Overclock Discussion SU4

Well time to eat some crow. Sorry for bringing this OC issue up again but I think it’s only fair. I, like many, thought I hand a perfectly tuned system but with this OC issue decided to try and find a tool that puts a lot of stress on CPU and RAM. I found one in the Prime95 stress test tool and when I ran it, sure enough, some of the cores reported errors. :frowning:

I won’t bore you with all the trial and error details but I was able to resolve the issue with just 2 tweaks.

For PBO I kept it enabled but had to lower the curve optimizer from negative 20 to negative 15.

For EXPO, I could keep it enabled but just needed to lower the VDD and VDDQ RAM voltages from 1.35 to 1.33.

After those two changes it past the prime95 tests. Now we’ll see if that had an impact on the CTD in the SIM.

I would recommend those that might have concerns about their system to download and run that prime95 stress test tool. Seems to do a pretty good job.

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Yeah, this is what we all have learnt the same way - MSFS stresses the system in ways that most tools miss, and overclocking is often the cause of CTDs. I also went through the same learning years ago with 2020.

What I don’t understand is why some people get so defensive (not you, you tried it out and posted updates) about this topic???

Just try it without the OC, no one is insulting your leet knowledge or decades of PC tuning experience (this was a poster who felt the need to inform me of their great skill in overclocking…). If it works, great, if not, just put your OC back.

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Glad to see your adjustments work. I had noticed the major cpu utilzation changes in this build. What i want to know is if the follow up builds are going to head in the same mode of travel before making any changes. Hence why i am waiting for the next build for validation.
The fact that for me in all the previous builds the best performing cores while running the sim topped out at 4.8GHZ while flying and with this build its hitting 5.3 indicates that load has been removed from some of the cores and they are now boosting higher and as a result some cores are undervolted a touch with too much of a negative curve. Simple fix (with time and the right tools) but you have to be able to specifically identify which core and adjust accordingly if you want to keep your per core OC or you can go with your route and adjust all your cores back (which is the mode you chose).

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It appears you definitely lost connection to the servers. Of course, we have no idea if that was an issue on the MS/Asobo side or your ISP side. You mentioned the scenery should have been cached, as you have loaded into that airport in the past. I assume you realize that is very much dependent on the size of your rolling cache and how many other areas you have flown since the last time you were at that airport. I can say I have never encountered scenery looking anything like your screenshot in MSFS2020 or MSFS2024 - and I have spent MANY hours in both sims.

I am no longer running any overclocks or undervolting on my system, but when I was doing that kind of tweaking, I found instances when all “stress-test” apps, including Prime95, came back clean, but MSFS2024 still would CTD on occasion. Since reverting to completely stock timings/speeds, my frequency of CTDs has dropped to almost zero.

I have a 9800x3d, MSI 5070ti, 64gb of 6000 cl 30 gskill Flare. Running PBO -30 all cores, with plus 200 mhz and it routinely boosts to 5.5-5.6 at less than 80c. 5070ti mild OC of 250 on the core and 200 on the memory with latest driver. RAM is OC to 6200 cl28. Been running this for months with only 1 ctd in the last 6-8 months. The current Beta is almost the best in all regards for me. So overclocking is not an automatic CTD.

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As an outsider to this specific topic, I certainly did not get the impression that anybody implied that it is. What I understand people to be saying is that this has been shown to cause problems in some cases. So, if you do get regular CTD’s and you do have your system overclocked, it is a simple step to eliminate OC as a cause by restoring defaults. If it happens to fix the issue: great! If not, then at least you have eliminated one possible cause of problems and can look at other possibilities..

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It’s not a simple either-or situation: it’s all about probabilities.

You can live to be 100 even with an unhealthy lifestyle, but the odds go down, and statistics back that up.

It’s the same thing with OC.

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My new 9800X3D system has a very modest PBO curve on all cores of -10, and no (none, zero, zilch) overclocking. That one change lowered my Cinebench All-Cores peak CPU temp by like 8 degrees C but leaves the system entirely stable. I tried -15 but it failed the Aida64 CPU stress test in like 20 seconds. Lost the silicon lottery there. But I’m using a 360mm AIO cooler in a high airflow case. When I first load the sim, my CPU peaks at around 70C until my cooler ramps up, then drops to low 50’s and stays there, even hours into long-hauls. I run my DDR5 memory at its rated speed of 6400 mt/s, its stock XMP profile, and have had literally zero stability issue with any build of MSFS204, or anything else I’ve thrown at it.

Conversely, 4 years ago when I got my last system, running my DDR4-3600 memory at its 3600 speed would almost always result in crashes of MSFS2020 within 10 - 20 minutes of flight. Dropping that memory to 3200 resulted in near-perfect stability. I later replaced that system memory with a different set of 3600 speed memory and that particular set of sticks ran just great at full speed.

Certainly if my system had the slightest bit of instability with FS2024 or anything else, the very first thing I would do would be revert everything to the safest defaults and then carefully change things one variable at a time to figure out where the weak spot was. Fortunately that has not proved necessary for this system.

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I have the 9950x which as a “ready for X3D” button in the BIOS. This does some magic with the number of cores. Feel free to fill in the details.

I run Expo 2, which is as I understand it, more stable than Expo 1. That’s all I touch in the BIOS.

I do not get any CTD’s in flight. I have had a couple enabling aircraft in My Library, and one or two just clicking Ready to Fly. I’m pretty sure these are module related and not general SIM issues or OC issues.

CPU at 4.3

Memory at 5600.

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I have my RAM (DDR4-3200) running with XMP2 profile enabled and my GPU (RTX 4060) was sold with a 10% standard overclock. MSFS 2024 is running very stable not causing any CTDs.

I also reenabled ReBar with some settings done in Nvidia Profile Inspector and that was a pretty nice decision. Graphics queue and MainThread both were at 20ms. Now they are at 15ms.

I agree re MSFS. I follow all the standard OC youtubers and get a stable OC on the various apps but still have to wind back the settings to get stable for MSFS

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This is the whole point that some of us were making. I learned on FS2004 that it was the only thing that crashed my OC’d PC at the time. I had one flight that caused it 100% of the time. Backtracked on the OC and it was fine.

It may not be a popular thought on some parts of this forum but not everything is Asobos fault. Not only do you read about OC issues but also driver and OS issues that people have fixed themselves. I give full respect to people who at least try to find solutions on their own equipment and I am very happy for them when they at least improve their stability/performance.

What I find hard to fathom is those that say ‘well it works fine for everything else’. The warning sign for me that it might be a personal PC issue is when Asobo are unable to reproduce the error, but somehow some people don’t think like that.

Youtube videos are very helpful but by the same token you can’t fall into the trap of just because something worked for the maker of it does not mean it will work perfectly for you.

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Your statement is spot on and is literally what i wrote months ago here on this forum.

People need to understand, that when OC-ing you are walking a thin line. Your overclocked system is only considered ‘stable’ as long as it doesn’t crash :slight_smile: So the argument “but it does run perfectly with everything else” is not valid by definition.

OC’ing is not a process that can be considered finalized at any point in time. Because as long as you keep updating/adding new software and hardware to your system you will have to re-evaluate your OC-ing.

MSFS is a really demanding peace of software and some kind of a stress test for your system setup/config. I have certain GPU OC profiles just for MSFS because with my main OC settings it won’t work. And yes, i also had to tame down my RAM OC because of MSFS. And that is totally fine and expected.

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I think what is fueling this misconception OCs is the false advertising of RAM speed.

They all get advertises with their XMP speeds that got tested under “laboratory conditions” and most people do not understand that this is still an overclock and therefore outside of specifications.

So if a software is not “behaving” turning down OC is one possible way to find the cause.

But as well it is legit to question why every other software seems to work well and only MSFS is crashing.

My guess is, that the sim got “optimized” so much with its memory management, that there is no headroom left for even the smallest error. And when you “live at the edge”, its more likely to fall.

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Exactly. Just because MSFS v1.x.y.0 works with an overclocked system does not mean v1.x.y+1.0 will.

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And no two CPU or memory modules are identical. Some will be more tolerant than others.

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That’s the main variable.

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Oh, there are plenty of others: motherboard design specifications in terms of power stability and PCI lanes; storage bandwidth and how people have their storage configured; plus the out-of-our-control of whatever-the-heck Windows is doing under the hood in conjunction with the even-more-out-of-our-control stuff the system BIOS is doing …

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