Hello everyone,
As from another thread, I mentioned that I would have a brief window in which I had both a 3080 and 3090. They are both MSI Suprim X versions, so I thought I would compare their performance in various MSFS scenarios.
Of course, as always, take all these numbers with a pinch of salt. I’m not claiming these are objectively true, but rather the results I had found. There are most definitely variances in the numbers just because of some third party factor(i.e. MSFS stutters on something that it didn’t do in another run).
TL;DR - Provided you’re not being limited by mainthread, the RTX 3090 offers around 10 - 15% greater performance over the 3080. At the best of times, this will amount to 6 - 8 more FPS. However, even with a 5800X, CPU remains the dominant limiting factor that will prevent better performance, particularly with VR. VRAM usage in my testing was not wildly different between the card, and never exceeded the 3080. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible this can happen once MSFS moves to DX12. The 3080 is a vastly more attractive option for its value, and performs extremely well. It remains to be seen how much of a difference there will be once DX12 happens. Unsurprisingly, the 3080Ti would be the best choice once released.
This is my rig:
ASUS Prime X570 Pro motherboard
Ryzen 7 5800X OC’ed with CTR 2.1 at 4.725Ghz
Coolermaster ML240R
G.Skill Trident Neo 4*8 GB 3800Mhz CL16 DDR4 RAM
Corsair 750W PSU
Corsair 680X Crystal Series Case
Sabrent Rocket Q4 2TB NVMe SSD
I have tested the two cards in two separate conditions. That is, both of them were run at stock, and overclock. For stock settings, I did also open MSI Afterburner and pull the power limit to its maximum to make sure they get the wattage they need to stay at higher clocks. For overclock settings, they both had the same core and memory clock increases - interestingly both crashed on Unigine Heaven when I put them above +100 core clock. OC settings were +100 core, +250 memory clock.
Scenario 1:
Shoreham airport sitting on runway(freeware scenery from flightsim.to) 20 ultra settings with Sim Skunk Works Fiat G.91:
Notes: This was in a situation in which both GPUs were allowed to rise up to full 100% usage, and is the most accurate example in performance difference between the two cards.
Scenario 2:
Flying along the coast of Brighton seafront(freeware scenery from flightsim.to) around 800ft 250KIAS, Fiat G.91 Ultra Settings
Similar to Scenario 1, though there were some flickers showing it was being limited by mainthread in split seconds.
Scenario 3:
JFK Landing Challenge Ultra Settings
Notes: Scenario was dominantly limited by mainthread.
Scenario 4:
Shoreham Airport Runway 20 Ultra Settings SSW Fiat G.91 Custom(around high to low ultra) Settings, VR Rift S
Notes: VR uses quite a lot of CPU performance, and MSI Afterburner demonstrated that both cards fell to sub 80% usage.
Scenario 5:
Flying along the coast of Brighton seafront around 800ft 250KIAS, Fiat G.91 Custom(around high to low ultra) Settings, VR Rift S
Notes: Similar to scenario 4, though I suspect since I was moving rather than static on the runway, the 3090 was less of a bottleneck hence marginally better FPS.
Otherwise, my only other notes are that:
The 3090 only ran about 1 celsius hotter than the 3080(72/73 rather than 71/72)
VRAM usage between the two cards was very similar(this was using the developers FPS tool) and the highest I saw(in these scenarios) was 8.5GB.
As with flight sim in general, the CPU remained the dominant limiting factor, in particular with VR.
I did not have any traffic enabled or multiplayer given that the dominantly affect CPU usage.
If my Reverb G2 arrives before I have sold my 3080, I will test the results… this is also contingent on the Reverb working on my X570 board!
I hope these results are of interest to people, and don’t hesitate to ask any questions if you want more information.
Cheers,
Peter