Low performance/FPS?

User Support Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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1

I recently felt that my MSFS 2024 SU2 beta and MSFS 2020 were running somewhat slow; I suspected a number of recently installed add-ons. I disabled everything, cleared the community folder, reduced graphics settings to low and still get numbers, which I feel are too low.

The test setup: MSFS 2024 SU2 beta, empty community folder, no tools running, traffic disabled, most apps closed. I start with a simple Asobo C172 at a small airfield (tried some, e.g. EDLD and EDLX, also some other planes), either at night or day. Graphics are set to low at 1920x1080 with no VSync. I get around 80 fps in or out of the plane (same at 4K actually, and with way higher settings).

The system: AMD 7950X3D, X670E mainboard, NVidia GeForce RTX4090, 64 GB DDR @ 6600 / EXPO enabled, fast NVMe.

Some things that I tried: Various resolutions, airports, planes, NVidia driver versions (576 series and 572), clearing the rolling cache, clearing shader caches, other games and benchmarks (those work fine), measuring FPS with other tools than Dev Mode (and disabling that), disabling Game Bar and NVidia Overlay.

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Benchmarks and other games show expected performance for CPU and GPU, but both MSFS installs seem to be somewhat broken for me. I would be happy with 80fps in general, but latency is quickly going up to sometimes >100ms with addons and getting <30fps with a small GA plane at a small airfield does not bode well for complex airliners at major airports with traffic injection.

What could I try? What should I expect as a baseline performance with a 7950X3D/RTX 4090/64 GB for those scenarios?

2

I have a similar system and get good and bad performance in SU2 too, sometimes for no rhyme nor reason, as do many others if you read the SU2 feedback here.

I really hope that MS/Asobo are looking in to this and have a fix in the pipeline, otherwise if SU2 is released as is I expect they will get a lot of backlash. I switch between SU1 and the SU2 beta quite regularly, and the good news is that SU1 provides much more consistent performance, so I suggest you stay with that while you can.

3

Why on earth do you need more than 80fps. The sim should run butter smooth with those fps. I dont think Asobo are in the business of frame chasing, just making efforts to make sure it runs respectably over a wide range of PC`s.

4

I also have a 7950X3D. It is my opinion that when running this sim on a dual-CCD design like this CPU, Process Lasso is a must.

This video helped me a lot.

5

I found out that this is/was most likely a driver problem. LatencyMon showed high latency and two cores showed usage when the system should have idled. This seems to happen with the “ITE USB Connector Client” device on some systems (maybe only ASUS X670E boards with AMD CPUs), possibly caused by a driver or BIOS problem or incompatibility with recent Windows updates. Disabling that device in device manager works around the problem. The loss of performance is most noticeable in MSFS 2020 (because of its bad multi-threading) and somewhat less in MSFS 2024 (same idea, just not quite as bad).

Disabling that quickly resulted in 150 fps with low settings and passable frame rates at 4K ultra with DLSS frame gen in 4K (~70-80 fps, but very much depending on plane and airport). This is closer to what I expected.

Another performance problem with MSFS 2024 was the installed, but currently unused GAmod 2024, which, with AI traffic on, brought FPS down by a factor of 2-3x. Disabling the mod fixed that. AI traffic at the highest level still costs many fps for what it does (~20 fps even when no plane is visible???) in my install, but for now I can live with that; maybe MSFS 2028 will fix things.

6

It doesn’t run respectably over a wide range of PCs or gaming console, for which it is also sold and advertised.

I was getting 80 fps with low settings at Full HD on a high-end machine (top last-gen components, only recently superseded) with way less when using acceptable settings (i.e. settings that made it look better than MSFS 2000), but I guess it wasn’t your business to read my description.

This specific problem was primarily caused by some broken driver, which was unexpected, because no single other game has had a noticeable drop in frame rate. It’s also clear that MSFS does have many performance problems which Asobo is responsible for and should fix. It’s not like MSFS 2020 and 2024 got their 2.7/5 and 1.9/5 star ratings on the MS Store for nothing and started off with rating even worse.