My W7 system score has always been dragged down by something called the disk transfer rate. Does anyone know if it's important to FS and if there is anything I can do about it (I'm guessing a new hard drive, but maybe it's just the HD connector).



I should get the specs for my machine to go along with the scores. I'll do that tonight, after the Canucks win the cup.

LOL - If that is the lowest number on your system you should be happy with that Most people would drool just to get those numbers!

Yes, I believe this is due to the hard drive. Give us the make / model of the hard drive and maybe that can shed some light on things...

Cheers

it's possible it is using how fast your disk spins to determine the transfer rate base number but I can't seem to find a definitive answer on how Windows factors "Disk data transfer rate" but still, I think it's fair to assume that a faster spinning disk means a faster transfer of data. My system seems to be having the same "drag down" as yours but in my case I think Windows doesn't even know how to recognize an "SSD" ( it always says "No hard disk found!" when I boot up) and therefore relies on my secondary, traditional hard drive for determining a transfer rate. My secondary hard drive spins at 7200 rpm by the way, and I bet if it was 10200 rpm like some of the pricier drives I'd get a better rating. ( All this is hypothetical from the tiny brain of Gary by the way)

I don't think any of it matters to you or me though Rob because I found this quote in windows help:

"Gaming and graphic-intensive programs. If you use your computer for games or programs that are graphic-intensive, such as digital video editing programs or realistic first-person games, then high subscores in the RAM, desktop graphics, 3‑D gaming graphics, and CPU categories are important. A subscore of 3.0 or higher is usually sufficient in the hard disk category."

if 3.0 is sufficient I would highly doubt 5.9 is dragging you down

Gary

Okay! well I think you both said more or less the same thing, that I shouldn't worry about it. I love consistency.

Thanks!

Hey Rob

Is that really a picture of you or is that Wilson from "Home Improvement"?

Hey Rob,
was playing around with windows 7 tonight and discovered this:

Assuming you didn't change your start menu from the default settings or at least didn't choose to omit the "Games" button on the right hand side of the start menu you can click "Start" and hover over "Games" on the right and then right click and choose "open" once you are in the "Games" folder you can hi-lite "Microsoft Flight Simulator X" and then look to the right and you will see a box with 2 tabs the second tab gives you basic info on what Index Experiencing ranks the games ability to run on Windows 7. Useless information I know.

Gary

Consistent with what everyone says. I'm well over the minimums.

The harddrive data transfer rate could have an impact on your gaming when it comes to paging. When windows runs out of room on your RAM, it swaps stuff in and out of your HD. Paging is where SSDs shine, no moving parts.

I know you have a lot more ram than most here, but like all things PC, new software always needs more space to run.

I'm finishing up my Win 7 Pro install and I like it so far. Newfangled GUI of course, you gotta change stuff or else people think they're buying the same old stuff.

Tried the gamer rating:

Win 7 64bit
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2400 @ 2700
4GB OCZ DDR2 800mhz stock speed
nvidia 9600 GT stock speed




EDIT: WOAH! Score is determined by slowest component in a class. My graphics score dropped to 6.0 by adding the nvidia 6800. It don't matter if I have 2 nvidia 9600GT though.

I upped the CPU to 3.0GHz and the quad code still scores at 7.1.

Oh yeah, if you want to bump your disk data rate, try a SATA 6 mobo, we probably both use SATA 3.

Bump for my Scores on my new laptop (Note: not on it at this moment i done 2 tests after igot it and before i put FS9/FS2004 on it, when i get a chance to retest it i will, i'm at home for at least a week or 2 weeks though so i won't be able to do anymore flights till then)
"As posted in my "Best Laptop Option for Upgrading from FS9 to FSX?" Thread"

Specs:

Just reran it and processor went up from a 5.5 subscore to a 5.6

I would like to get into this discussion with actual numbers but..... my computer is somewhere between Christopher Lake, Sk. and Glace Bay, N.S. while I am in Dominion, N.S. waiting for closing on our retirment home on Thursday.

A somewhat good and somewhat bad nine day ride from Sask. to here ended on Sunday, two dogs, a cat and wife in a Dakota pickup towing an 18 foot Bigfoot trailer across country. Ended up with only one problem on the trip with vehicles, the trailer 12 volt wiring decided without notice to have an almost deadshort somewhere and while driving causes the alternator on the truck to pull a LOT of pwwer and us to burn a lot of petrol. Finally found the problem and we have lights again for the night.

Won't be back flying till near the end of November, once the furniture gets here I have to leave to go back to Prince Albert National Park to finish off my time before retirement, be back in Nova Scotia around the end of November after another drive across country with our car. Sick and tired of driving!!!!

As far as disk transfer, I became frustrated at work with slow loads of the GIS software I use and bought a solid state drive to run the software off of, it changed the load time from over five minutes, yes five minutes to around two (the two minutes includes the time it takes to sign out a license from Ottwaw using a system I set up for Parks, saved us a ton of money on annual license fees but slows start up down). Once up and running, the program is MUCH faster than running off of a 7200 RPM hard drive, I will do the same with my system once I get back.

Cheers Rod

Hey, great. I'd love to hear how that goes. Those drives, like everything else in the world these days, are quite affordable (if you have a job, etc etc).

At my dept, we're just replacing our entire software system with a Terminal Server that will play the apps for us. We're back to dumb terminals. No wonder they've never updated my 2009 computer running WXP!

I hope you enjoy your new digs, sir!

Back in Glace Bay after going back to Sask. to finish off work, left Waskesiu Lake Sunday morning this week, arrived in Glace Bay on Thursday evening at 6:15, five long days of driving. Glad to be in my new home and will unpack and start to set up my computer system over the next few days and will post numbers and results then

On holidays until Nov. 28 when I officially retire!

Cheers Rod

just thought i would post up current scores for my newest laptop(Laptop is a Acer Aspire 5560 Series, AMD A6-3420M Quad core @ 1.5GHz, 6GB Install RAM (5.47 usable), Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1):

Installed the solid state hard drive, copied the flight sim stuff over to it (easy to do a check on load time then by just changing drive letters between the old drive and the new one). I have not timed it yet, as just got it running this afternoon, but FSX loads about twice as fast off the solid state drive than off of the old 5400 RPM hard drive. Will do acutal time tests and flight tests soon. Very happy with the results so far.

I copied over all programs used with FSX to the solid state drive, they auto start with FSX and the whole process is very noticeably faster than before. Will try out more as soon as I get a chance. Tomorrow have to go out and order new bathroom cabinet doors.. wife (should say my Boss!) is bugging me about getting the house finished.

Cheers Rod