Graphic Cards

[plumber]

Hi, My present system is as follows;
W7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1
Intel Pentium CPU G3220 @ 3.00GHz
4 GB Ram
Nividia GeForce GTS 450

Will I gain anything by installing a later version Graphic Card, this is purely for FS9.
At the age of 77 I do not wish to upgrade the CPU as I do not fancy uploading everything
again.
Your comments would be most appreciated.
Brian H

[Firebird]

I use an NVIDIA GeForce GTX750 Ti.

A year on from me buying this it should be well within your price range. The standard GTX750 has 2GB of ram whereas the GTX750 Ti has 4GB. It is small and very quiet. Search for a review on it.
So if you could find a Ti that one will give you will have a bonus.

[plumber]

Thanks Steve is it a straight swop one for one?
Cheers
Brian

[Firebird]

Standard slot, no extra power required, if I remember correctly, but the review(s) will mention that.

CORRECTION the standard Ti has 2GB RAM but you can find them with 4GB.

[plumber]

Thanks Steve, Will look into it.

[plumber]

Steve, Am updating my PC (Via my Friendly Computer Shop)today with your recommendation of GC,plus additional Ram.
Now my question is Re FS9 what do I have to do on the PC post installation.
Would appreciate your input.
Many thanks
Brian H

[Firebird]

OK people who have installed on Win 10 systems say that the install goes fine and I have nothing to dispute that. What you must do is have the NoCD patch installed for it to run.

In an ideal world what I would do is ensure that I have a number of internal drives.
I have a 250GB SSD as my C: drive. Nothing else on but the MS install stuff. This makes it easier for backup and recovery purposes.
Then have at least one massive HD, at least 2TB in size. This you then partition into several drives of sizes that suit you.
I have D: (Programs) and an E: (Data) partitions of 250GB each. The D: is where you install ALL installable programs. The E: drive is where all portable programs are installed plus all of your data such as Word, Excel docs etc etc.

When you back up you back up the C: and D: drives together to ensure that the reg entries match the installations. The E: drive you can back up on another day.

Now for the rest of the drive you can partition how you like. My advice is not to allocate all the space unless you need to. This allows you to expand partitions should it become necessary.
On the HD I have an F: (FS9) drive of 250GB. This is where I install FS9. DO NOT install it at the default MS location. This leads to permission problems with other FS related addons.

Now the simplest and quickest way to get your FS back up and running is to simply install FS9 to F: and then copy the entire backup of your FS9 folder over the top. This ensures that FS9 is in the registry but now you have all your planes and scenery in place to.

Now one other thing that you will need to restore from your backup is the fs9.cfg file so restore your C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FS9 folder across from your system backup. Your saved flights and weather files are saved in the C:\Users\xxx\Documents\Flight Simulator Files folder so that folder will need to be restored as well.

Now this next bit is not necessary but I highly recommend it.
Sometimes users get very frustrated with scenery stuttering on loadup when in game. You can mitigate this due to a little known feature in FS9.
When you add addon scenery one of the parms added to the scenery,cfg is the local parm which states where the scenery folder exists, such as :-
[Area.037]
Title=Propeller Objects
Local=Scenery\props
Layer=37
Active=TRUE
Required=TRUE

Now this defaults to the base FS9 installation folder, in my case "F:\Flight Simulator 9", but you can actually specify a full path name and therefore place the scenery anywhere. So if you were to add a separate HD, or preferably an SSD, and make that your S: (Scenery) drive then it means that when loading scenery a different drive is being accessed from the main F: drive and therefore the loading is quicker.
To migrate your scenery across is quite easy. I created a folder called "FS9_Scenery" in the root of my S: drive and copied all my foldered addon scenery to that new location and then amended the local parms in the scenery.cfg file in a text editor, such as :-

[Area.457]
Local=S:\FS9_Scenery\MAIW Global Scenery Library Objects FS9
Title=MAIW Global Scenery Library Objects FS9
Required=FALSE
Active=TRUE
Layer=103

My S: drive is a small 120GB SSD.

Now if you follow my setup then you can backup different drives on different days so as to impact your computer time as little as possible. Like stated earlier C+D drives should be backed up at the same time and it therefore follows that F+S drives should be backed up at the same time.

Now one last safety tip.
Once you recover your fs9.cfg file rename it. Then once you have started FS9 it will create a clean cfg file. The reason for doing this is that Win 10 is not tolerant of incorrect graphics card parms and this was the reason that people got black screens if they switched to full screen mode once they upgraded to 10, if they had changed their cards since their original installation.
Once you have your cfg file with the correct graphics card parms in then you can copy all the other stuff back from the renamed original fs9.cfg file EXCEPT the graphics card section, using a text editor.

Hopefully this makes sense and is easy to follow. I also hope that it answers your question. If you need anything clarified then let me know.

[plumber]

I have W7, it was the fs9 cfg bit that I could not remember, from doing a previous update. Many thanks
Brian H


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[Firebird]

Sorry, I am assumed that it would be W10 as you said it was a new 'puter.

[plumber]

No just an improvement to existing PC. Your info will be useful to anyone doing a full upgrade. So many thanks for your input.


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[plumber]

Having a few problems following the update, can anyone advise me as to where I locate the CFG for FS9 on Windows 7 PC please.

[jimrodger]

Having a few problems following the update, can anyone advise me as to where I locate the CFG for FS9 on Windows 7 PC please.

C:\Users\"Username"\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FS9 is the usual place.

Jim

You might have to go into "Folder options" - "View" and change "Hidden files and folders" to "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" to be able to see the folder/file.

[plumber]

Thanks Jim, will give it a go.
Brian H

[plumber]

Thanks was able to move the cfg to enable new Graphic Card to set itself up. I was in the hope that this would allow me to access my FS9, however when previously setting up in settings for the new card I had a problem with the screen resolution, so in so doing I must have exceeded the limits as on accessing FS9 after a period of time the screen goes black with a message stating exceeded limits or words to that effect. To get out of this I have to s/w the PC off. So can anybody assist me with problem.

[Firebird]

What is your default resolution on your monitor, including colour depth, and your refresh rate.

It sounds to me that you are using something different to the defaults and FS blows it out. If you are not using your defaults then use them and see if the problem still occurs. Make sure you have the latest nvidia drivers.

With my GTX750 Ti (4GB) I have a native resolution of 1920x1200, 32bit and 60Hz with my monitors.

[plumber]

Thanks Steve for reply, I have same GTX750 as you plus 8gb of ram.I am unable to set my Monitors resolution via the N'videa Control Panel as the settings available are lower than the monitors requirement. Just a thought if I deleted the "no disc" file from FS9 then inserted a replacement would I get access to the Sim?
Cheers
Brian

[Firebird]

The NoDisc option only removes the checking for an original disc. Nothing else is removed from the proggy. That is not the cause of your problem.

The issue you report with the resolution settings are the reason that you are getting the blowout.
What are your monitors?
What are your monitor(s) requirement specs?
Have you got the correct drivers for that monitor?

[plumber]

Monitor is original no change. But I am unable to set up its specs via N'videa Control Panel.


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[Firebird]

What monitor model is it and does the nvidia control panel show that as the model installed?

For example when I go into the Display - Change Resolution tab section 1. shows both my monitors as Samsung SMS24A450s and in section 2 it shows 1920x1200 (native) which matches what I know.

It sounds like it may be the case that the monitor driver has been lost after the hardware upgrade. I know mine was and I had to re-install it. You may be using the generic driver at the moment.

[plumber]

Thanks will have to check. However I am on a PC free day today, instructions from her indoors.[emoji106]


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