New Nvidia Studio Drivers (not Game-Ready) have dropped! 517.40

Posted in the other thread as well:
I5-10600K / 3070 / 32 GB here, tested DX12 with Studio Driver and seeing a very nice improvement.

Settings on HIGH, TLOD 125, trees, textures and clouds ULTRA.

VRAM usage is close to the max (around 6.9 GB out of 7.0 available). But it is fluent, steady FPS > 30 even on frame heavy airports like justsim EDDL with the BAe146 or the Fenix, only minor stutters when making sharp turns

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Someone just posted in another thread about this, a message off of the Nvidia boards from some official at Nvidia that said yes, the improvements do apply to the studio driver for MSFS.

I just uninstalled 22h2 for win 10 both .net and cumulative after CTD 4 times before the sim would actually run, and it ran with good fps for the most part. So I have to wonder now is there something in 22H2 causing the issue. Gonna try it this way for a couple of days and see if it makes a difference…

Yeah thats the one Thnx Kstarfightrr

Here it is!

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True, but Asobo took the optimisation out of the sim, after the first beta build. Hopefully they will put it back in next week after the release of game ready driver, and then both drivers should work real nice.

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No the optimizations are in the sim, they said they would be in su10 and we have su10. Theres something from Asobo about this in the release notes, something to the effect the optimizations are in there and when the next driver drops they will automagically kick in and work. The debate here turned into whether or not this was the next driver update or do we have to wait for the Game Ready Driver. And now we have an official answer from Nvidia…

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No official word from Asobo on this, but apparently it’s enabled once it detects the new driver. This is in line with what I’ve seen in my comparison as well, as there’s a performance increase using the latest 517.40 driver and DX12.

Why is VRAM usage higher with the studio driver than game ready driver, if the optimisation is in the sim, despite it being removed, and not put back in, (the live build is the same as final beta, and it wasn’t in final beta). Surely if the memory optimisation was in it would recognise the studio driver but not the game ready and so VRAM usage would be lower with studio driver, when the opposite is actually true?

I don’t know what the DX12 memory optimization actually does outside of improving performance. On my rig with a 3090, I immediately see a sizeable increase in VRAM usage when using the new driver and DX12, but a signficant performance increase.

As far as studio vs game ready driver, they will result in the same performance as per what Nvidia’s reponse is posted above. If there is a VRAM usage increase in the studio version, it will be the same in the game ready driver.

Yes, with the Studio Driver we’ll see improved performance, but also increased VRAM usage. As others have said, Asobo took the memory optimisation out of the final beta, which is now the live version, so we now need to wait for Asobo to put the memory optimisation back in to ensure VRAM usage is properly controlled by MSFS.

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Source is https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/user/15/501521//?comment=3283628

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I’m not sure why you keep saying the optimisation was not in the final beta. It’s absolutely possible (maybe even likely) that it was/is in there but disabled unless the system detects an driver version of greater than 517.xx or some other flag that indicates the capability to use the memory allocator on Nvidia. In fact we know the code is in there because it’s already active for AMD gfx card users as per the release notes. Further corroborating this Matt from WT made a post saying it would auto-activate on the next Nvidia driver release

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Depends on what they mean by optimised. If I’m sitting there with my 24GB 3090 seeing 6GB usage with the non-optimised driver, and I then see, for sake of argument, 12GB of VRAM usage, to me that is optimised.

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Can confirm. I was getting stutters after su10 on dx12. Installing the studio driver completely removes the stutters

This is why there is so much confusion and really just can’t comprehend how nobody in Asobo or MSFS can give us an explanation to end this debacle.

Supposedly, the sim does not have the optimization code until driver is released, but yet, with the studio driver, DX12 is performing like the optimization is in the sim and activated.

I feel like this will lead to a lot of ■■■■■■ off people once the GRD drops and nothing changes for them.

Just don’t understand why nobody can officially give a statement. Instead, we consumers are the ones going around and piecing together whatever information we can find.

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Nvidia says that they will release the new game ready driver next week but that the new studio driver should give the same experience for msfs.

In my testing, the new studio driver gives stable fps in dx12. However Fps is around 14fps lower than dx11 in vr with my 3080ti so it is an absolute no go for me

Also at my house. DX12 with this studio driver, is smooth but -5 to 10 FPS compared to DX11. My GPU usage is also the difference. DX11=9ms and DX12=20ms, double.

If it was just a question of the sim being able to recognise the driver and then activate the optimisation if it was present, why did they have to take the optimisation out of the beta after the first build? Surely it could have been left there as it wasn’t doing anything until it had the correct driver. These to me implies that the memory optimisation is a sim side thing and not just something that is there that will suddenly work with the correct driver. Added to this the fact the VRAM usage is in fact higher with the new studio driver than the current game ready driver, suggests that the optimisation is not present at the moment whichever driver one is using, and therefore, needs to be put back in the sim at some point. This is confirmed by the fact that they removed it in the first place and said, that they had taken out the code for optimisation after the first beta, this did not go back in to any of the following beta build, including the final one, which is identical to the release build, therefore, this optimisation is not in the release build, and irrespective of what driver we are currently using, it is not there. This doesn’t mean of course that either the studio driver, or the game ready driver, don’t have other benefits or bad things that makes performance better or worse with one or the other.

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If memory optimisation is not activated with the use of the new studio driver, then when Asobo activates it, it will be a bomb! Because the new studio driver gives very good performance with DX12! This suggests that it will be even better afterwards! I hope so :see_no_evil:

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I hope so too! But I wouldn’t put it past them to be as equally confused as we are about the whole issue and make a mess of it.

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Tried DX12 with Studio driver, I only have 8GB VRAM.
I was pleasantly surprised (FPS locked to 1/3 100Hz)

  • DX12 CPU usage was same as DX11
  • DX12 0.8ms higher GPU usage than DX11
  • I use DLSS (4K) and my texture resolution is to low. DX12 I have around 500mb spare at a 3rd party airport. Far smoother with less stutters compared to previous versions.
  • I’ll still going to use DX11 but I was surprised how smooth DX12 was, when in previous builds I was getting stutters due to over usage of VRAM