I currently use a 3080 10GB GPU, which has served me well in MSFS VR for the past two years, but major improvements are upon us. With the recent release of the 4090, then 4080, GPUs from nVidia, I am salivating at how much of a bump in MSFS VR performance these cards are reported to be achieving. What makes me choke on my cornflakes however is the ridiculously high pricing of these new cards.
I also read with excitement that AMD is on the cusp of releasing their 7900 XT/XTX offerings. Although still priced quite high, the XTX in particular is rumoured to offer better than 4080 raw performance at $USD200 lower price than the 4080. Additionally, I currently don’t use any nVidia-specific features such as DLSS (too blurry in VR, even with higher starting rendering resolutions) nor motion reprojection (can’t stand the flubberiness), which I believe works better on nVidia cards, so I am not specifically wed to getting an nVidia GPU as a replacement.
What concerns me is issues I have read of here and on other forums of AMD GPUs having issues in MSFS VR that led some owners to move over to nVidia. In particular I have read of the aforementioned MR functionality and driver performance and stability, however these latter issues seem to be a thing of the past.
So for those AMD GPU owners, past and present, who have used MSFS in VR, what are the current issues with these GPUs that I should consider before leaving the comfort of the nVidia nest and fluttering towards an AMD GPU future?
I simply can not find a magic recipe for worthwhile motion reprojection performance. The OXRTK developer has corroborated several deficiencies with how AMD graphics cards currently work with VR in general. Definitely a couple steps behind nVidia.
Also, AMD doesn’t support many features in DX11 like nVidia does, and with DX12 still in Beta and not entirely stable for everyone, you have to take the DX12 bugs just to enable certain things on AMD (one example is fixed foveated rendering is not supported by AMD on DX11).
As mentioned, this I can live with as I don’t like MR but it is good to know that the issue is still current.
That I did not know. I currently use FSR sharpening (with FSR set to 100% so no scaling), FFR (but only non-visible areas in the headset so 70% inner ring) and shaking reduction 50%. Turning off FFR loses me about 10% in performance, so my thoughts are that the 7900 XTX has enough raw grunt for such a 10% loss to be negligible and that DX12 eventually becomes mature enough in MSFS that I will be able to use it and all the AMD features it allows.
I have a 6900xt and have been using DX12 since SU10 beta. I don’t see any bugs. It works better than DX11 and I don’t have crashes. I certainly don’t think there’s any need to avoid DX12. Actually I just recently made a post about how good FSR2 and DX12 work together as you know.
I’ve been thinking about the new GPU’s (waiting for the 7900xtx reviews) along with the hopefully release of new “3D cache” versions of the AMD CPU’s in the new year. But just last night, after a glorious flight in the himalayas in the gotgravel-monster-nxcub I thought to myself that the sim was running so well that I could skip an upgrade cycle. It’s a lot of money and I’m totally enjoying the sim as it is today.
Airport texture bugs (missing tiles, blurry satellite texture showing instead) is the primary one. I see it all over, as do many others. There is a standing bug open that wasn’t fixed with SU11.
I have 5800X3D CPU and had a 6800XT GPU before getting a 4090. Once Asobo had ported the sim over to Xbox, the bugs that had previously been annoying using an AMD card disappeared and from then on, I was getting equal if not slightly better performance than people using a 3080. The only problem was that MR was basically unusable, which the OP doesn’t like anyway. I must also say, I really like the AMD Adrenalin all in one control panel software. I quite miss it now I’m back with team green.
I would say that a new AMD card could be very good value for money compared to a 4080 or 4090 and should perform really well in VR with MSFS. Best wait for some benchmarks first though, just to be sure.
I’m on a 5700XT and outside of not eing able to use FFR it’s been fine. When flightsim first came out it was a nightmare for me because it would just cause my driver to crash for the first maybe 6 months or a year the game was completely unplayable but that has since been resolved
It is good to be hearing that the AMD drivers are pretty good now. As originally mentioned, MR is not an issue for me as I don’t use it and am even less likely to consider using it in the future if my base performance rises by 50%+ through the upgrade (I’m also moving to 5800X3D).
Regarding needing to be in DX12 to use things like FFR and FSR, if the 7900 XTX has >10% more performance than the 4080, that offsets the 10% performance loss of staying in DX11 and losing FFR. Also, I haven’t come across an AA/supersampling method that looks better than TAA, so not being able to use DLSS, DLAA or FSR is no big deal. I expect DX12 in MSFS will have its day in the future and when it does I’ll get a boost by being able to use FFR again.
Thanks everyone for your input. You’ve been most helpful!
With the 6800XT, using a G2 headset I had OXR and in game render scaling at 100%, clouds high, buildings trees and grass at high, the rest was either high or medium with ambient occlusion set to off. I used the Toolkit and used NIS scaling set to 80%.
Here are my framerates with that combo, compared to the 5600X I had before the upgrade. Average FPS is similar, but the lows were much better.
DX12 and yes I was using the OpenXR toolkit, as you can see from the benchmarks showing different upscaling settings for FSR using the toolkit. AMD CPUs and GPUs in combo work well with DX12 in this sim.
FYI: FSR2 is already in the sim. I use it and have stopped using OXR Toolkit. Note it’s only available when running with DX12. So while using DX12 just change TAA to FSR.
Flying 2 years now in VR, its getting better and better. The only problem i found is that when changing in-game from TAA to FSR i get stutter although the fps are high. There is a bug in 'SU11, sometimes i am able to fix it with going into Options/Controller settings, change a setting and when doing so the display goes black in the headset and comes back and then the stutter is gone. That is really only random working
Other than that it works ok.
