Windows 7 Out

[falcon409]

FSX is a 32bit program so it'll only run in 32bit format.

Thanks. . .in which case is there any evidence that running FSX on a 64 bit OS improves it's performance or is the benefit only in the fact that with 64bit you have the ability to increase your Memory allocation? I went from 4 gig to 8gig which the System recognizes but is this any advantage to FSX?

 

[FAC257]

"FSX is a 32bit application and as such even when run in a 64bit operating system memory amounts greater than 4GB will be of little use to FSX directly, however, when applied with a 64bit OS and i7 FSX SP2 (or RTM/SP1 with edited fsx.exe files) will be allowed access to a full 4GB with other processes and applications running along side having access to more (over and above). Therefore 6GB (3x2GB) i7 systems as addons and aircraft become more complicated will benefit FSX on a 64bit OS. If you switch to i7 you are far better off on 3x2GB than 3x1GB in system memory."

Source:
http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041


FAC

 

[falcon409]

"FSX is a 32bit application and as such even when run in a 64bit operating system memory amounts greater than 4GB will be of little use to FSX directly, however, when applied with a 64bit OS and i7 FSX SP2 (or RTM/SP1 with edited fsx.exe files) will be allowed access to a full 4GB with other processes and applications running along side having access to more (over and above). Therefore 6GB (3x2GB) i7 systems as addons and aircraft become more complicated will benefit FSX on a 64bit OS. If you switch to i7 you are far better off on 3x2GB than 3x1GB in system memory."
FAC

ok, soooo what I take from this (since it'll be a cold day in "you know where" before I could ever think about owning an i7 system) is that since I assumed that going to 64bit (I was unaware that FSX is solely a 32bit program) and upgrading the RAM to 8gig would be of great benefit to FSX, what I could have done was put that $320 into a killer video card or faster CPU and probably seen more improvement, lol. Figures!!

 

[Anneke]

Guys!!! there are two questions above as to why we should use 64 bit instead of 32 bit. What are the reasons to change. Please could anyone take the trouble to answer our questions..

 

[falcon409]

Guys!!! there are two questions above as to why we should use 64 bit instead of 32 bit. What are the reasons to change. Please could anyone take the trouble to answer our questions..

If your question relates to FSX, then FAC257 kinda answered that one. . . .there's no real advantage to a 64bit OS as it relates to FSX because FSX is a 32bit program.
If the question is strictly from an OS standpoint then the answer is a 64bit OS is faster and it's able to address more memory, so memory intensive programs, like database, runs faster.

 

[FAC257]

My thoughts towards possibly going to 64bit when I do this next system upgrade will not be directed towards better FSX performance itself.

If I'm understanding everything correctly, the 64bit will allow me to head for the bigger ram numbers which should help out with my bad habit of serious multi-tasking while I'm flying.

Very seldom is FSX the only thing I have running when I'm flying.

FAC

 

[SkippyBing]

From personal experience and anecdotally from others, FSX on 64 bit Win 7 is faster loading than on 32 bit XP. I'm also getting better FPS but that may be my own hardware set up rather than a general rule. As you get 32 and 64 bit on the same disc there's no price difference between the two and so far I've had no snags running 64 bit so I'd recommend that as, as FAC mentions, it lets you run more things concurrently and certainly has no observable downside when running FSX.

 

[Bjoern]

So thanks to MSDNAA, I'm writing this post from Windows 7 x64 Pro right now.

And honestly, I'm a bit disappointed. RAM usage is still way too high for my taste, even after having disabled much unneeded stuff.

The curse of x64 OSes?

 

[Lionheart]

Good to know Bjoern.

I was thinking of getting Win7 64 just for FSX, but to find out its a 32bit based program makes that prospect no longer a good one.


Odd, as the gauges in FSX are designed for 64bit OS...



Bill

 

[jdhaenens]

Unless they've fixed it, the 3ds Max export tools did not work on 64 bit machines.?

 

[falcon409]

. . . . I was thinking of getting Win7 64 just for FSX, but to find out its a 32bit based program makes that prospect no longer a good one. Odd, as the gauges in FSX are designed for 64bit OS...
Bill

Yea, kinda frustrating for me as well after upgrading from 4 gig to 8 gig assuming it would boost FSX somewhat only to find after the fact that it had no effect at all. I could have spent that extra cash on a faster CPU and gotten more for my money. Considering 64bit isn't anything new so-to-speak, it's baffling why MS would go with the lower end OS for a Sim that was supposed to be (with the advent of DX10) extremely realistic. By the way, what good does DX10 do anyway? I've used it before, briefly, and saw no appreciable difference.

 

[Lionheart]

The beauty of DX10 was it can make things fuzzy.

:d


(that blurry effect like with sunlight reflecting off of things, etc).




Bill

 

[falcon409]

The beauty of DX10 was it can make things fuzzy.

:d (that blurry effect like with sunlight reflecting off of things, etc). Bill

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, geee, sorry I missed that, lol.

 

[some1]

And honestly, I'm a bit disappointed. RAM usage is still way too high for my taste, even after having disabled much unneeded stuff.

The curse of x64 OSes?

Sort of.

64 bit OS can take more RAM (maybe 200, 300MB) because memory adresses are 2 times longer so it takes more space to store them (memory pointers have to be 64 bit).

Other than that, Vista and 7 simply have different memory management than XP and they use more memory because they can and are designed for faster computers than XP. System adapts to how much memory your computer have and if you have 4GB it can take more memory than XP on 512MB machine.

Odd, as the gauges in FSX are designed for 64bit OS...

No, they're not. You can't make 64 bit gauge that will run inside FSX. The SimConnect libraries from SDK are also 32 bit only, but the new Managed SimConnect SDK from Tim “Beatle” Gregson can be 64 bit. But it's only for external applications that communicate with FSX.

Yea, kinda frustrating for me as well after upgrading from 4 gig to 8 gig assuming it would boost FSX somewhat only to find after the fact that it had no effect at all. I could have spent that extra cash on a faster CPU and gotten more for my money. Considering 64bit isn't anything new so-to-speak, it's baffling why MS would go with the lower end OS for a Sim that was supposed to be (with the advent of DX10) extremely realistic.

-upgrading an old code to be compiled as 64 bit can be Hell when it's not well written.
-because every component has to be 64 bit, say goodbye to compatibility with all c++ gauges that were made before, unless they will be loaded to separate 32 bit process.
-Even now, nobody is selling games that are exclusive 64 bit programs, 3 years ago when FSX was released it was even more exotic thing. So there had to be 32 and 64 bit variants. So now imagine that we have not only 2 service packs and Acceleration that are partially incompatible between themselves, but also 64 bit variants of them.
-it's worth for a program to be 64 bit only when it uses more memory. The performance increase usually is negligible. FSX doesn't use more memory than 2GB simply because it's written to not exceed 32 bit limit of 2GB per process and doesn't keep to much data (especially textures) in memory. Only with very complex (or bugged) addons you can sometimes push it over 2GB limit and generate OOM errors on a 32 bit OS


Anyway, on a 64 bit OS even 32 bit program can have 4GB avaliable memory (instead of 2GB/3GBon a 32 bit OS). It is more than enough, but it doesn't change much because FSX don't use the extra memory in normal processing (see above). You simply don't get OOM errors, and that's all.

 

[Bjoern]

Unless they've fixed it, the 3ds Max export tools did not work on 64 bit machines.?

Not even in compatibility mode?

One reason for my switch to 7 was the "XP mode" which basically lets applications run in a virtual x86 XP environment.

Still need to figure out how it works though...

Other than that, Vista and 7 simply have different memory management than XP and they use more memory because they can and are designed for faster computers than XP. System adapts to how much memory your computer have and if you have 4GB it can take more memory than XP on 512MB machine.

Reason number two for the switch.


Seems I'm stuck with 7 anyways, so well...let's make the best of it.

 

[SkippyBing]

Unless they've fixed it, the 3ds Max export tools did not work on 64 bit machines.?

Not strictly true, they won't work in 64 bit versions of MAX, but they will work on 32 bit versions of Max on a 64 bit machine.

 

[jdhaenens]

Ahhh, good. I've just started on my GMAX Bible tutorials and was looking at shifting to Win 7 64 Bit. What I experienced with XP 64 was that the graphics address space was taken out of ram in excess of the 2g+ that FSX was using.

Thanks!

Jim

 

[Irocx]

I spent the weekend loading up W7/64 Pro RTM on a new HD along with FSX and all the goodies. I really like this new OS, everything blazes, fast boot and loads - no problem with compatibility , BUT...... I have these blasted micro stutters in FSX - anyone been on that road yet?

Just minor, repeated pauses in the scenery while taxing yet the frames are strong - almost like somethings repeatedly hitting the CPU, yet I have no anti-virus, defender, firewall, UAC, indexing, error reporting, auto update etc, etc running.

I've tried every available Nvidia driver for my 8800GT, forced vsync on/off, updated Directx.....windowed mode works fine and even tried DX10 which works great and unlocked frames which seemed to help too. Multiple TBM settings didn't work either and defrag'd twice with Ultimate defrag moving FSX to the outer reaches of the disc.... what gives here? I run the same 4.05 GHZ rig with XP64 and all is smooth. Driver issue?

I love the OS if all the tools work with it, but these graphical hesitations have been a real

 

[kjb]

I'm surprised at the problems Excel 2007 is having with Win7 RC1. I do a lot of work in Excel and started trying it with Win7...bad news. It starts off okay, then starts claiming "sharing violations" and can't save the spreadsheet. I wrote spreadsheet and have been using it for years with no problems until trying it in Win7.

Win7 does run FSX really well, so a dual boot setup makes sense with XP for work and Win7 for FSX.

 

[Drake]

I'm surprised at the problems Excel 2007 is having with Win7 RC1. I do a lot of work in Excel and started trying it with Win7...bad news. It starts off okay, then starts claiming "sharing violations" and can't save the spreadsheet. I wrote spreadsheet and have been using it for years with no problems until trying it in Win7.

Win7 does run FSX really well, so a dual boot setup makes sense with XP for work and Win7 for FSX.

They're gonna want you to buy a new version of Office I bet. Good to hear it runs FSX well.