12400F, 32GB, 1660Ti. Upgrade to 3070 to benefit from DLSS+FramGen?

User Support Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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Hi everyone,

I’ve been flight simming since FS9 and FSX and this is what led me to get a real private pilot license 12 years ago. I also have experience in computer building.

I built the following system this week using a mix of new and older parts that I already had from an old i7 3770K @ 4.4Ghz build which ran MSFS2020 on a mix of medium and low settings:

  • Intel i5 12400F and Thermalright Assassin X 120 cooler (new)
  • Gigabyte H610m motherboard (new)
  • 32GB RAM @ 3,200 MHz (new)
  • LG 27” 1080p 100Hz Freesync monitor but with no DP port (new)
  • Palit GTX 1660Ti VGA+HDMI+DP (old)
  • 1TB+512GB 2.5” SSDs (old)
  • Acer 21” 900p 60Hz monitor for Little Navmap and Vatsim-Radar (old)

Using this new system with the following settings, I am getting 25-35 FPS at 3rd party add-on airports and 35-40 FPS in the air flying the FBW A320:

  • DX11
  • Most settings on High with a couple on Medium
  • TLOD 100, OLOD 100
  • TAA
  • No traffic except for Vatsim

Developer mode says limited by main thread and GPU usage is around 75%.

So my question is:

Can I solve these FPS drops and maintain higher FPS and get a much smoother experience while keeping everything on high by upgrading to an RTX 3070 and benefitting from DLSS 3.7 with the FramGen mod?

Or is this not the case because I am already limited by main thread and GPU usage is 75%?

I don’t mind spending $210 at all on a used 3070 if it will increase my FPS so that they never drop below say 35 or 40.

If you think the 3070 is overkill for 1080p, I have other used options: 3060Ti for $185 or 3060 for $175.

Thank you in advance.

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I would try flying without Vatsim running and see what your performance is like. You may want to check the CPU frame time and not just the FPS here. I don’t personally use it, but I can imagine it puts a hit on the CPU. If that’s your culprit, that would be a tough spot for me.

Frame generation would get your frame rate up and make it smoother, but that would be a last resort for me. My general opinion is if your native frame rates are so low that you feel the need for frame generation, your system is likely too weak to use it without distracting artifacts. If your system is able to run the native frame rate high enough that the artifacts are not noticeable, then you probably don’t need frame gen in the first place.

A CPU upgrade should be in your future. If you get a higher end 12th Gen, that would be the cheapest (if you buy used) and probably get you into a sweet spot with the 1660Ti, but that GPU may be due for an upgrade and make that upgraded CPU a bottleneck again. A 13th or 14th Gen CPU would give better performance, but would cost more and Intel is currently embroiled in controversy over the stability and potential damages to them.

There is of course the AMD side of things where the x3d CPU’s are king, but now you are looking at needing other upgrades as well. The mobo if you are able to get your hands on a 5800x3d, or the mobo and ram for a 7000 or soon to be released 9000 series x3d’s.

I think a lot will depend on your current budget, patience, and long term plans (especially regarding a future GPU upgrade). If you just absolutely need an upgrade asap, then I would look at a 12700k or 12900k if you have the headroom with your PSU. If you are willing to wait until you can afford more than a stop gap upgrade, then hold out for a switch to team red with an x3d CPU. That’s how I personally like to do things so I get much longer useful life from an upgrade and not constantly chasing performance.

Of course 2024 with its better use of multi-threading could throw a wrench into all of that. I’m taking it with a grain of salt for the time being until we start getting real world comparisons because the new sim will also have more CPU related processes going on. It also may change the best CPU suggestions since Intel generally has more cores than AMD. At the very least, you should wait until it is released and we get those comparisons unless you plan to stick with 2020.

I know you said you had no other AI traffic, but does that include land and sea? If those are turned up, reducing them will help for the time being.

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:clap: :clap: :clap:

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Are you using the onboard Intel graphics chip with that i5 for the little Acer, perhaps? The 3070 is an excellent investment for you, or 32GB more RAM with the 3060Ti is good too.
As for the mainthread issue, this is due to the terrain details. You can experiment by dragging terrain and object LOD’s down to 10, then with TAA, drag the scaling slider down until you see the frame times come down. This is your sweet spot. Then you drag the scaling slider down a bit and turn up the LOD’s to find the best balance.

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i went from 3070 to 4070 super and my vram usually is enuff, but sometimes it isnt. Invest to better cpu also. In most modern games i experienced stutters, when vram went empty. Vram is important in dx12 games like fs2024.

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I’ll definitely check CPU frame time and revert back.

I picked the 12400F since I wanted to stay away from 13th and 14th Gen CPUs while also keeping the budget in check as I only get to sim once or twice a week and have plenty of other hobbies to feed :smiley: Since I just built this system, I don’t plan on any upgrades any time soon at all. I’m just wondering if spending $200ish on a GPU to use FrameGen is going to benefit my case.

Yes. All these are disabled.

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Not at all. Both monitors are plugged into the GPU. The 12400F does not have onboard graphics.

Is this a general statement or is this due to the performance gain it’s going to achieve by using FrameGen?

This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I am going to try it. What frame times should I be aiming for in this case as I’m not too familiar with the good ranges for this parameter?

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What CPU are you using?
Were you using DLSS+FramGen with the 3070 or not? Did you start using DLSS+FrameGen with the 4070 super?

Did you see an FPS increase by going from 3070 to 4070 super while keeping the same CPU or did your FPS stay the same because you were already limited by the CPU?

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I don’t think 30X0 series supports DLSS frame generation. 4000 series only. I know there are some mods out there for older cards, but nVidia doesn’t support natively.

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Well, I think you are trying to upgrade on a budget, correct? It’s a nice step up from your current card. I have the 3080Ti, and this card or the 3090 are the ones to get if you are going 30 series.
I was getting 80fps in VR this morning with GPU frame times at 10ms and CPU was working harder at 14ms there abouts. I’ve seen 10ms GPU and 5ms CPU, but this is at the lowest settings.

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Despite peoples opinions on DLSS it does make a massive difference, and do does frame generation in the 4 series. If the upgrade is for DLSS you wont be disappointed.

As I said in another thread I have a low end PC (its basically used as a test bench and not my main PC) which is:

  • Ryzen 3 4100 CPU, GPU Nvidia 3050 and Mem DDR4 16Gb

And I ran the Alpha of 2024 on it fine, where it struggles with 2020. Also it runs Star Wars Outlaws fine, and the only reason is DLSS is helping the machine.

If I swap out the GPU for an Nvidia 1070 Ti which is quicker in rasterization, the games dont run that well because it doesn’t support DLSS.

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There’s a simple mod that makes it work on any RTX card. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube with great results.

Yes as I said I don’t mind spending an extra $200 or so on a 3070 to avoid the FPS dropping below 30-35 on approach to a 3rd party airport and while taxying using the FBW A320 and High settings. That’s all I’m asking from this modest system.
What CPU are you running to get this amazing performance?

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That’s a very indicative data point you shared here especially since it’s with a 3050 and not even a 3060 or 3070. This is pretty promising.

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I have the i7 11700. Nothing fancy.
Start with texture resolution LOW, if you can live with it, great. It’s fine for me. The thing is this engine packs a ton of information into the landscape, so the DX commands can get huge as you bump up the texture resolution.

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Was this using any form of DLSS and/or FrameGen or just pure TAA?

Most reviews online put the 12400F and the 11700K at the same level in 1080p gaming so our CPUs are not that far off from each other while your 3080Ti is 60% faster at 1080p gaming than my 1660Ti. Doesn’t this lead to the conclusion that my upgrade to a 3070 will benefit my case with and without FramGen?

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I find it better to seek the level of detail that works with my system without using the tricks like FG. There’s no free lunch. Those FG frames will be slightly out of sync (older) than a “real” frame, so you will notice effect. DLSS is a neat trick to render an image that is too large for your hardware because scaling is cheap and fast. Once I tune without the “tricks”, then DLSS Quality is all you need to take away the jaggies.

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I’ll definitely be trying this then and see what results it gives. Thanks a lot.

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Well, I just faced an analogous situation. Although mainthread-limited like most of us, my unlocked i7-11700KF manages decent frames in most situations (30+ fps at low level with traffic in decent airports, 45+ at cruise) in complex airliners, but my RTX 3070 is running into that 8GB VRAM wall badly in places like Chicago, around NYC and Las Vegas. That leads to annoying stuttering. Reducing render scale helps a bit but has noticeable impact on visuals even at 1440p.

I had planned to build a new PC in the coming months but honestly, the CPU situation now is a mess with Intel’s Arrow Lake “Ultra” line showing regression in gaming performance compared to even 13th gen chips, AMD’s new X3D offering not yet available so 7800X3D prices are spiking, and Nvidia rubbing their hands toghether like the $3T misers they are waiting to unleash the 50-series line at CES.

I decided to kick this can down the curb. I was actually impressed with the smoothness and CPU usage I saw in the Tech Alpha a few weeks ago, but the cockpit ray-traced shadows had my GPU running at 85 - 99% nearly full time, pushing me into GPU-limited territory. So today I bought an RTX 4070 Ti Super and a new ATX 3.0 PSU to power it. That should give me solid ray tracing performance in FS2024 and other games, double the VRAM for flight simming, and native hardware frame-gen, and still give me excellent performance when I do eventually buy a new mobo, CPU and memory next year after the dust settles.

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Congratulations on your purchases. Please reply back when you install the new parts and let us know by how much did FPS and overall smoothness increase. Thanks.

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Yes, hardware is not easy to find now, and some things are still overpriced. I’m holding off my upgrades for a bit.

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