Digital Foundry published a video on Youtube that has interesting points regarding our sim.
I wanted to share it here, as i often hear the old common sense argument, that only the gpu matters… not in MSFS! #Allcomponentsmatter
Relevant points are:
MSFS is one of the most CPU hungry games (ADDITIONAL to gpu restraints)
Even @ 4k the cpu is often the cause of frame drops
Lack of optimisation that causes constantly fluctuating framedrops (Yeah, let’s talk after DX12 update again…)
Best CPU for MSFS seems to be the 11900k for now, significant margin+
Unfortunately the Infinity fabric (my conclusion) on Ryzen with more then one chiplet seems to cause a loss of a few frames compared to the 5600x
The importance of decent ram speed (e.g. 3600Mhz) is pointed out
My own experience tells me that if you’re searching for the best graphical experience staying with the recommended 8cores/16 threads (new gens) seems to be the optimum for now… yet an 4cores or an old Ryzen 3600 unfortunately won’t do it anymore!
Keep in mind that MS/Asobo have explicitly said not to expect any major performance improvements from the DX12 update.
I’m still hoping, but not really expecting much.
A few frames you will get if you’re not limited by any other component. Seems to be more important that the frame times getting more constant, that should reduce stutter and that will make the captain happy…
My 3600 (no X) Ryzen on an X570 board, with 32GB 3200 RAM, and a 5700XT GPU give me as much as 80 fps. At KSFO or KLAX? More like 25-30 fps.
The combination seems pretty solid, save for the few times an update has caused grief.
I fly only GA piston aircraft with the one exception being the TBM coupled with the WT Garmin mod. Most of my flights (other than in the TBM) are below 10,000’ and in CAVOK conditions.
My opinion is that it is more about “balance” and component compatibility/reliability than pure speed. Example: I have a driver installed for the 5700XT from October 2020. It works perfectly. It is stable. Why change it for “latest and greatest?”
I found a 5600X at MSRP a few weeks ago, but haven’t installed it yet. When I do, it will be the only change I make other than a Noctua CPU cooler. It’ll be interesting to chart the difference in performance and reliability.
Finding the balance that works for you is important, true!
Maybe i should have mentioned that i am one of these nerds that are counting pixels, i am searching for the most details, and yeah thats not everyone’s perspective. Nothing wrong with not aiming @ ultra. Even on medium settings the sim looks great.
You are right, they did indeed say that back in (iirc) Novemberish.
However since then they have alluded to many performance improvements coming with DX12 as a result of the Xbox work. To name a couple Seb spoke of a 4x speed up in trees, enormous memory usage improvements, moving the Glass Cockpit displays over to their own thread, improvements in data streaming etc. Jorg just referred to a more generic substantial performance bump.
It’s more accurate to say that just the simple act of converting to DX12 doesn’t magically make your game run better. However it has allowed extra optimisations to be found during their work to implement it and optimise for Xbox. As much hate as some here give the idea of an Xbox version we will have a lot to thank it for IMO when it releases this summer… the work they’ve done to get it running well on DX12 for the series X should benefit PC users significantly.
There are then also technologies within DX12U such as mesh shaders, sampler feedback, variable rate shading, direct storage - we don’t know which (if any) of these features they are availing themselves of but they are features that aren’t possible on DX11 and can have extremely significant effects on performance. My personal hope is that MS push this as a flagship example of what DX12U is capable of and we see them using as much of the feature set as possible, but time will tell. If not at launch then at least hopefully we will see the DX12U feature set being implemented over time after the legwork of moving to DX12 itself is done.
Yes, I’m hopeful that maybe some small optimisations may bleed through to the PC community but it must be remembered that the DX12 branch is being optimized for a specific hardware set (AMD, Infinity fabric, DDR6) so benefits to the PC community may be limited.
I’ve never really understood why 8 cores are recommend as optimum when all those extra cores aren’t used? Surely 6 fast cores, as with something like the 5600X should be just as good?
It is recommended because a six core is still a six core, and when I had my i5-9600K it was always around 80% usage, which is pretty high. I think the game uses 4 cores or something (not by the Task Manager), one as the main core, and then you need a core or two for Windows an every app you use, from controllers to sound card, etc.
So a six core, even a good one like the 5600X, will not allow you room enough to stream properly for example.
So you are fine with a 5600X, but if you start buying 4000Mhz RAM and a RTX 3080 Ti, makes little sense to get stuck on a six core that might become outdated if DX12 brings more cores to the mix.
I think there were talks that a pure 8 core was better than the 6 core / 12 threads back in the days of the i7-9700K.
So it is a matter of budget. If you are tight, get the 5600X or the i5-11600K. If you have some leeway, get the 5800X or the i9-11900K.
Yeah I’ve got a 5600X currently. I’ll see what the next year brings and possibly upgrade to a 5800X (or higher) if its really needed. In the last dev Q+A they said that currently the sim runs off one core but the optimisation work they’ve done means they’ve managed to offload all the aircraft systems processing to another core. That should make a huge difference.
It doesn’t run off one core, it uses multiple cores… just observe the CPU during gameplay and this is self evident.
What is actually the problem currently is that the main thread is often a serious bottleneck, so your performance is often limited by your single core CPU performance. This is not however the same as saying it only uses one core… try running MSFS off a single core and you will not fair well.
From their dev updates they continue to work to move more things off the main thread, and it sounds like some significant changes may come this summer with, for example, things like glass cockpits being moved to their own thread.
You can move the glass cockpit to its own core/thread
but the game is still a “Linear” process.
The mainthread will still have to wait for the guages to get changed
before it can change the flight.
For example, you want to go up 1,000 feet.
Do you jump up 1,000 feet and then change the Alt guage?
Or, change the Alt guage and then fly up another 1,000 feet?
Granted, updating all the things on a Glass Cockpit has been noted
as being a real strain on the CPU.
While it’s good to keep expectations in check, I feel you are being overly pessimistic in this case. The Xbox is closer than ever to desktop in architecture, and can also run full fat DX12U just like PC - one of the objectives of this was to unify the platforms further.
From just a couple of days ago in their June 3rd blog update (emphasis mine):
“Would you like to participate in our next flighting opportunity? We have made significant updates and data changes to the sim and need a variety of PC setups to help test stability and performance. This build does not include any content changes but has significant performance updates we’d love for you to try out and provide feedback on.”
They said that a while ago, but what Jörg said in the latest Q&A is that it has brought some good performance improvement. And also the latest Dev Blog states performance optimisation. Its yet to see if its solely trough DX12 or if they optimised other things as well…
Thanks for the share.
I’m running an i9-11K (OC’d to 5.4 on 2 cores, remaining at 5.2), 32GB 3200 ram, and a 3090. Although there are so many benefits in going with an AMD 5900 or 5950, I was trying to maximize MSFS at 4K and on a HP Reverb G2. Even from an OC’d i7-10K I noticed improvement in the simulator. In general benchmarks are improved. I haven’t moved to 3600 RAM yet. I did test 3200 Corsair vengeance against 4000 gskill along with manipulating gear 1 v gear 2. 3200 gear 1 definitely beats out 4000 gear 2. The sweet spot in looking at other tests is 3600 gear 1 with CL16 or lower depending on your chip / mobo. To get any use out of high freq and gear 2, you have to go really high on the freq.
Seems logical that ram in the mode Gear 1 with it’s synced frequencies should be superior in general. With higher frequencies you often loose the good timings and at the end the speed decreases overall, sure you know that already. AMD has a Ryzen calculator to search optimums, pretty sure that are equivalents for Intel out there…
At the end with upcoming DDR5 and ADATA already stating to get (really, not marginal) high clocked DDR5 on the market on the end of year i wouldn’t sink too much time into optimization here when a system change is inevitable medium term. I would maybe run some fast calculations to get it to 3600/3800 with decent timing… and yeah, see what DDR5 brings on the street…
The simulator performs well for me can have no complaints
Running 4K with a system
Ryzen 5900x
Rtx 3090
64GB 36000mhz ram
All installed on a fast m.2 drive
