Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I know for me editing the config file fixed my problem. Now when I use FSX I am also running windows 7 beta, for me it is the best option over xp and vista. But I must admit I have been using X-plane 9 as of late.
 
If anyone is still experiencing this problem under Win XP I have found out the main issue is AffinityMask. This controls how many cores runs with FSX. If you have an 8 core like me you need to try a setting of AffinityMask=254. This is a decimal interpretation of a binary format to decide which cores are used, in this case 11111110. 1=On 0=off. If you use a tool such as http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~gurwitz/core5/nav2tool.html you can convert the binary into a decimal value for fsx.

Please note that in my example above, the last 0 is the first core, so it is in fact back to front. Be aware this hasn't fixed all my problems but it I am slowly nailing them, but this should stop the 1-5 fps drops every 30 seconds or so.
 
Just an update for anyone finding this thread, I am following some advice on a Flightsim Forum which is extensive. I have been warned that the 2008 MP isn't ideal due to DDR2 Ram and the un-optimised nature of FSX. Stay tuned and I'll report back.

Mike
 
Just an update for anyone finding this thread, I am following some advice on a Flightsim Forum which is extensive. I have been warned that the 2008 MP isn't ideal due to DDR2 Ram and the un-optimised nature of FSX. Stay tuned and I'll report back.

Mike

Have you tried X-Plane with Windows? I'm curious if you would have the same problem.

I would like to use X-Plane or FSX with Windows because there is some very nice Garmin G1000 and GNS 430/530 software for those flight sims running under Windows (blah!)
 
No I haven't tried X-Plane on the windows partition I have XP9 on OSX - It runs very well (although I am turning the water shaders off at the mo as it is a huge hog) I can get 60fps and its very smooth. I reckon if it's that good on the Mac, it'll probably be better in Windows, but I'd rather be in OSX!

Unfortunately i like Fsx too, I have still got microstutters and am close to giving up, nothing works and no one seems to care to much on flightsim forums about a Mac user....
 
I've been reading this thread in hope that it would help me understand my issue with getting FSX to run smoothly, but as I'm not very computer minded when it comes to the technicality of it I would be greatly appreciative if someone could clear up my confusion.

Basically I have the new Mac Book Pro 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 with 256mb Video memory and a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT with 512mb video memory.

I have Windows XP 32bit installed via Bootcamp, with Flight sim X installed with Sp1.

I've noticed I'm not using alot of RAM when running FSX just over 800mb at the most out of the 4GB I have.

Dose having both a windows operating system and Macs system half my performance or something?
How comes I'm struggling to get a good, smooth frame rate with the graphics even at medium settings? :(

Really appreciate the spelling it out for me.
 
I've been reading this thread in hope that it would help me understand my issue with getting FSX to run smoothly, but as I'm not very computer minded when it comes to the technicality of it I would be greatly appreciative if someone could clear up my confusion.

Basically I have the new Mac Book Pro 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 with 256mb Video memory and a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT with 512mb video memory.

I have Windows XP 32bit installed via Bootcamp, with Flight sim X installed with Sp1.

I've noticed I'm not using alot of RAM when running FSX just over 800mb at the most out of the 4GB I have.

Dose having both a windows operating system and Macs system half my performance or something?
How comes I'm struggling to get a good, smooth frame rate with the graphics even at medium settings? :(

Really appreciate the spelling it out for me.

I don't know what the problem is, but for the last time Bootcamp does NOT affect performance in either OS!!!
 
I've been reading this thread in hope that it would help me understand my issue with getting FSX to run smoothly, but as I'm not very computer minded when it comes to the technicality of it I would be greatly appreciative if someone could clear up my confusion.

Basically I have the new Mac Book Pro 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB of Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 with 256mb Video memory and a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT with 512mb video memory.

I have Windows XP 32bit installed via Bootcamp, with Flight sim X installed with Sp1.

I've noticed I'm not using alot of RAM when running FSX just over 800mb at the most out of the 4GB I have.

Dose having both a windows operating system and Macs system half my performance or something?
How comes I'm struggling to get a good, smooth frame rate with the graphics even at medium settings? :(

Really appreciate the spelling it out for me.

When you say you're struggling to get a smooth frame rate, is it jerking or stuttering every couple of seconds? I have found little difference in running scenery pretty high or low, it still stutters.

From what I have learnt from all this, the primary issue with FSX is the CPU clockspeed and the bandwidth to the memory and memory type. DDR3 Ram, which I think your MBP has is good. The Video card is important but so much of the heavy work is being composited on the CPU, the guys on these forums are running Intel I7 Nehelem chips overclocked to 4+ Ghz:eek: and even some of them get stutters!

If you are serious you can follow the information found at http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1208959973 However, I have tried almost all of it and I have not noticed much improvement - it is alot of work and has left me exhausted.

Some other things I have observed though is that SP2 at least on my MP 2.8 Octo runs worse than the default install with some tweaks.

Good luck, and please anyone else with experience in this, please chime in. I feel like i'm one of the only Mac users trying to run fsx:confused:
 
Fired up my windows 7 today do do a little flight siming and every time I tried to load the real world weather my system froze. I don't have a lot of free time these days and I am really getting frustrated with Flight Simulator X. I like the eye candy but I can't deal with the buggyness. I guess I should stick with X plane and OS X.
 
I just got FSX running on bootcamp with win 7 and I get great framerates but still have the stutters. If anyone has had this issue and fixed it with Win 7 64 please let me know what you did.
 
It's been a while since I fix the stutters problem but I think it was my video driver. I am using the latest from nivida (not boot camp driver) and Flight Sim X is running great.
 
How did you guys installed fsx on your mac pro. I do have the new Mac Pro with Westmere CPU. Everytime I try to start the game it crashs after the Window, where you can choose your aircraft.
Windows7 says it found an error and is trying to find a solution but that's all.
Did I miss to install something?
I installed the new catalyst driver for HD 5870 and both service packs for FSX
 
Did you install the service packs? For me I just installed the sim and the service pack and that was it.
 
Not sure whats going on. I do remember that I had problems when I tried the direct x 10 preview. Otherwise I just running Windows 7 x64 with the standard nivida driver.
 
SP2 was TERRIBLE. As usual with MS, it was 2 steps forward, 1 step back - some of the things they fixed in SP1 they didn't carry forward into SP2, so you get some bugs fixed in SP2, but things they fixed in SP1 are broken again in SP2.

I really should set up my FSX again on my 2009 MP. I just don't have the time and patience to deal with installing all the add-ons I have and getting everything tuned and configged.

Having a FAST disk to load the textures and tuning the fibers and such in the config file is very important. You have to remember that this is the first version of FS that was built to use multi-cores and that was even an afterthought (many of the discussions with the developers highlight that when they were in initial development of FSX, they expected Intel to come out with faster single core CPU's, not go the multi-core route, which was pushed by AMD.) As such, very little of the FSX code really takes super big advantage of the additional cores. Having a higher single core speed is the more important factor (as well as having a high-end graphics card with lots of RAM on it, something we NEVER seem to get on Macs... )
 
Hmmm. I reinstalled the game but this time just the sp1. And again: it's not starting.
I don't know what else I should do
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.