Horrible performance on high performance PC

InvitingSteam46 · November 4, 2025, 6:20am

hello

So I just built a pretty decent PC and I’ve been managing to play MSFS-24 for about a year. My issue is that the game-play will quite frequently freeze, and or it wont accept my input, usually acknowledging atc.

My PC - MSI Z790 Gaming pro MOBO, i5-14600KF CPU, Win 11 64 GB ram, GeForce RTX 4060, viewed on a 32” Samsung M70

That should be plenty to have a smooth gameplay, and a 4060 should do fine at 1444. I’ve used the NVIDIA suggested settings, yet I get a warning that my video card isn’t doing so hot and to reduce my settings.

I have a fresh Win 11 install and I don’t do much on it, other than edit videos. I’ve play a few other games on it and they work fine. I’m disappointed in the 4060 performance and I’m not willing to drop $600 on a video card with my budget.

I disable almost everything possible, including anti-virus. One interesting thing is that if the game is struggling a lot, yet hasn’t crashed yet, if I open Task manager and leave it open, the game gets immediately better.

I know this game is buggy and I don’t play often because there all too much to handle for me. I wish I wouldn’t have ever bought the thing, yet if not for the issues, I love playing it.

I’ve considered running a Virtual Machine or something, once I learned how to do so, and see if some of my issues are at fault of my PC, as in Windows environment. I’ve read until my eyes bled over the months trying to get this to work right, but my time and patience isn’t that abundant I’m afraid. Can someone please help me out? point me in the right direction in working out what the issue is, or is this all just essentially a scam that people released this heap of ■■■■ and labled it a working game? Its so sad that its so riddled with flaws, and I so tired of waiting to get to fly 747’s in career mode.

Please, Please help me. Even just to link me some posts that explain solutions.

thanks

MagicQuasar1176 · November 4, 2025, 8:42am

There’s obviously a lot of different factors that can affect your PC’s performance, particularly with a demanding title like MSFS. I’ve been using 2020 and 2024 with reasonable success since they came out, so can offer a few tips from my experiences and also wider reading.

Firstly, what kind of internet service do you have to the PC - wifi or wired ethernet cable? For reliable streaming of the scenery a wired connection is the best if possible, and you need a decent network speed - Microsoft recommends 50Mbps but plenty of users will tell you that more is essential. I have 1gb fibre and that works well but if you don’t have a fast enough connection then 2024 is never going to work very well and you may be better off trying 2020 instead.

Secondly, I would suggest turning off the Nvidia ‘Optimised’ settings in your Nvidia app, and then adjusting the graphics settings yourself to better match your pc’s capabilities. If I look at the optimised settings the Nvidia app is suggesting for my PC, it leans heavily towards Ultra settings for characters & traffic, plus the use of DLSS and much lower LOD and TLOD than I currently have set. I much prefer a more realistic view of scenery and in the cockpit.

In order to set up the graphics manually you need to understand the current bottleneck which will be your CPU, especially if using 1080p or 1440p. Try turning on the Developer mode in game - go to General Options / Advanced Options and you will see Developer mode at the top. Turn it on and you will get a small menu bar at the top of the screen once you save your settings. Click on Debug and you will get a drop-down that includes the option ‘Display FPS.’ Click on that and you will see the in-game counter which gives you a lot of information.

If you then go to the main graphic settings and set a low-ish general baseline then you can try a flight and start making changes. Ensure your render scale is at 100, so the GPU is matched to your display and set anti-aliasing to TAA. Try most other settings at Medium, and set your LOD and Terrain LOD to 100-120. Leave photogrammetry turned on, but turn off Multiplayer, Live Weather and Live Traffic while you’re adjusting the base setting.

Also important - try your display refresh rate at 60hz - that’s plenty for MSFS, and means the system isn’t being pushed unrealistically from the outset.

The go for a flight and see how it looks and what information the FPS counter gives you. Try free flight from wherever you like, or maybe one of the Discovery flights - Bora Bora is nice, Naples or NY are challenging for the PC.

Once you get to this point the possible options and variations are enormous, and you just need time and patience. There are many You Tube and forum guides to graphic settings and you can search those for suggestions then tweak one parameter at a time, save your settings and restart the flight to see how it looks.

In general, if you see ‘Limited by Mainthread’ then your CPU is the bottleneck and you need to reduce the LOD’s, Terrain Caching and Shadows in the main, but could also increase other settings that rely more on the GPU. If you see ‘Limited by GPU’ then the opposite applies, and you could try increasing the CPU-based settings like LOD’s.

There are so many variables it’s impossible to cure everything via one forum post or a few short flights, but keep at it and you should see improvements as you understand which settings affect which components (and each other). Once you have a decent base setting, then you can try DLSS and the various other tweaks and sticking-plasters to see if they help. Experiment also with ‘Resizable BAR’ turned on or off via the BIOS.

Good luck!

WildTapestry269 · November 4, 2025, 9:43am

Are you trying to run the Sim in 4K with this setup? I am not sure if I would say that a 14700KF (mid range CPU) and a 4060 (the 4060 is more on the low-middle end of last gen video cards) are high performace , so they are usually to weak to run the sim in 4K with all on ultra and no framegen (since you have not sated it, what are your actual sim settings?).
Maybe you have to drop some settings and make heavy use of framegen to get fluid framerates.

Edit: also important are the RAM speed and timing - are you running XMP profiles for the RAM (mandatory for performance) or are you running the RAM at stock speed?

NelsonMoontz · November 4, 2025, 11:09am

I’ve got 4060 and there is always tradeoff. It’s nice gpu for the price but all in all it’s not anything close to highend:) If you prefer eye-candy outside views you can go really high with your settings when you set 30fps and turn on dynamic settings (1440p). In this case you can go high with lod and stuff. It really can do its job but If you want 60fps this gpu won’t perform well.

talgmar · November 4, 2025, 12:08pm

Sorry what? The second best Intel CPU for gaming is mid range now?
a 14700K is listed as the ideal high end spec for msfs2024

to the topic starter, your system should be fine and more than good enough for decent quality at 1080/1440. (its even listed at roughly the recommended spec requirements for msfs2024).

WildTapestry269 · November 4, 2025, 1:59pm

Yes, because there are not only Intel chips out in the wild …

Edit: Highend for gaming are 9800X3D and 9950X3D (this also for productive work)

feelipeses · November 4, 2025, 5:54pm

Remember that MSFS2020 and MSFS2024 runs on Xbox, at 60 fps. So you really don’t need a “high performance” PC. The bulk of the work is streaming; basically, the simulator’s performance capacity depends on factors external to your PC.

NelsonMoontz · November 4, 2025, 6:27pm

I had both xbox s and x. Xbox x runs msfs 30fps 1440p upscaled to 4k. In my opinion Rtx 4060 with last gen cpu (i5 or better) performs better than xbox x and you can set high settings when you limit your fps. It performs really poorly when you leave free fps and go high with settings.

feelipeses · November 4, 2025, 7:19pm

Something is misconfigured; on Xbox Series X it runs at 60 fps, if you have Vsync and VRR enabled at 120 Hz.

NelsonMoontz · November 4, 2025, 7:40pm

Probably it depends if your tv is 120hz or not. I sold xbox some time ago and i remeber it was 30fps abut i don’ lt remember if vrr was working with msfs. Nevermind. I compared 4060 vs xbox x when i had xbox and pc was performing better.

talgmar · November 4, 2025, 7:46pm

Well that is incorrect, The 14700K is listed as the ideal spec for msfs2024.

High end doesnt mean “only the top 0.01%/3 performing”. Whats next? the 7900XTX/4080 isnt high end because 4090, 5080 and 5090 exist?

@InvitingSteam46 your system(and cpu) is fine, you might need to use some upscalers with your GPU, and double check for other bottlenecks. There are some guides that walks you through each graphic settings for msfs2024, I would probably start there after deciding if I wanted to push 1440 or 1080 at some fps. Try aiming for 50 or 33% of your monitor refresh rate.

“yet I get a warning that my video card isn’t doing so hot and to reduce my settings.”
If you are getting the message in regards to the VRAM budget, you might be blasting past your VRAM limit and your frames will drop significantly because of that. Solution to that might be dropping texture quality, resolution, and maybe even turning off ReBar if that is enabled. The spaghetti code that is msfs2024 is not easy to deal with.

feelipeses · November 4, 2025, 9:02pm

Yes, a long time ago, on Xbox MSFS202 was 30 fps. Now is 60 fps at 120 hz, same on MSFS2024.

InvitingSteam46 · November 4, 2025, 11:51pm

Thank you all very much, especially MagicQuasar1176

So I did much of what was suggested and the game did look and preform better. I think the issue might be with it over using the graphics GPU, and not enough of the CPU. GPU is usually at 99% in game play, and CPU is between 10 and 25, yet often at less than 10.

If it wasn’t painfully obvious, I’m not well versed in the graphics settings finer details. Playing at 1444 is depressing after playing at the level above that, which NVIDIA suggests, and it looks much better. On a 32 inch monitor, 1080 looks like super nintendo. I took some screenshots to hopefully explain my graphics settings better than I could with words.

I couldn’t enable developer mode for some reason, yet the NVIDA app overlay shows me FPS, GPU and CPU % and something else. I’m not sure what to set the FPS at, and I rarely look at the overlay, but I have seen it at 140 at times but I think I used to notice it at between 40-65 on average.

I have Starlink internet, as I live rural. my ping is low 20’s, download 500 MBPS, Up is 50-100 MBPS.

My main concern is with the game freezing and crashing, as I’ve come to accept my $400 (Canadian $) 4060 isn’t going to make the game look amazing. I tried using a Metaquest 3S VR, but I don’t think the “S” can handle the job and it was a major hassle to try and get everything to work.

WildTapestry269 · November 5, 2025, 12:18am

Well, no: this is the last gen intel chip, not the current gen one, first of all. Second, a chip which is nearly 20% slower in gaming performance overall can not be considred high end - this is unfortunatly by definition the upper 0.01%

Yes, more or less

talgmar · November 5, 2025, 12:24am

No, this current gen intel chips are focusing on efficiency, not performance. They are even criticized for lower perfomance than older models. Also it is listed as ideal spec, see below:

If you want to talk about low/mid/high - that would be 33% low, 33% mid, 33% high. So that makes no sense. Also how is this helping this topic, the topic author has a 14600KF which is also good enough.

No, again.

InvitingSteam46 · November 5, 2025, 2:31am

One man’s “Mid-Low” range is another’s “High-Mid”.

You can dissect CPU variables and how they relate to game performance a million different years.

However my i5 14600KF is a solid Midrange, that leans more on the High end, than low, yet slightly.

However I don’t really consider the Core Ultra’s as a true consumer CPU. If I did, my i5 would be low end. lol

TenPatrol · November 5, 2025, 8:50am

@WildTapestry269 @talgmar
Top-range Hardware

RTX 5090
Ryzen 7 9800X3d
Intel i9 14900K

High-range hardware

RTX 4090
Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Intel i9 13900K
Intel i7 14700K

Mid-range hardware

i5 14600KF
RTX 4060

OP has a mid-range CPU and a mid-range GPU, which basically makes it an mid-range PC, not a high-range one.

@InvitingSteam46
i5 14600KF and an RTX 4060 simply can’t handle MSFS 2024 in 2K on ultra. That’s the brutal truth. If you can’t upgrade yet, you’ll have to rely on DLSS and Frame Generation to make it playable.

Also, check your CPU temperatures and write which BIOS version you’re using. With this CPU BIOS version can have a big impact on performance and stability, so it’s important to know.

WildTapestry269 · November 5, 2025, 9:04am

Exactly, seems I not the only one seeing it this way.

It would be interesting on which settings the OP tries to run the Sim. Because from the name OP seems to have a 4k monitor which (as you already stated) can not be driven satisfyingly by his hardware, even more so if he tries to run it all on ultra or even all on high. Low to medium setting might work with his setup, but I am not sure if it works in 4k (perhaps with some frame gen magic and heavy DLSS use )

~~So to help further we need to know what the OP tries to run exactly.~~ I overlooked that OP already provided his settings.

@InvitingSteam46 : I see you have terrain pre caching enabled - try to deactivate this to save video memory since the 4060 does not have enough (only 8GB, which is considered to less for modern games and definitly for higher settings for MSFS). General advise for graphics cards with minimum VRAM: try to reduce all settings which need framebuffer, such as object details, shadowmaps, additional AI traffic (cars, ships, planes → eases up the CPU usage also).
As a last resort on the VRAM, use 1920x1080 as target resolution.

You also need to reduce the glass cockpit refresh rate, the 14600KF can’t handle the setting high there, I have my doubts that medium is already working satisfyingly → try low here.

And try to enable frame gen - this might also help.

In general, try to play around with the settings. I would recommend to turn all settings to as low as possible and then work up from there by increasing the settings until you reach the minimum framerate with which you can live.

IncontnentCamel · November 5, 2025, 9:30am

With dynamic settings turned on you need to crank up the terrain and object LOD. Otherwise it will have no effect. This way the terrain will look way better than in your first picture.

Also you could then try to turn off DLSS and see if you are happy with your frame rate. DLSS makes glass displays very unclear and hard to read. Personally I set the dynamic settings frame rate target to 40 and then turned on frame generation. Has very few artifacts this way and makes for a way smoother experience.

BTW turn off in-game vsync and give this article a read https://blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings/14/

Azphilosopher · November 5, 2025, 9:39am

Doesn’t the 4060 only come with 8GB VRAM? I think we’ve determined 2024 really struggles with that little. My 4060ti has 16gb and I’m playing smoothly with much higher graphics settings in both 2D and VR.