Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition

Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition

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Performance Boost For Modern Hardware
By TehSpoopyKitteh
I created this guide because it took me forever to actually find a solution for the poor performance of this app..even on a modern desktop computer..When using Microsoft Fight Simulator X: Steam Edition on current hardware, you'll find that the app has a much better performance when only utilizing physical threads used by the CPU. For instance, my Core i7-6700K has 4 cores+4 threads for a total of 8 threads. In short it has 4 cores, so we need to set the CPU Affinity Mask setting accordingly in the configuration file.

   
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How to Calculate CPU Affinity Mask
When you decide out the desired number of physical cores/threads (see below) you want to use, align the 1's and 0's from right to left starting with cpu-0. If you want cpu-0 active, you place a 1 under it for visual reference. I am running a Core i7-6700K that has 8 threads (4 physical, 4 logical). In that case that would be the following CPU Threads/Cores turned on:
cpu-3=1 cpu2=1 cpu-1=1 cpu-0=1

That ends up being 1111 in binary...or 15 in decimal. The CPU Affinity Mask will end up being 15

If I want to use a specific pair or quartet or triplet (etcetera) of cores you can also do that:
cpu-3=0 cpu2=0 cpu-1=1 cpu-0=1

The binary result would be 0011...which means the Affinity Mask should be set to 3.

You can even use this to specify which specific cores to use:
cpu-3=0 cpu2=1 cpu-1=0 cpu-0=1
0101 = 5

How To Add CPU Affinity Mask to MSFSX:SE
First you need to set all your in app settings to whatever you desire. I maxed out most of mine. Then save the configuration. Note the location where it is saved to.

Open up the CFG file you just made using Notepad and you add the section calleda [JOBSCHEDULER]. It should look like this...but replacing n with a Decimal number representing your calculated CPU Affinity Mask from above.

[JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=n