Hey Everyone,
I know this issue has been blown up, but I couldn’t find any super recent posts that helped me out. Overall, I have a great system (see below), a pretty decent monitor, and have tried all kinds of different settings out but I can’t figure out how to set this game up appropriately. I see people with a lower quality systems producing excellent fps and visually amazing. Sometimes I feel like I am playing an arcade game on an old console, not an expensive computer. To add some context also, I am brand new to PC gaming. If anyone can help me out with settings, I feel like I am missing something in either the NIVIDIA control panel, or in the game. But I am getting super frustrated!!! I have tried Ultra settings, all the way down to low. Help me enjoy this game!
System:
Intel I9 14900KF
NVIDIA RTX 4080
Asus Z790
64gb of memory
Anything else that’s helpful to know? Here are screen shots of dev fps and Nvidia performance overlay. I don’t know much about PC world so be nice to me!
Hi mate,
Your settings are probabaly a little on the high side for what you really need, I run a 4090 and do not have some things this high.
Try lowering these ones and see how you go
Ambient Occlusion
Motion Blur to OFF
Grass, Buildings and Trees down a touch
TLOD to 160
Objects to 160
This will give you a start, hope this helps
You are heavily CPU limited by a factor of 3 times over your GPU. Make sure your CPU is ramping up to full speed (5+ GHz) and that you have XMP for your memory enabled in your BIOS. Youtube can help if you don’t know how to check these.
What is the make/model of your monitor and what refresh rate are you using?
I have two PCs…
i9-14900KF / RTX 4090 / 64 GB DDR5 RAM @ 6000 / ASUS Z790
i9-13900K / RTX 4080 Super / 64 GB DDR5 RAM @ 5600 / ASUS Z790
Both have MSFS installed on a very fast NVMe M.2
Both maxed out playing at 1440p on 180Hz and 170Hz monitors.
I suggest enabling frame generation in the settings (need to enable DX 12). It will help loads. I personally don’t have frame generation enabled in the settings but instead use the Lossless Scaling app. It’s $7 on Steam and a game changer. MSFS is incredibly smooth.
If you have a 120 Hrz monitor and force the sim to match it (as you do), it might cause the sim to behave badly (ask me how I know). Set it to 25% and see what happens.
Mathijs Kok
PMDG
I would second the Frame Gen option - or a 3rd party program called lossless scaling
The first thing I noticed is that you are using the global Ultra preset. You want to set your graphics options individually. The goal is to try to balance latency (call ‘Limited By’ in the FPS counter) between Main Thread and GPU, while maintaining the FPS and graphical fidelity you want.
Watch this video, and use it to find the best settings for your system.
Being main thread (CPU) limited, you need to focus on CPU related settings. Terrain and object level of detail settings are big contributors to CPU load in the graphics settings. I would also check your traffic settings. Having tons of extra aircraft, airport workers, and other AI vehicles can also have a severe impact on frame rates. Here’s a quick and dirty video I made a while back comparing low vs max land and sea traffic settings on a 5800x3d CPU.
I wouldn’t worry about frame generation right now because that isn’t going to solve your problem. Your native frame rates should be much higher than what you are showing. If you turn frame generation on at such low native frame rates, there’s a higher likelihood of getting distracting artifacts. Once you get your native frame rates up and everything else dialed in, you may not even need frame generation.
Once your CPU loads are in check, then you may want to fine tune the other graphics settings. Ultra default settings are overkill in some cases and reducing them can improve performance with little difference in image quality. Or if performance is ok with the ultra default, the reduction of some settings will allow your GPU to run at lower power, saving some on your electric bill.
Thank you for the info. Weirdly enough, messing with any of the global settings doesn’t seem to have any impact on my situation, which is why I am at a loss.
The monitor is a Alienware 34" ultrawide curved monitor, 3440x1440 @ 165Hz
Well, right now, you are asking the sim to produce 165 frames per second. I would set that to 25% to aim for 41 fps, which is fine for the sim. It will also allow the CPU to catch up on things. Remember that you see stutters WAY easier than a low FPS, and people often confuse low FPS with stutters. That’s logical as they have a lot in common for human vision. People should stop counting their FPS. I have no idea how many FPS I get; if I don’t see a problem, I don’t care. It could be 30, it could be 90.
I am not a fan of any of the tweaks that increase fps. They work, for sure, but they all have rather horrible graphical side effects if you know what to look for. Our modelers certainly do not like them, as they show their work in a rather bleak light. I only use them on a ‘gaming’ laptop where I don’t care how the sim looks.
First thing I recommend is that you turn off vsync in the sim. With vsync on at 100% of the monitors refresh rate you are essentially telling the sim to drive your 4080 at 165fps which it will never achieve. If you do end up needing to cap your fps there are better ways to do it.
Secondly, I noticed that your manipulators are a little high which hints at possibly a lot of 3rd party add-ons which will tax your cpu. For now, I would remove your 3rd party add-ons and use the 2 videos by @BegottenPoet228 and @Mooncatt3953 above to balance the sim with your hardware.
Hey Everyone,
Thank you for all the suggestions. So far I have managed to close the gap between GPU and CPU. I am still CPU limited, but I have gotten my fps and clarity up considerably. To start, I did a completely clean reinstall of everything. Windows, MSFS. All of it brand new. (FYI the download limit on msfs is ridiculous. With 800mbps coming in I was downloading at about 10mbits. Took all night). Not sure if it was a download from the marketplace or some third party app that was killing it, but a clean download helped. Next, I dropped most of the global settings to high instead of ultra (still had minimal impact) but the biggest thing was spending some time in the NVIDIA control panel and computer settings, turning off V sync and G Sync. DX12 did not work better for me and I had some graphic issues. TLOD and OD don’t seem to have much impact which is weird to me. I also have all AI to zero. Definitely interesting that a high end card and CPU are struggling with some things, but it sounds like maybe that is just an issue with msfs 2020 (hopefully fixed in 2024?) Any other suggestions to try out? Thank you all again. I appreciate it!
Thanks for the perspective. I get where you’re coming from about counting FPS. For me though, the issue was it looked terrible in general. Almost fully arcade style of gaming, so it was a CPU limiting issue and a graphics issue. It seems to be better with a clean install, so I will try and reinstall some things one by one and see if I can pinpoint what caused the CPU to tank. Do you just keep all your settings on default and let the game do its things?
Can you elaborate on what you mean by struggling? The sim is resource intensive. If you recently updated your BIOS, it likely included the downclocking of your CPU due to the Intel issue. That may also be playing a part.