to the cpu. so, for as much as the machine is doing with the cpu, the ram is cutting it in half because the wait state is holding the data in the buffer. Meanwhile, while the data is being held in the buffer, more data from the program is being read in. This can cause a slow machine, or even buffer overruns and BSODs.
Synch mode, reads the data in from the program, and almost instantly feeds it to the cpu. theres no waiting and no data backing up in the buffer. The result is that the machine works more efficiently and the program runs faster, smoother, and with with fewer if any overruns and bsods.
Simply going into your cmos ram and changing the memory mode from asynch to synch can improve things immensely.
another thing to look into is how many cpu's are being used when the syetem starts up. By default, windows 7 only uses on cpu. going into the advanced options boot section of the dydtem control panel and telling it to use all four or however many cpus you have at boot time, greatly increases the efficiency and performance of the machine as well.. Oddly enough, it also helps the machine run cooler..
technically, any 32 bit program should work better on a 64 bit machine, but the two things i've pointed out above can make it and even 64 bit programs crawl a a snails pace..
Turn off bios cacheing, and follow the overclockers guidlines for turning off spread spectrum functions of certain regions of your board to further increase performance. It doesnt matter if your overclocking or not. it will improve the performance.. But please do look it up and read whats recommended first as there are good spread spectrum stuff in there and not so good spread spectrum..
64 bit also allows for multiple cpus with multiple co-processors much more easily than 32 bit did, and with fsx, thats always a boon.. If you can use SLI do it. On a properly set up motherboard, the impact on fsx is phenomenal. Your no longer talking megaherz, your talking teraflops (or trillions of file operations per second ) But the bottom line is you need to do a little research and take notes, then go into cmos ram with those notes and set your machine up on a firmware level, then set windows up to boot on all four processors..
Hope this helps a little..
Pam
just a little glitch with activating scenery that has been documented.
