Thanks for the info and suggestions. I am too tired to be doing this today, so will tackle it tomorrow and try those things.
Tonight after work I just wanted to relax and fly for a bit, but again it would not boot - even with the 5600 we had set the previous time. It seems to be one time it does, then next time it doesn’t, so I end up back at BIOS setup screen after force-powering down, save with F10 (no changes) and this time it does boot. Pretty random.
Anyway, this time I took out 2 sticks in between the lockup and powering on again. Left it at 5600 but it did boot to Windows OK and I have been flying without problems (probably would have booted with 4 sticks too, I don’t know). I will try from cold boot in the morning still with just 2 sticks and go from there.
Weird that it hung first with orange light, then a beep and nothing (not the “post” beep - a different one) but then red light came and stayed on on the mobo (top right corner) which the manual says is CPU but may not be the actual cause, just a starting point for troubleshooting.
These are the settings now with the 2 sticks and no changes on Bios since this time it forced me into it:
Also I do feel like I want to get 64gb working. In MS Game Bar, whilst running FS I can see RAM usage is like 65%+ sometimes and I thought anything over 50% and it starts using the pagefile? I was getting some annoying stutters just now in this session. I mean it’s silky smooth but then get the odd stutter and it’s really noticeable as its so smooth the rest of the time. I turned LOD back down (to 200) but still getting them which I think it should not really be doing, but who knows
Maybe once upon a time but with ram now in it’s tens of gigabytes that sounds incredulous to me. Sure there will come a point where Windows starts making preparations but even then I can’t see why that would matter much because it’s the actual back and forth data transfers that slow down performance along with your respective ram and drive speeds.
Little (!!) update for those following along — TLDR; good-ish news
I removed 2 sticks and booting has been fine and much faster since.
I did not tinker with speeds yet or try to get all 4 sticks running together - to be honest I just want to make sure it’s stable and play this weekend and not fiddle around so will do that next week.
LOD set at 250 now and all Ultra. TBH I can’t really see a visual difference between 200 and 400 anyway, but over 350 it does start to stutter a little in the HEAVIST Photogrammetry I can throw at it, so I settled on 250 and that is absolutely amazing.
Reran the A310 at busy Heathrow test and I suspect the outdated version of Game Bar was causing that problem of 15fps on the ground and around 25 on approach and under 30 over London, as it is much, much better now. Still struggles a bit (slowing comes in “waves” but it’s actually 50+ fps always now and usually 57 on the ground!).
Flying over London was 60 solid, with the odd stutter (but I think that is just the bad old unoptimized LOD of the PG there!)
As proof, I played with Cowan Bell 206 in New York, full Ultra detail, 300 LOD and it didn’t skip a beat - 60fps locked - was totally stunning! :o Same for any of the newer PG - looks SO sharp and lovely.
If I have another app in focus (on my 2nd screen) then the game gets choppy until I click back onto that FS screen. Maybe it’s because 2nd screen is only 60hz?
Screen is on 120Hz now (for some reason before, even though I set 120, it had reverted to 59Hz!), with NVCP target of 60fps in the Program Settings for MSFS.exe and “Off” in the Global settings, vsync on Global Settings in NVCP (off in-game and “Use Global Settings” in Program Settings) and Preferred Refresh Rate as “Highest Possible” also in Global Settings (this is a step I missed before, and maybe still not right, but it’s a lot smoother now with no tearing but I think it could still be better). Maybe this somewhere is the problem with focus of another window making game chug, or I need to set GameBar to treat “Discord” as a game?!
Not sure if I need to have any other settings on the Program Settings for MSFS.exe on top of that.
In-game I have frame gen on (I thought with 120Hz screen that should match up nicely?), all Ultra, TAA with 50 AMD Sharpening (can’t decide between this and DLAA - both have small pros and cons but almost the same). So far, so good
Ah, I see - but I think it’s not that. It’s way choppier than if I turn FG off manually. It’s actually tearing and probably about 15-20fps suddenly. I will see if unplugging my other screen helps and having the “other app” (Discord in this case) on the same screen does anything different.
Good to hear it’s working so much better for you now!
Regarding the loss of performance even tabbing over to another screen, I think it’s standard for Windows to downgrade performance on background programs (which is effectively what you are doing even when it’s viewable on a separate screen). It’s not a problem I’ve ever dealt with since I only have one screen and it doesn’t matter, but maybe there’s a way to address it.
One thing that might help is to open the task manager and go to the details tab. Right click the Flightsimulator.exe file (it has to be running) and set the priority to above normal or high. Don’t set it to real time, or basically your computer will do nothing else and essentially lock it up until you force a hard reboot from the power button.
I have the same problem since I activated rtx4090 and FG. When I click on screen 2, the sim becomes very jerky. When I go back to screen 1, everything is perfect… it’s very unpleasant when you have to work on screen 2 with the Ivao Web Eye, Navigraph, etc I guess there is no solution?
No doubt the solution will come with more powerful cpu’s, currently the 4xxx’s are overpowering even the best of them. Of course underclocking the gpu might help but as I don’t have one … etc. etc.
So long as mainthread is tied to one core there’s not going to be much change. Asobo may be able to move some more functions away from it but that in itself could have a negative effect.
if you have a nvidia gpu there is an option in the control panel to enable or disable reduction of resources when not focusing on an application window. It is called “Background application max framerate”. I didn’t found anything similar for amd.
I know what you mean. I didn’t change it from default but what I need is a background MINIMUM frame rate (… if that is in fact what is slowing it down). Will changing that to 60 allow the sim to run normally? I don’t think that’s what it means.
@BoboSkypark sorry to “jump on you” but I see what you wrote. 2 questions:
Then how in the Zen Timings I originally posted was I running fine for 3 days at 6000 with all sticks going? Problem only happened after I installed the Chipset updates but that is probably a coincidence as it’s not installing those files onto the mobo firmware chip, or does it?
I think improvements CAN come in software - via firmware & drivers for all the hardware (CPU / Mobo) as this tech is only very new and will be improved. That is what I have been told by multiple people at least.
I appreciate that I may not get 4 sticks stable and I at this point I think I might just buy my own 2x 32 RAM and get a refund for those 4 at this point soon if I can find a pair that I know will work.
But still baffles me why I could fly 16+ hours when I first unboxed the PC and that was at 6000 with decent timings. If it would be unstable surely in that 16 hours it would have crashed or frozen or anything bad but it didn’t at all, not even for a moment.
Stability issues can be a finicky thing. It’s like with a CPU or GPU overclock that’s right on the edge. You could run fine for hours, then suddenly have stability problems seemingly out of the blue. Maybe the memory controller was ok at first, but simply couldn’t keep it up long term.
I tried already to communicate this. Your memory is trained on every bootup - all X670 chipsets behave this way. If it fails the training for some reason (it can still be stable but fails), you will get the issue you have. You can either be patient and accept memory training can randomly fail, or run four sticks at a lower frequency.
You are not jumping on me. It’s all good. It is a know issue that theses boards cannot run fast memory speeds in quad channel. I would suspect if you look closely at your bios manual and the QVL list for memory one would see this. It’s nice to see the PC builder is working with you but they should have never made the mistake of putting in Quad RAM sticks in the first place. Glad to see you are now doing well.
You mean using the four slots, right? Because the x670 chipset doesn’t have quad channel. His motherboard has 2x dual channels.
And yeah, agreed, lots of people having issues using 4 sticks of ram with the 7000 series. Ryzens have issues with ram since the release, but it had improved a lot on the 5000 series. But the x670 is in a really bad place for now, maybe it’s the ddr5.
I’m not sure what you mean here. Quad-channel is not supported on X670 and Z790 chipsets. If you’re loosely referring to “quad channel,” DDR5 sticks contain 2x32-bit bus channels compared to DDR4 with a single 1x64-bit channel. Why some might consider two DDR5 sticks as “quad channel,” Intel and AMD still consider this 4x32-bit config as dual-channel.
Ryzen has always been sensitive to memory due to the infinity fabric concept, and the X670 chipset is a mess when it comes to memory support and training. If you’re planning on running an AM5 setup, make your life easier and invest in a 2x stick config to avoid the hassle trying to run 4x sticks stable. Also limit your DDR5 to 6000 Mhz, as it’s quite painful to get anything above 6000 Mhz stable on AM5.
@ncbartschi , @Cahzito you guys are correct what I meant to say was two sticks of RAM vice four. It is very clear in the manual for my board that if you populate all slots max speed is degraded considerably. The other thing I am seeing alot of issues with is people trying to use XMP rated RAM instead of EXPO rated and having all kinds of post issues. One would like to think they should be interchageable but that does not seem to be the case at the moment.
So, in the end, sounds like I need to get 2x 32 sticks kit of EXPO ram to reach 6000 on the Strix. I will call the store and see if they will do a refund but then I will buy myself the kit and try it before sending theirs back.
So important question: what brand and what RAM model would you suggest I buy now? As I wrote before and linked, that Kingston Fury I have now DID get a great review on that one article I linked. But that was maybe a different model (they were running 7200Mhz?!). I am pretty sure my Fury Silver is EXPO but not too sure how I can confirm that without the packaging it came in. What would be better, the G.Skill stuff?
EDIT: I am wrong - it is not EXPO. The Beast version is!