Is loading time for scenery and objects dependent on CPU or RAM? When I approach Stockholm I experience heavy stutters for a couple of seconds (then it’s fine). I have the Orbx Stockholm scenery installed. I have a decent CPU (i7 10700) and an RTX 4070 but only 16 gb RAM. Could the RAM be the bottleneck in these type of situations or is my CPU just not good enough? I also experience suboptimal performance in the Fenix A320 at big airports on VATSIM.
this is a rare time that yes, RAM is your bottleneck. Sort of.
Now your CPU aint bad but this game is still CPU heavy and is likely processing slower than what your GPU can render at. But you’re asking about RAM in this case.
MSFS will use around 14-16gb (average high-ultra settings) under most circumstances. It will vary based on location, how high quality the airport is, traffic, the plane you’re flying etc but i’m speaking from my own experience
The norm these days for PC gaming all around is 32gb minimum.
Thanks! I ordered a new set of 32 gb RAM and I’ll see if it gets better. Next step will be a new CPU but we’ll see how the extra RAM works out first.
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If you unload Orbx Stockholm, do you still get the stutter on approach?
I’m not able to check for a while but I don’t think so. Didn’t have the problem before buying it. It’s not even just stutter, it’s a complete freeze for a couple of seconds.
While I don’t discout that RAM could very well be part of your problem, I must also tell you that I have similar effects when flying into an area with heavy PG or city scapes from SamScene or Orbx. I can’t say if they’re of the same magentude, but they are definitely there. And I have 64 GB DDR5.
In the end I also recommend the investment. After all: you can never have enough RAM, processing power or disk space.
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Fast NVME drive may also help. I recently replaced my SATA SSD with NVME and it’s 10x (if not more) faster.
I’d venture to ask more specific questions such as the resolution you’re playing at, not to mention what your stats say is your actual inhibitor.
Can you screenshot it? I’m running an older PC myself with lower end GPU but slightly newer CPU than you and run into no stuttering issues at all at 2K resolution.
MSFS 2020 says my CPU is my bottleneck as I’m only at 54 fps when frames dip down.
Running an RTX3080 (with nVidia experience recommended settings) and Intel 12400F so a little dated, but only on DDR4 ram.
A complete 2 seconds freeze shouldn’t be RAM related, except if you’re paging maybe, and even then it can’t be confirmed. However it is true that you’re kinda short on RAM. I have 32GB RAM, run two monitors and generally have Chrome with several tabs (>10) on one monitor and the sim on the other one. On background I usually run LNM + OpentrackIR, and my system is normally sitting at 16-19GB system ram used. So yes, having 16GB is kinda short.
Nevertheless, from time to time I also have some stutters, particularly at busy airports of heavy photogrammetry cities. Don’t remember Stockholm and would need to check but last weekend had some stutters, and those aren’t related to ram and generally don’t have a unique answer. Could be server hiccup, connection, rolling cache (if you’re using it), etc.
Test that. And there’s your answer then. You have stutter with the Orbx Stockholm, but no stutter without.
However, if you have the stutter regardless, then it can’t be the scenery.
I installed the new RAM and the freezing when approaching Stockholm has vanished. The load times when starting the sim and a flight are now noticeably shorter too. However I still experience low fps inside the Fenix when looking at the center of the instrument panel, especially at my home airport of Arlanda. I am therefore going to upgrade my CPU and hopefully that will make it better.
Nice to hear! Just keep in mind that it’s kinda impossible (or at least very hard) to have a full no stutter no fps drop anywhere everywhere in MSFS. Even people with 4090s and X3D CPUs get lags, stutters or fps drops.
But yeah, good to know you’re getting a better experience. You were kinda short on RAM and having overhead is always good.
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I was reluctant to add more than 16 gigs of system ram as GPU-Z was showing 11 to 13 gigs in use. I was using all of the 12 gigs of RTX 4070. I upgraded to 32 gigs and was surprised to see GPU-Z showing about 16 gigs of of the 32 gigs of ram in use. With a i5-12600k, I don’t notice any loading time difference in the sim.
Personal Comments and Observations
The more complex the scenery (i.e., custom landscape/cityscape/airport) combined with a glass heavy cockpit with more than two screens and a TLoD/OLoD > 100, you are going to chew up more system resources, including RAM.
I now switched from the Intel 10700 to the Ryzen 5800X3D and it’s a complete gamechanger for me. Turns out my biggest bottleneck was the CPU even if the extra RAM helped too. The upgrade from 2070S to 4070 didn’t really make a big difference but I’m only playing in 1080p, maybe that’s why.
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Same experience here! You can check in this link