Military AI Works

So...i've finally got a computer that can run FSX pretty smoothly. One thing I have noticed is that after I have added my AI and addons is that it takes about 8 minutes to fully load. Will a SSD drive help any? Any other tips or tricks for better load up time?

Mark,
As with anything the basic rule of thumb is that if you can read the file(s) from the disk quicker it can load quicker. Assuming that your nice new system will not have BUS bottlenecks then yes with an SSD you would see a decrease in load time, however the biggest speed increase you will see there will be with the dim running, i.e. scenery loading quicker from the disk.

You can also decrease the time to load with a non=SSD system but you would need a RAID 0 array (striped) to achieve best results. This would also see most benefits in operation for the same reason, two disks being read at once rather than one.

The other obvious speed ups are to defrag your HD. There various other bits and pieces that you can do to speed up the process but it involves reducing the amount of data being read, so it depends if you don't mind altering things when you start up FS or whether you want to have anything set in stone so as to avoid messing around pre-startup.

I have two aircraft folders and two scenery folders on my big rig. When I want to stream line I merely change the name of the folders prior to starting the sim. I do the same thing on my hobby PC, that way I can start the simulater in about 20 seconds rather than 5 minutes.
Not saying its perfect but it works fine for me when you need to open and close the simulator constantly to view your model updates.
Cheer's,
Mark

I have my OS on one SSD and FSX and FS9 on another which gives me FSX startup times of ~20 seconds and saved flight startup times at airports with complete MAIW scenery/AI packages of ~35 seconds.

Thanks for the replies, looks like I will plan on getting a SSD here soon. I upgraded my card to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 and added a 600 watt power supply and FSX runs like a dream minus the load time.

djnocturnal wrote:Thanks for the replies, looks like I will plan on getting a SSD here soon. I upgraded my card to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 and added a 600 watt power supply and FSX runs like a dream minus the load time.

I updated to a GTX 650 about 5 months ago, massive improvement for me to.

Mark, I highly recommend you use this web page to tweek your FSX.cfg for maximum performance based on your system. Just fill in a few fields then upload your cfg, and they send you a tweeked one straight back.

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

Hey mark, I saw that yesterday while browsing the forums. It did help quite a bit. Good tool, highly recommend it!