Fsx cpu 100% usage

[twinb228]

Not sure what is happening but when i play fsx steam I get cpu spikes of 100% every minute or so. This is with default planes or payware planes. When the cpu spikes I go from 75+ fps to around 15 fps (sometimes lower). I have reinstalled windows, steam and fsx 3 times already and I get same issue. This computer was just built a couple weeks ago. Any suggestions? Think a hardware issue? I am going to check all connections to be sure. I never had this problem with old pc that was way older.

The build is;
Amd ryzen 5 2600x
Msi x470 motherboard
Radeon rx550 4gb graphics card
16 gb Ddr4 ram

[Rogue]

FSX is CPU intensive. The speed of your cpu is more important than your graphics card. It will use all the cpu you can feed it. It's an old program and it was designed that way.

[Rogen]

Certainly true and you can usually smooth that out a bit with some tweeking.

For instance you could add/set the following values which are fairly generic and should help most machines with good gear.

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=4094 \\ FSX will use all cores except 0 (for a 12 thread processor), use AffinityMask=65534 for a 16 thread processor. Leaves one thread free for everything other than FSX-SE thus improving responsiveness.

http://www.gatwick-fsg.org.uk/affinitymask.aspx?SubMenuItem=utilties


[TERRAIN]
WATER_EFFECTS=4 \\ Water effects are very intensive and take multiple processing passes, 4 is a good compromise, especially if you have REX textures).

[Display]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0 \\ Let FSX run as fast as it can and use Nvida Inspector or AMD equivelent to mange the upper frame rate (e.g. set to 61 fps) Using a zero settings means FSX-SE ignores the value of TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and instead pumps data as fast as it can.

[BUFFERPOOLS]
UsePools=0 \\ Bufferpools with a value of 0 sets FSX to push the GFX card to manage the buffers instead of the CPU. Default is no [Bufferpools] entry in fsx.cfg

Cheers

[twinb228]

I will give those a try. What I don't get is when it does spike all cores/threads spike to 100 at the same time. Core 0 always stays at around 100 but the spikes drive all of them up. Do I have to add the affinity line item? I have been looking in the configuration file and don't see it in there. I don't see buffer pools either.

[twinb228]

In windows 10 you can set your affinity under task manager. I set fsx to use cpu 8,9,10&11. While they will still get an occasional spike to 100% on those cores, my Fps stays between 25 and 50 in the air and doesn't go below 20 on the ground. Is it a possibility that fsx just doesn't like all the cores and just runs better on fewer?

[Rogen]

Originally posted by twinb228:

I will give those a try. What I don't get is when it does spike all cores/threads spike to 100 at the same time. Core 0 always stays at around 100 but the spikes drive all of them up. Do I have to add the affinity line item? I have been looking in the configuration file and don't see it in there. I don't see buffer pools either.

Just the nature of the game of what is FSX-SE.

Back when it was developed and initially released (2006, same year as the first iPhone) )it was very much CPU and single core based because that was the hardware of the day. With the service pack releases came many improvments including pushing out to support multi-core processors but even then the hardware was 2/4 core without threading.

Fast forward to today and we have amazing levels of hardware with which to run the app, however FSX was never really optomised for what we have now. AMD's Ryzen is a good processor and I too have one (Ryzen 7), overclocked as well and FSX-SE will still maximise to 100 % (except for core zero as I have an affinity mask applied) . I see it mostly when textures are being loaded and processed, so perhaps reducing texture related quailty settings will a help e.g. mesh complexity, Orbx recommend a complexity level of 5.

Core 0 in your case will be the main control thread (core 1, in my case) and will vary across the range. You can demonstrate the use of the control thread by flying around in a small circle, once the circle's textures/scenery has loaded, the cores will drop down to next to nothing while the control core will vary while perfoming it's managment for the FSX processes. It's also much more noticeble if you set an affinity mask to leave core 0 free from FSX use as the control thread will then be on core 1.

Both the [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask and [BUFFERPOOLS] UsePools do not exist in a standard fsx.cfg but it is no problem to put them in and with the Affinitymask you can use the URL I supplied to calculate your own and enable/disable selected cores/threads as you desire.

I found leaving core zero free for other processing means FSX doesn't suck up all the processing power and thus other jobs like the OS, disk access, etc. are not starved for CPU while FSX eschews 100% CPU.

When it comes to tweeking I've tried them all and the ones I've supplied are the ones I've found to be of the most use. It is worthy of note though that Prepar3D makes far better use of the GPU than FSX-SE and in that sim's operation it is a rarer thing for 100% to be consumed, infact for P3D I don't bother with an affinity mask.

Tweeks are easy ehough to apply and can be commented out/in as testing progresses, you can also use the comments for notes and my FSX-SE config file is littered with commented out tweeks and copious notes on the testing results and values of the tweeks.

[Rogen]

Originally posted by twinb228:

In windows 10 you can set your affinity under task manager. I set fsx to use cpu 8,9,10&11. While they will still get an occasional spike to 100% on those cores, my Fps stays between 25 and 50 in the air and doesn't go below 20 on the ground. Is it a possibility that fsx just doesn't like all the cores and just runs better on fewer?

Yes you can but that's a bit fiddly, better to place the required affiniity mask into the fsx.cfg, that way it will always be used.

There is another option for controlling executables and that is Priority. I set mine to high so as to ensure that when it comes to resources - FSX-SE will be marked as a high priority. Note I don't use realtime as I've found other processes such as sound drivers etc. are starved and become stuttery.

So that I don't have to set the value each time, I call FSX-SE via a start script shortcut that fires off the below start script I've written. Essentualy it is a .txt file with the.txt extension changed to .cmd

"E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\Start FSX-SE.cmd"

And in the file is...

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq fsx.exe" | find /i "fsx.exe" > nul ||(START "FSX-SE" /HIGH /D "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX" /I "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\fsx.exe")


The script also has other lines to start FSX-SE realted apps e.g. Active Sky Next, Broderless Gaming, Joy To Key and a VAS monitor which all use the same above script format. The basics are the script checks to see if the app is already running and if so doesn't try to run it, otherwise fires it up with the Priority set to high.

Cheers

[twinb228]

Thanks for the help. I set my affinity mask to 3584 (last 3 cores) since that is what I found worked best with my aerosoft and A2A planes. Using the task manager to test affinity is really helpful. But actually putting it in the config files is great. No more fiddling. I also read that fsx does a lighting texture refresh every 61 seconds and causes the 100% cpu usage spikes. I think I have it to something I can live with now.

[Jammerjonn]

twinb228, thanks for the tip. How did you set it in task manager?

In windows 10 you can set your affinity under task manager. I set fsx to use cpu 8,9,10&11

[markoscardoso]

Please, could someone HELP me! I can't take this ERROR anymore.

My CPU at 100% in 15 minutes of using Flight Simulator X - Steam Edition.
I've done all the testing and configuration changes possible. Decreases graphics, scenarios, traffic, ran the simulator in compatibility mode with Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista and nothing, always the same error.
I already went to advanced system settings in the performance options and made changes to the virtual memory by placing an initial size of 5,000 and a maximum size of 10,000 and it didn't work.

My computer:
Intel Core i5-9400F processor
Asus TUF H310M-Plus Gaming Motherboard
Kingston A400 SSD, 480GB, SATA
8GB, 2666MHz, DDR4
Gigabyte Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti D5 4G, GDDR5

[Rogen]

It's not an error that FSX-SE uses 100% of CPU, in fact it is normal and expected operation.

The thread was discussing how to use an affinity mask to leave a core free from FSX-SE so that there is at least a core not being used by FSX-SE and thus one that is not at 100%.

There are a few config tweaks mentioned in the thread that do help improve performance, but I would still be expecting 100% core use without an affinity mask applied.

That is unless there is some actual error occurring?