Continuing from my last post… having been unable to do away with the Matrox appliance because I couldnt get 3 outputs to work from the 660 with the XGA projectors – the Matrox Th2Go is still in place.
Now for some results…
The first step on the physical install was that the system asked for the install of the driver that came with it – that driver is WHQL 305.27. This is important, Please note it because of a point that comes later in the post. The driver uninstalled the 304.yy driver and installed the 305.yy driver successfully.
Rebooted the PC.
The nvidia auto-updater asked if I wanted to update it to the latest version – WHQL 310.yy and performed the update.
Started up NThusim and FSX. Everything works well- till now!
Here is where the problem began – didnt feel like everything was like before. Images were not sharp. Blur scenery even on ground. Aircraft textures were bad. Felt like my old 800×600 monitor and PC XT in the 80s.
The graphics card – one of the best in its class. The driver – the most recent.
Then what could be wrong??
I didn’t want to adjust anything on the projector. However I tried a few things just to be sure..
No improvement.
Restored the 304.xx driver.
Came back to basics of FSX tuning – started with the FSX Config File.
Started by recovering an old baseline FSX.CFG file. Went through all of the routine mods that had to be placed.
Experimented with texture size parameter – went back to 2048 rebooted FSX and came back repeated that with 4096 later.
Tried reworking the LOD parameter. No improvement
Reduced the TBM number back to default and then increased it upwards. From what I have read and understood, TBM acts a throttle of how much is being pumped into the GPU.
And finally I think the right match between TBM and FIber Frame Fraction did the trick. The blurs went away – in heavy airports and in the sky.
I also noted that this combination also helped me achieve something that had eluded me for quite sometime – the max load in the GPU. I had never seen that load number go beyond 20% – even in heavy airport or significant WXR. With this match I now see my GPU being used a whole lot more – spikes reaching 87-90 percent and an average load of 60-70 percent.
The average use of VRAM went up a little bit – with a lot of traffic and heavy airports it uses about 800-900MB up from the standard 500-550MB it would consistently use.
My FPS (Nvidia FPS gauge) went up a little in very heavy airports like Aerosoft EDDF or FSDT Zurich (even with Jetways operational). Used to average 22fps, now get around 27-28 fps on the ground in heavy airports.
While the other tweaks may have helped get rid of the blurs, my conclusion is that the 310 driver caused the blurs.
If you choose to use it, please backup your config files and the old driver installer before installing the 310 driver.
CPJ
