With sliders to 4-2-2-2-4 I'm getting about 50 FPS when nothing is going on, and 17-20 FPS in full combat or near the front lines. It feels choppy at times and it's really killing my immersion.

My rig

- MSI M/B K9A2CF-F AMD 790X
- AMD Athlon II X4 640 Quad-Core 3.0 GHz (OC'd to 3.42 GHz)
- 4GB RAM
- Seagate Barracuda 250GB Sata HD (7200 rpm)
- Samsung Spinpoint TB HD (7200 RPM)
- DVDRW/CDRW drive
- Corsair 650TX 650W ATX12V
- GIGABYTE Radeon 6850 HD video card
- Windows 7 (32-bit)
- Acer 23" monitor (max res 1920 x 1080)

I have to launch the game twice after booting up to start a mission. I get a blue spinning cursor of death then have to ctrl-alt-delete quit then on the next restart it's fine. I have done a full reinstall multiple times and was having the same issue with OFF. Beyond the low FPS I've been having some crashes lately, particularly when getting ready to land or sometimes I'm just cruising mid-flight. Either WOFF of CSF3 stops working. I know WOFF has been stable for most folks so it points back to my rig. I would have liked to have invested in a faster CPU on my last upgrade but my Mobo held me back. It's at least 5 years old and I've replaced everything but that since I bought this rig used.

Sometimes I randomly get the blue screen of death and my computer just reboots itself. I was having more of these issues after my CPU overclock, then finally when I pulled back to 3.42 GHz it's been mostly stable.


AMD card settings.

3D Application Settings
AA: use application settings
AF: 16X (per pixel samples)
Tessellation: use application settings
Catalyst AI: Quality (medium setting)
Wait for vertical refresh: Off, unless application specifies
AA Mode: Adaptive Multi-sample AA
OpenGL Settings: Triple buffering not checked


AMD OverDrive

High-performance GPU clock settings: 865 MHz
High-performance memory clock settings: 1195 MHz
Enable manual fan control: 100%


Workshop settings (the settings I feel affect performance).

UI Aspect: 16:9 wide
In Cloud Fog: off
Aircraft Skin Res: normal
Terrain Detail Textures: Detail Textures Normal
Woods/Forests Density: Low
Resolution: 1920x1080, 32 bit depth, 8 samples AA
Sliders set to 4,2,2,2,4
G Effects: off

Maybe I need an upgrade to my Mobo, then a faster CPU? Maybe my PSU is causing some of these issues? It's about 3 years old. I feel like I want to get this system stable, get some better performance, and of course do it on a budget.

Hi Shiloh..i hope this advice could possibly help...

1.Your 3d settings.AA.=.Override app settings
AAx4,filter standard,AA method =multisampling
Morphological filtering=off

2.AF=Override application settings,AF level =8x
Texture filtering quality=standard


3.Wait for vertical refresh=Always on
Open GL Triple buffering =ON

Tessellation,and Max Tessellation=AMD optimized

your workshop settings keep as is EXCEPT on resolution take your AA samples down to 2

Your Vertical refresh on this method will prevent possible screen tearing,whils OPEN GL Triple buffering when turned on May improve frame rates IF your FPS is less than your monitor refresh rate.(Which yours is)..i hope this helps,feel free to ask me any more questions if required Ps..try 5,3,3,5,5 with the above settings and then tweak as necessary.I NEVER oc my GPU and i always let C.C.C control my GPU fan bud...PPS..Ankors mod has improved FPS on a few systems....AHH just noticed your running a 32bit OS..Any chance you can get hold of WIN 7 64bit?,it handles your Ram a lot better.

Sounds like your CPU speed may be a bit of a bottleneck and it has obviously caused issues due to it's overclocking. Have you tried lowering it, maybe even to stock speed, to see how well it runs? I ask because you admit to having stability issues while it was overclocked, so your performance problems may be of the same sort. WOFF is very CPU0 intensive so perhaps your overclocked CPU is becoming unstable or overheating. Must be one of those two issues if you get crashes.

Other than that, the 4GB of system RAM while using Windows 7 is rather low. I'd try to bump it up to 8GB at the least. It's probably the cheapest option. If you can find the exact same model of RAM (for any open RAM slots) ,or replace the smaller ones with the largest your board supports, it will probably help a bit. Can't guarantee it'll be huge but your computer is probably using hard drive space as 'Virtual Memory' while playing the game, which is bad for texture loading performance & such.

I upgraded my previous 4 or 5 year old PC's RAM from 4GB to 8GB a couple years ago and there was a small improvement in some games. It also ran a bit warmer but was fine.. just a side effect of the specific motherboard it had.

I dont think 8GB of RAM with a 32bit os makes any kind of difference Nefaro..I may be wrong though.

Thanks guys. Adger, I adjusted my settings as indicated above and my performance is pretty much the same. I just had a campaign fight with 3 Pups against Albs near the front lines and my FPS were consistently dipping below 20 FPS down to 13-15 at times. I even crashed on landing and my pilot died because of a hiccup.

Nefaro, I OC'd to improve performance as my FPS were abysmal to start. The OC has helped with that but perhaps it's caused some instability. I've checked my heat and that's been fine. People have had good success OCing this CPU.Is the 32 bit hurting me much? I made the decision not to go 64 bit on an install a few years back as I would have had to wipe my hard drive and that would have caused me some issues.

I had some issues with my original ram where my machine was only seeing 2GB and not the full 4GB. I got my hands on some used ram and my Mobo wasn't seeing them at all. The ram worked at first but since then, I get a blank screen on a restart with that ram so I've since removed it. Correct me if I'm wrong but 32 bit only allows for 8 GB ram.

Anyhow, I'm wondering if I can get better performance without a major upgrade but in case I have to do it I started some initial research on upgrading my Mobo, CPU and ram.

Crap.. didn't realize he was using a 32-bit OS. I just take 64-bit for granted these days.

Without a 64-bit OS, a memory upgrade wouldn't be useful.

I've been at these settings for months and I'm coming to realize that my rig isn't going to run WOFF to my liking unless I upgrade certain components. I think I'd benefit from a new processor but my Mobo is so old I have just about the fastest processor that I can have. So I started poking around a bit and I found a Mobo and processor that may work. The extra ram I have that is not currently working with my Mobo may work with a newer one. That would take me up to 8MB ram.

ASUS P8Z77-V LX LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007MKG...d=AZA8F2FX7HCUJ

Intel Core i5-4670K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.4 GHZ 6 MB Cache
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CO8T...d=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I would try using a 64-bit OS to go with your 64-bit CPU and then upgrading the memory to 8GB. I am using an AMD 965 (std 3.4Ghz o/c to 3.9Ghz). Maybe you could get one of those second hand?

I also run ProcessLasso so that I can run WOFF in its own processors 2 and 3 and make sure all the other stuff runs in 0 and 1.

Shiloh, with the overclocked CPU you have values like my Intel i5.
I have Win 7 (32bit) with 4GB memory.

The only things I have different are

- Samsung 80GB SSD drive (with WOFF on it)
- ATI RADEON HD7870 graphic card

I use settings

Aircraft 5
Terrain Detail 3
Scenery Detail 4
Effects 5
Clouds 5

Graphic card overrides application settings, as Adger recommended.
And I receive 60 frps.

I just noticed one major factor in your setup:


You are running WOFF at 8x AA!

That is murderous demand. Your 1920x resolution is being drawn eight times for every frame displayed.

That right there is your biggest hog. Mine is only passable at 4xAA and it's a newer system. Yours probably looks like a slide show over the front. You may have to lower it to 2x even, depending on how smooth you want it.

Thanks Jim. I was trying to avoid going 64 bit as I have to sweep my drive and that's a monumental task I'm not ready for. Do you think 64 bit makes a big difference other than having the ability to run more RAM? I'm giving that ProcessLasso a good look.




It's good to see Olham that your rig is similar to mine in many aspects and you're getting good performance. The benefit to the newer i5 is that people are OCing that card to 4.5 GHz and above with stability. I wouldn't necessarily go that high but it's good to know it has that capability.

So that is a separate drive for WOFF? I currently run WOFF on my TB drive to keep the startup disk cleaner as I'm using up 85% of the space on it. The TB drive is getting full as well and is probably at the same capacity although I can dump some stuff. Maybe that is slowing me down?

Then are you saying that maybe a faster GPU could be my issue? That would be a slightly expensive but easy fix. I wonder if my Mobo limits my getting a more powerful GPU?




If you're referencing the settings in Workshops Nefaro I've since lowered that to 2X and I don't see much difference if any at all in my FPS.

That is odd. It should make a very noticeable difference. Do you have your video card software set to override the game settings instead?

I would check those settings, too. Make sure you're not using high AA or Supersampling & such.

Shiloh, my CPU is running at normal speed, with 3.30 GHz.

Nefaro, with my ATI HD7870, it is better to have

- Anti-aliasing: 8x
- Anisotropic Filtering: 4x

Runs smoother, and looks better, too.

Shiloh;

Just a suggestion! If your pocket book allows for it, Buy an SSD drive of 250 gig and make your system dual boot.
Make the SSD 64 bit bootable. You can add the extra memory that the 64 bit system can use as well. That way you have the faster SSD for games and can boot into it and at the same time you keep your original 32 bit system to boot to when you need it.

This is the approach I took and it really makes a difference.

All good info. to help me figure this out Olham. Do your other settings look similar to mine? I did change the ones Adger suggested changing.



Not exactly sure how to do that Robert. I found this online at New Egg. So I can put up to 16 GB of memory? Does this need Windows 7 64 bit?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01AZ5550

Shiloh, you should let the graphic card do the AA - here are the settings I would recommend to try:

AMD card settings.

3D Application Settings
AA: 8x - override application settings
AF: 4X
Tessellation: AMD optimised
Catalyst AI: Quality (medium setting)
Wait for vertical refresh: Always on
AA Mode: Adaptive Multi-sample AA
OpenGL Settings: Triple buffering ON


Workshop settings (the settings I feel affect performance).

UI Aspect: 16:9 wide
In Cloud Fog: off
Aircraft Skin Res: normal
Terrain Detail Textures: Detail Textures Normal
Woods/Forests Density: Low
Resolution: 1920x1080, 32 bit depth, 8 samples AA
Sliders set to 5,3,4,5,5
G Effects: off

Please report if it works. Don't be afraid to set the values all like my example.
If it doesn't work, you can still step down.
But some stuff works better at HIGHER settings, I noticed.

You need 64 bit OS for WOFF as the sim is designed for it and can take advantage of more memory.
CPU will be taxed more than most apps or games with WOFF.
CPU may be being throttled by the BIOS. When CPU overheats the thermal settings in BIOS override and slow the CPU down unless you disable it - however maybe a bad idea if you need better cooling first though or lower o/clock).

AA must OVERRIDE application settings.

Try 5,3,3,5,5 sliders (terrain and scenery are biggest fps hit.
See FAQ for fps tips.

Not exactly sure how to do that Robert. I found this online at New Egg. So I can put up to 16 GB of memory? Does this need Windows 7 64 bit?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01AZ5550

[/quote]

Shiloh, that SSD at Newegg is exactly like mine. Yes you should create a bootable SSD drive loaded with Windows 7 64 bit. Then make your system dual bootable. If you don't know how to do this we can deal with that later if and when you decide to go that route.

Polovski's suggestion which follows is a very wise one as well, and cooling will be important if your CPU runs hot after an OC fix. If you start getting blue screen crashes after an OC your probably want to run something like "Core Temp" which is free to monitor your CPU Core temperatures.

I did go with those settings Olham and they seemed to help a bit in QC. I need to test in campaign mode to see how it does when I get into a scrap. Thanks Pol for chiming in...much appreciated time out of your busy schedule.

I like this idea Robert. Both my HDs are only 7200 RPM so they're likely to slow things down regardless of my CPU. So I would need this SSD drive, Windows 7 64 bit, and perhaps some RAM to boost me up there. So does the SSD replace my current HD as the bootable drive? Do I need to clear off any of my other drives (something I'd like to avoid) or can I just load Windows 64 bit to this drive and boot from it when I want to?

Shiloh, I use my SSD drive as my bootdrive C.
There is only Windows and the programs on it, and WOFF.

The other 2 drives are for saving my works, pics, music and other stuff;
and all other games are also on there.
(WOFF is privileged for the SSD drive, to make it work faster.)