Like everyone I’ve suffered from stutters in MSFS. While the causes of stutters are various & different for every PC configuration, having the sim installed on an SSD will undoubtedly improve matters. But although I have my MSFS installed on my fastest SSD I was still experiencing frequent stutters. So I did some digging into my disk performance and what exactly MSFS was doing with disk I/O while running.
Userbenchmark rated the SSD that I have opted to have MSFS installed to as performing well above average:
So I fired up Resource Monitor and kept on eye on what disks were being accessed while MSFS was running. Plenty of access to my fast SSD where MSFS is installed of course. But also GamingServices was almost constantly accessing my C drive. In particular it was accessing:
Anyone familiar with how WindowsApps from the store work will know that if you opt to install an app to a drive other than C: Windows creates virtual links from the Packages directory on C: to the nominated drive. What I discovered however was that the \SystemAppData\wgs directories were NOT a virtual link but physically present on my C:
So what I did was copy \SystemAppData\wgs to my fast SSD at this location:
L:\WpSystem\S-1-5-21-2632947446-2646122361-4214480181-1002\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe
After doing this (and I’ve done it a few times now having reinstalled MSFS regularly) my stutters are greatly reduced.
Obviously this isn’t going to help everybody but the moral of the story is that even if you think you’ve put MSFS on your fastest available drive, if your system drive is underperforming you may still have problems.
good find , i bought a 2 TB Nmve drive for MSFS and windows and have everything installed default on that Nmve . never had stutters , no trouble updating. and everything loads pretty fast as a bonus.
And folks might also want to turn off core virtualization in bios. Right now FS2020 runs some threads super hard but CPU core virtualization swaps out stuff that needs cycles for stuff that maybe shouldn’t even be running. Result is poor performance. Hopefully DX12 fixes some of that.
You need to check what both are. I don’t know from the information you describe. Might check the manual and/or search the web to find out.
Also, should include the caveat that changing bios settings carries some risk if you don’t know what you are doing. I would say minimal risk, but anyone unsure might wait and get someone’s help. It should be obvious and not need saying, but don’t change voltages or go poking around experimenting until you really know what you’re doing.
Here’s how mine stands. All of these were created by MSFS:
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\FlightSimulator\ - 40 KB - no idea what the files in there are for.
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\ - 16 GB - most of the saved game-state is here including my 16GB rolling cache.
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\KITTYHAWK\ - empty - no idea why it created this folder.
D:\Steam\userdata\%STEAMUSERIDNUMBER%\1250410\ - 1.76 MB - this is where my data usage statistics, logbook, profile statistics, and input configurations are stored.
F:\Microsoft Flight Simulator\ - 128 GB - this is the location of all content, including where mods and 3rd party content would be. this is where I told the launcher to install the game content.
F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\MicrosoftFlightSimulator\ - 1.60 GB - this is the location of the launcher install. this is where I told Steam to install MFS.
My drive configuration:
C: 512 GB NVME SSD (WD Black SN700 M.2)
D: 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD (WD Black Performance 3.5")
E: 1 TB SATA SSD (WD Blue 3D NAND 2.5")
F: 2 TB SATA SSD (WD Blue 3D NAND 2.5")
Agreed that there are tons of posts out there and most go over my head on overclocking. I have a MSI Gaming Pro Carbon Z390 MB And a 2080Ti. In the BIOS of the MB, there is XMP and BOOST buttons. I select those and let the BIOS do the work. I am O/C’d at 5.0. I still get the bad stop/stutter every 30 seconds or so. I am on WiFi and figure that may be it, even tho it is fast.
