This is an interesting take. It makes perfect sense. But I’ve found that if I set my monitor refresh in NvCP to 165Hz and in the sim turn Vsync OFF, I get a very smooth 90 fps, with both CPU and GPU latency around 7ms. Turning vSync on @ 50% results in a good 82 fps, but CPU latency goes up slightly, and GPU latency doubles.
If I turn my NvCP setting down to 60Hz and leave vSync set to 100%, my latency goes up significantly, and I see little micro tics in the GPU latency. Turning vSync OFF doesn’t help.
In short, I get best results when I just let my system run like a racehorse.
I don’t use frame generation. HAGS off, RBAR enabled. TAA. TOD and LOD @ 200. Mix of Ultra and High. These screenshots are from a 1500 ft. AGL flight over desert in a Rans S6S.
5800X3D
RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
BEST: Refresh = 165Hz, vSync OFF. GPU and CPU latency are excellent.
You’re right about the 3090 Ti not supporting frame generation. The 40xx series does, so my system can’t be directly compared to OP’s. My point is that I have a good balance of CPU and GPU performance - something OP does not have because of his outdated CPU and state-of-the-art consumer GPU. This ‘balancing’ is something I’ve learned from experts on this forum. Don’t spend a lot of money on one component while neglecting the others and expect some magical performance gain (in MSFS.) Someone suggested that if OP can’t budget money to upgrade his MOBO and CPU he might consider holding out for MSFS 2024. I can’t help but think the new sim will increase performance for everyone.
Of course performance lessens over areas with more objects. The point is that I use deserts to get a ‘best scenario’ baseline when tuning my system. Then I can fly over a city or major airport to fine tune. Here’s Atlanta. It was a smooth flight. FPS dropped to around 55 briefly, but was mostly what you see in the screenshot.
Ok well your results…, seem fine. I’ve logged in to 3Dmark and compared to a few others as well as my own and they stand up ok. Nothing I would say to worry about for the basic health of those components.
Thank you! I really appreciate your feedback and well written explanations
In the meantime I have done some flights and is quite smooth. I am just not looking at the in game FPS counter anymore as are mainly red and staying around 20-30 FPS.
Actually, while I said I couldn’t be of more help, just thought I’d knock out a few things I did when I got my new system. Lets give this another go.
Motherboard and driver updates. This was a shock to me, on my ASUS motherboard alone the website had 5 distinct driver / bios updates, everything bios, to IO, Engine Management software etc almost all of it had a performance impact with older software.
We know the issue isn’t with the GPU, but as maitenance step, install the latest GPU driver, for Nvidia 536.23 it’s working really well right now in MSFS, remember to click advanced and check the box to remove the original driver and also from the Temporary Files in windows delete the Direct X shader cache.
Also for the GPU, I usually select Performance mode for the Textures and Power Management options.
In Windows under Graphics Settings, you can browse to Microsoft Flight Simulator and select High Performance.
Check what’s starting up for the Task Manager and disable any tasks which are not required. Your CPU might be compromised by what’s running in the background. This is more so in MSFS than any of the games I have on my harddisk.
Consider installing Rivatuner and MSI Afterbuner on your system, this can expose a whole bunch of metrics you can see when running MSFS in realtime. It’s easy to tweak once setup, just search for these products in YouTube on how to install.
For MSFS, if you have a busy community folder, consider renaming this and trying default aircraft to see if performance is still impacted. You should be able to have ULTRA settings across the board with DLSS 3 and TAA and get stellar performance, even in 4K although I admittedly only use 1440P (the 4090 is required for VR and bragging rights over my brother).
Also in the forums somebody else has posted a performance thread based on the 10900K again not something I would be concerned with as everybodies system is different but worth keeping an eye on.
The thing is thatthose are non demanding landscapes and a not demanding airplane. I get >60FPS with a stock aircraft like the DA40NG over the desert with a much more humble setup.
Pending is to see how it performs on more demanding zones and airplanes. Try KLAX (th epitome of fps eater) with the A320FBW (reasonably demanding aircraft) from gate to take off and check FPS with that.
Edit: oops, missed they posted in a more demanding zone later.
KLAX is a tough one. I don’t fly airliners, so I can’t speak to the performance hit I would get with an A320.
My point was not so much about “Ooooh, Ahhhh, look at me!” as it was about how having a 4090 isn’t the end-all-be-all. OP has some issues that we are trying to help him resolve. Hopefully my post helped a little at least, by showing what a well-tuned, modest system with a balanced CPU/GPU combination can do, as well as how using some basic tuning tools can help him achieve better performance.
On KLAX with the DA40 I’m getting 28-36fps. With an airliner it’s easily 10fps below that, or more. That’s why I think that what’s one experience may differ a lot to someone else: at 28fps it’s perfectly playable, but landing at 15-17fps is a really horrible gaming experience.
EDIT: Should have been more precise about my settings. Full Screen Resolution 1920x1080, rendering scaling at 135% (2592x1458), DX12, TLOD at 150, OLOD at 125, offscreen precaching at ultra, terrain vector data at ultra, building, tress, grass and bushes at ultra, volumetric clouds at ultra, and the rest mixed between ultra and high.
Full Screen Resolution 2560x1440, Render Scaling N/A
DX11, DLSS-DLAA, HDR On, vSync OFF, RIVA Tuner framerate limit = 90 FPS, Anisotropic Filtering OFF (I enable 16X in NvCP)
TLOD at 200, OLOD at 200
Off Screen Pre-Caching ULTRA
Terrain Vector Data HIGH
Buildings - ULTRA
Trees, grass and bushes HIGH
Volumetric clouds ULTRA
Texture Supersampling 8x8, Texture Synthesis ULTRA, Shadow Maps 1536, Terrain Shadows 1024
The rest mixed ULTRA and HIGH
Not sure why I’m getting errors when I try to upload screenshots…Never had a problem before.
FPS / Latency:
Over LA buildings at 900 ft - 55 / 18ms
6 miles out - 66 / 15ms
On approach @ 1 mile - 46 / 21ms
Threshold - 40 / 24ms
Touchdown - 40 / 24ms
Hello guys! i just wanted to report back what i think it was the solution of my initial problem posted some weeks ago. After checking the connections, i realized i had the GPU connected via HMDI to my Monitor. I then changed my cable to a display port cable, connected this in the diplay port of the GPU and then to the monitor. Surprise! the FPS counter went up
If i recreate the initial set up i had (pmdg on runway at KJFK), i get well above the 30 FPS that I was seeing. I must say the performace and smoothiness was never an issue. But i just could not understand why i was stucked on 30 FPS even by not having any locked refresh rate and although i lower the graphic settings in the sim from Ultra to Low the 30 FPS were still there.
Well i can say I am not an expert in connecting stuff but wow! i never though that a cable connection would play such a big role in the display of FPS (not performace).
I want to thank everyone who contributed by giving ideas and taking the time to troubleshoot the issue!
Yes, both cable quality and the type of connection is very important. When using hdmi or display port, you’re only going to get the resolution, refresh rate and hdr level of the weakest point in your set up. So if you’re using hdmi and expecting 4k at 120Hz then both monitor and video card must support the hdmi v2.1 standard. Hdmi v2.0b will only get you 4k at 60Hz and lesser specs will get less resolution and refresh rates so check your specs!
Yes, you should be getting much better performance in the sim. Your profile indicates Xbox but obviously your using a PC - so is this PC new?
It also appears you’re using 2 monitors? Can you pls provide some details on what make/model these monitors are and the refresh rates. Also, what type of cables are you using (HDMI/Display Port) and are they good quality cables?
Also, is your community folder empty? If not I would recommend that you use no 3rd party add-ons during diagnosis.
CPU getting hammered, and GPU latency spikes evident.
but wow! i never though that a cable connection would play such a big role in the display of FPS (not performace).
