Help by Hernan Di Tano and FSPLANET.COM
Everybody who has FS2000 knows that you need an powerful machine for being able to run ik fast with an lot of details this is because the engine of FS2000 is not very good and Fs2000 has to generate a lot of stuff (scenery, Panel, dynamics….) In this review i will show hoe to run it fast and still with an quite few details.
There are several ways of doing this operation some are a bit risky because of that i inform you that FSPLANET.COM nor Hernan is not responsible to any damages to your machine!
The first option is very simple: BUY A NEW MACHINE! But because not everybody has got the money for this we got other options.
The second is over clocking your machine i will explain later how to do this
The third option is cleaning your windows memory and options in FS2000, very effective!
1.- If you buy an new machine i do recommend an AMD Thunderbird 900 MHZ 256 MB RAM
geforce 2 mx graphics cards (there is no point in buying an fancy Geforce 2 GTS or ULTRA unles you do run at resolutions above 1280×720) with an fast hard disk that would be the perfect machine for running FS2000 (i am not including fancy joysticks or any thing else)
2.-ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ACCEPT THAT FSPLANET.COM NOR FABIAN LUKKEN ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR MACHINE OR DATA LOSS!!! well lets get started i have overclocked my machine and i get 40% more out of my machine after i over clocked my pc.
Not all pc’s are very overclockable it depends on your main board, processor and your video card(s) other PCI may have influence to.
My configuration (not over clocked) PIII 600 E (Coppermine) Abit BE6-2 Viper 770 TNT 2 (not ultra) Miro PCTV pro Sblive 1024 standard network card Maxtor 1024U2. And some other apparatus
My System after over clocking ( PIII 690e Viper 770 with an core speed of 170 MHz and an memory speed of 180 MHz 3Dmark score 3350 before 2700
some main boards cant be very over clocked and some memory cards aren’t either the TNT2 chipset is perfect for over clocking and the geforce 2 MX is also my main board was specially designed to over clock i can put the bus speed up MHz to MHz e.g: my default bus speed runs at 100MHz now it runs at 110. Because Intel® has been putting an multiplier lock on its processors since last year it has become more difficult to overclock (they are planning to put tan lock on the bus speed to!)
Step one: overclock the processor will start in the Bios menu or main board with jumpers
it is very important that you use an very heavy duty Cooler fan on your processor , case, graphics card otherwise you wont get far with it.
It is impossible to say how far you machine can go it depends on a few factors (of course if you putt your pc in the freezer i am shure it can go pretty far!)
over clocking the CPU in the bios is very easy: if you have the luck of not having an multiplier lock on it it will be sufficient by raise that and maybe the core voltage NOTE: that raising the voltage is only at need when your system freezes and it can be fatal for your processor so do everything bit by bit and after you clocked over something run a benchmarks like 3Dmark 2000 (madonion.com) if the machine can have it you can try a bit more otherwise try to change the voltage or other options which varies from main board to main board (the best overclock boards are Abit’s BX chipset) if this doesn’t help you have gone to far so turn down the multiplier or the BUS speed normally every PIII 100 MHz go around until 112 FSB Bus speed so i suppose the multiplier can go as far as 7 if you have an PIII 600 i have noticed that i could go much further with Windows 98 SE than with Windows ME or Windows 2000! If this is done you can overclock your video card this is much easier and you do it in windows with an utility like powerstrip or TNCLOCK which is my favourite you set the speeds and you check the box of apply on start up and you never have to do anything else! and it doesn’t eat an lot of your memory like powerstrip does you can obtain Tntclock here:
www.lukken-design.tmfweb.nl/tntclk12.zip
ok lets get started with the video card! Not all the video cards are supported by TNTclk but powerstrip suports much more note that cards with DDR memory wont get so far i have seen that an Geforce 2MX runs just as fast as an much more expensive Geforce 256 DDR.
My Viper card went pretty far after placing an Fancy Celeron FCPGA cooler on it, it costs the place of one PCI slot but i find it worth it! The default speed of an TNT2 card is usually 125 MHz core and 150 MHz memory i don’t know about other cards.
This is the same story every time you gone an MHz more benchmark your machine and see if it doesn’t freeze and if it does or you see strange things on your screen put in a little down!
Well that was the basics of over clocking your graphics card or PII/III/AMD
note that people with an board with jumpers to change the processor settings will have to take an look in the boards manual for the settings
3.- Big Clean up!
Notice that the none applications you run how slower your machine is so try to close the programs that you don’t need also the aplications in the system tray some of them only close by CTRL+ALT+DEL
Windows needs virtual memory normally windows regulates the quantity of it it is effective if you set this: go to system properties and go to the last tab in Dutch Windows me it calls “prestaties” and i assume in Spanish”prestaciones”then press the button of virtual memory there you can set it it is smart if you set the minimum to the double of amount of your Physical memory (RAM) and the maximum to the triple of it now press ok it will ask you to restart say no now go back to where the virtual memory button was now press the first button in Dutch is called:”bestandsysteem” and i got no idea how you calle it in English nor in Spanish! Once you pressed it there will be an option to select the default is desktop pc select network server this will increase your system’s performance
you can also install an memory flusher this utlity will flush your memory and making more freespace in your memory
in FS2000 you can select options to for detail i recommend that you always have an maximum unlimited visibility of about 70NM and the resolution about 960x728x16 and do not put all the slide bars to the max it will slow down your machine a lot it is also reccomended that you use your latest drivers for your graphics card for the TNT2 the best are detonator 3 you can get them at www.Nvidia.com and be shure you use the latest directx the latest is 7a DX8 will be available very soon which i have tried a beta of and seems to work fine and i noticed for the first time that my frame rate went up! Also be shure you got FS2000 “patched” you can get the patch at www.Flightsim.com And try to not to use a lot of add-on scenery they are more “real” but can slow down a lot FS2000.
I recommend Windows Me because it is more stable and you get an higher fram rate out of FS2000