Optimizing BIOS for MSFS 2020 & 2024 - Tips, Advice and Discussion

[RogueNaught1]

@xXIM1K4IXx

To be perfectly honest, my system is stock

That might be one of your issues because stock PCs do not make for good gaming PCs. In my case I have a dual boot system where I have all my gaming on its own partition. I un-installed all the Windows bloatware, basically anything not used for gaming. I disabled all my startup apps as well as those in Task Scheduler. I also went through all my services and disabled those service that are not required to keep Windows running. As a result I have a system with as little background services running as possible.

BTW… Next month Microsoft is suppose to release an Xbox Mode for Windows 11 that is suppose to do much of what I did manually, disable services not required to improve gaming. That should help many users improve their systems.

'Can't wait to have an Xbox mode that gives me more ads on my PC': Windows 11...

[GimbalAxis]

@xXIM1K4IXx

To be perfectly honest, my system is stock.

I suggest coming over to this thread (or start another) and you can get lots of troubleshooting help if you share your specific hardware and settings.

In general I can tell you this: assuming you have an AM5 Motherboard (you said 9950X3D, right?) and that your RAM is on your motherboard’s QVL list, then you want to enable EXPO in your BIOS. That ensures your memory is running at it’s “advertised” speed, which will be faster than its stock speed, and that alone makes a huge performance difference. There are a handful of other things to look at, however, including MSFS settings, frame rates, etc.

[SlabsFly]

@RogueNaught1

@xXIM1K4IXx

To be perfectly honest, my system is stock

That might be one of your issues because stock PCs do not make for good gaming PCs.

You are implying that you cannot get “good” performance with a “stock computer”, whatever that is. I suspect that would make for quite distressing/depressing reading for many current and potential users and I quite frankly disagree. I have what I consider a stock, quite high end PC with for instance 9800X3D and a 4080 Super. Native 4K, TAA, no DLSS upscaling and no framegen, mostly Ultra, 350 TLOD, 200 OLOD, medium aircraft and services on the ground. No live traffic and no multiplayer. And no, while I do have Little NavMap open while flying, I do not have all kinds of other programmes open in the background while using the sim. That is just common sense. But practically no fancy tweaks, overclocking or preparation. And I have pretty much always had pretty good performance.

Most times I have 60FPS in the air, dropping to around the 40FPS in cloud. With my stock normal flying “worst case” test for every Beta update (clear WX preset, flying from EGLC to EGLL, landing rwy 27R, taxi and parking next to some airliners in a Piper Dakota), this is typical for what I see in CapFrameX

I just completed a halfway around the world flight in just under 50 hours of flying in the A2A Aerostar. With basically nary a glitch. With visuals like this:

While I am sure not everybody would be deliriously happy with these results, it totally works for me, and I suspect many people would be satisfied as well. Sure I can still adjust my sim settings to improve things. But I am very much enjoying the sim just as it is.

To each his own.

[xXIM1K4IXx]

Thank you so much for all this information. I have a custom-built gaming PC. I have 64GB of RAM and I’ve already enabled Expo mode. I know quite a bit about system configurations. I don’t really understand, and I think I’ll format it for the third time. I should mention that I also have four hard drives, including a 2TB Gen 5 drive dedicated solely to MSFS24.

[xXIM1K4IXx]

I think I’m relatively demanding. I play with Inibuilds A350-1000s and aircraft like PMDG with BATC; I think that’s mainly where the problem with my high standards lies.

[GimbalAxis]

@xXIM1K4IXx

I should mention that I also have four hard drives, including a 2TB Gen 5 drive dedicated solely to MSFS24

Have you checked to see if any of your drive slots share PCIe bandwidth (and thus reduce bandwidth) with your GPU, or anything like that? Are you using Process Lasso or any other manual / custom settings that would affect CPU (I suggest not using those).

[xXIM1K4IXx]

Thanks for your reply, no, not at all, everything is original, and yes, my hard drive is shared on the Gen 5 slot of my graphics card because I’m entitled to two PCIe 5.0 slots.

[RogueNaught1]

@SlabsFly

You are implying that you cannot get “good” performance with a “stock computer”

Sorry if you misunderstood but that is not what I’m implying. What I am saying is that you cannot expect to get optimal performance from a stock Windows installation without first performing a cleanup.

Go back to when Windows was first introduced. It was designed as an OS that allowed for multitasking. That is to have multiple application running simultaniously in a ‘windowed environment’ sharing system resources. That is where Windows got its name from in the first place. It was never designed for gaming where multitasking is the opposite of what you want. Would you run FS2024, Call of Duty and Cyberpunk in its own window at the same time and expect good performance? Of course not.

If you want to run games on Windows and get optimal performance you should disable all those unnecessary background services using those valuable CPU resources. That is all that I’m saying.

[Jacobes16]

Updated my X870E to the latest Bios last night, updated chipset driver. Now the question I have, if my pc is really only for MSFS and Skyrim, I should be fine turning virtualization off in bios correct?

I do use the sim pc for buying stuff on Amazon every now and then but other sensitive matters are done on a second pc.

thanks in advance

[TenPatrol]

When you disable virtualization in BIOS, Windows automatically turns off Memory Integrity. In your case, that’s actually likely a good thing performance-wise - you may see slightly better performance in MSFS and Skyrim, so that’s a plus.

The downside is that you lose the extra security layer provided by Memory Integrity, so your system is a bit less protected.

Memory integrity is a Virtualization-based security (VBS) feature available in Windows. Memory integrity and VBS improve the threat model of Windows and provide stronger protections against malware trying to exploit the Windows kernel. VBS uses the Windows hypervisor to create an isolated virtual environment that becomes the root of trust of the OS that assumes the kernel can be compromised. Memory integrity is a critical component that protects and hardens Windows by running kernel mode code integrity within the isolated virtual environment of VBS. Memory integrity also restricts kernel memory allocations that could be used to compromise the system.

[A68yoSniper]

just thought i would put up a note as I saw there was an entry in this useful thread.

At the end of the day I decided to disable all the good looking ASUS OCing options because I was getting a crash a day out of the blue. I could run stress tests all day long and never get a crash, but at 3AM… or 4PM doing nothing… boom.

Since I did this no crashes, period.

You recall I have an ASUS 5080 and a 670 MB with a RYZEN 7950X.

I do not have an AIO but a top of the line fan.

For the tiny performance increase I was getting was not worth the instability. Given my RAM is running at 5200 that is really the rate limiting step in the equation.

Anyway, this is a useful discussion and for my next build I will do better if I can afford it. I am glad I have 64GB of RAM no matter how slow.

[Jacobes16]

@TenPatrol Thank You for posting the Mem Integrity part. So as long as I keep W11 updated and I don’t click any nefarious links or the like, I should in theory be fine disabling it?

[TenPatrol]

@Jacobes16

Thank You for posting the Mem Integrity part. So as long as I keep W11 updated and I don’t click any nefarious links or the like, I should in theory be fine disabling it?

Ask yourself one simple question: what matters more to you - a few extra FPS or the security of your Windows system?

Before you decide to disable Virtualization or Memory Integrity, actually run some tests. On your specific hardware configuration, you might find that Memory Integrity has little to no noticeable impact on performance.

[Jacobes16]

I’ve decided to leave it on. If I need a few extra fps I’ll just switch from TAA back to DLSS.

Thanks for your input!

[PilotCentaur736]

Quick update on my previous message about tests to remove the long pauses in the Fenix.

I went into my BIOS to disable “Rebar” on my 5090 and also noticed I had previously had “x3D gaming mode” disabled as part of past attempts to stop audio crackling. This being disabled shows 16 cpu threads in Task Manager. I re-enabled it as it says improves gaming performance for my 7800x3D. Restarted the sim and horror of horrors - AUDIO CRACKLING has returned. I thought Asobo had fixed this as I havent had it in 2 months! I will switch the BIOS back again but crackling better not return. Nothing else has been changed.

[CipherNGX]

I believe Gaming Mode or Turbo Game Mode as ASUS refers to it, disables one of the CCD’s and also SMT/Hyperthreading. If you only have one CCD like on the 9800X3D, it just disables SMT. I tend to keep Game Mode disabled myself.

[CipherNGX]

Yeah you’re right, I too have noticed that keeping SMT enabled is better. To keep it enabled though Turbo Game Mode must be “Disabled”, I know, sounds counter-intuitive.

[PilotCentaur736]

I need to double check but I reversed the changes I made in the BIOS yesterday after they brought back audio crackling. Previously changing these never stopped audio issues, they just eventually stopped on their own. A test flight last night after reverting had no crackling.

I seen the amd settings as being similar to enabling or disabling hyper threading on my older i9 9900k intel processors. I have the amd gaming setting off but task manager shows 8 cores and 16 logical processors. It does 16 graphs. Cpuz app states 8 cores, 16 threads. If I enable amd game mode which bios tips say improves performance in games then task manager only shows 8 graphs and cpuz says 8 cores 8 threads

Update bios set as following images

[A68yoSniper]

Just a word of caution on the ASUS software. tried all the OCing stuff with their approval and eventually got systems crashes at odd times out of the blue for a measly 1-2% better performance…. your milage may vary. Running my ASUS 5080 and 7950X with their 670 MB and has been rock solid with stock settings now for several weeks.

[GimbalAxis]

Who likes data?

My goal has always been to get MSFS working on 3 screens. My problem is that when I built my PC, I had 1 screen, and got used to High and Ultra settings – but keeping Ultra settings on 3 screens becomes … a challenge.

I wanted to understand the range of performance from Low to Ultra, on single and triple screens, with default and tuned settings. I started doing circuits but realized the number of settings combinations was going to take forever. After capturing data at various stages of flight - from gate, takeoff, cruise, approach, landing, the numbers showed that sitting at the gate / parking tends to be a fair way to measure, since TLOD and OLOD have significant impact at the airport. And I really just wanted to compare the same scenarios across different settings.

Testing Set Up

Variable	Test
BIOS	Stock
	Tuned
Aircraft Locations	C172 at KTEB Parking 83
	A330 at KJFK Gate C31
MSFS Preset	Low
	Medium
	High
	Ultra
	Custom (High + Max 30, FGx2, VSync Half, TLOD 400)
Screens	1 screen 4K
	3 screens 2-4-2 K
	3 screens 4-4-4 K

Flight conditions:

• Few Clouds, No Traffic, Noon on May 5
• Load in cold and dark
• Start up, enter flight plan, capture data (screenshot)

Specs & Default vs Tuned

Edit May 9 - updated screenshot to include Rolling cache, and clarify VSync settings.

Results - A330-200 at KJFK

Results - C172 at KTEB

• 1 Screen = Limited by MainThread
• 3 Screens = Limited by RdrThread

I stick with DLAA because when you update DLSS using DLSS Swapper, the details in scenery, and in the cockpit, are really good, better than TAA for me. And because I sit close to large screens, I notice when those details are missing if I use DLSS Quality render scaling.

The performance numbers look worse on paper than they behave. The Dynamic setting does work (lowering LOD to preserve 30 FPS + FG), and things are mostly smooth even at a busy airport. I do have some minor jitters on 1 of 3 screens but I think that is down to the difference in cable (DisplayPort to HDMI adapter).

It becomes clear how beneficial Memory tuning is especially in demanding scenarios. Even if only minor differences show in FPS, most of the metrics and anything CPU related improve, and you can feel the difference. It’s also clear MSFS won’t use more than (I think) 36 GB of RAM even if more is available, and I wonder if that is arbitrary or Asobo might consider expanding that …

I’ve settled at a custom setting of mostly “High”, with Max Frames 30 + FSR Frame Generation x2, and still experimenting between 2-4-2 K and 4-4-4 K resolutions.