Performance Questions - Can't Reach 60FPS

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
1

So I’m going to go ahead and apologize now for beating what seams to be a dead horse, but I really am looking to solve some issues and maybe get some answers on if an upgrade is even worth it.

My issue really seems to stem from not being able to achieve 60 FPS, even on the lowest of the low settings, every single thing turned off, being offline, with only scale remaining at 100%. I personally feel that if I have to lower scale below 100%, I may as well go play something else.

Before I get into it, I should first start with an apology for this being a bit of a long winded word salad, as well as my specs.

Specs
i5-8400 6c/6t @ 2.8GHz with a 4GHz Turbo
Gigabyte Z370P D3 with bios revisions to support 9th gen CPUs
Corsair H55 AIO
ASUS 3070 Dual - No overclock
32GB Corsair RGB Pro @ 3600MHz CL18
Corsair RM 850 PSU
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD - Windows Drive
Samsung 970 EVO 256GB NVME M.2 - MSFS 2020 Location
MSI Optix AG32C 165Hz 1080p Monitor

So as you can see, my PC isn’t a 2021 top of the line special, but it’s good enough to run just about anything, other than FS2020, that I can throw at it in full 1080p at well above 60 FPS.

MSFS 2020 on the other hand, I can’t even seem to reach 60FPS on the lowest of the low settings, offline, at 100% scale. Now I know this is down to my CPU being the bottleneck, but it is beyond frustrating that I can’t even get above 60 FPS, on a runway in the middle of nowhere, with everything on low.

Shown in the photo below is the system being bottlenecked offline and low.

CYEE Low - OFFLINE
CYEE Low - OFFLINE1920×1080 284 KB

Since I am a new user I am not able to post a second photo. The second photo contains the FPS with the game Online, and on Ultra, and everything cranked up with scale at 100% still. In that configuration I see around 15 FPS, but am still CPU bound. I’m only using roughly half of my GPU power with that.

Now I’ve been on a few different threads, and it really seems to be a mixed bag on what is what. I see people with worse CPUs, and 1080s getting better FPS, while some people on better CPUs with worse GPUs getting worse.

So I’m really looking to hear from people who are on a higher end GPU, who have upgraded a lower end CPU to see what sort of gains they get, as well as what they upgraded to AMD or Intel.

At the moment I am considering going from the 8400 to the 8700k/9700k. My board will support the 9th gen CPUs, so I don’t have to consider a MOBO replacement. The PSU should keep up, and the AIO should keep everything nice and cool. With that said, if I am only going to see maybe a 5 FPS gain from that, I might consider an 11th gen intel, or a Ryzen 5000 series, assuming I can find one.

Any and all opinions would be great on if it’s worth the upgrade, as well if anyone knows anything I can adjust or change to maybe see 60 FPS, even on the lowest of the low settings. The only setting I really refuse to adjust is the scale, as stated before, if I have to move below 100% to get to 60 FPS on low I may just shelf the game until they either optimize it a bit better, or upgrade to an 11th or 5000 series CPU when stock returns.

Again, apologies for the long winded word salad, and thank you very much in advance for any help anyone can provide.

Lowest settings include turning off all ground traffic, boats, and animals.

Edit I also understand their is a middle ground, not just Low and Ultra. My gripe is more with not being able to achieve 60 FPS on the lowest settings with a system that sees no issue getting well above 60 FPS on ultra with any other title.

2

You have to understand that Flightsims are different from “other titles”. You will not reach 60FPS constantly with actual hardware right now. Maybe somewhen in the future, but not yet. Stop chasing the frames, its a waste of time. :slight_smile:

Smoothness is your goal. Set vsync 30FPS and enjoy a smooth sim. Happy flying!

EDIT: also stop throwing money at it, i have an i7-9700K and a ASUS STRIX 2080Ti OC. I can not get 60FPS. so, dont do it. :slight_smile:

10 Likes
3

True, but as you can see from the photo, even on low I am hitting around 45, and that’s in the middle of no where offline. I even look at a larger airport, or go online to fly with other people and I am lucky to see 30 FPS.

4

You’re limited by the CPU, not the GPU. So lowering graphics settings won’t do anything. The CPU still has too much to do. (which is to be expected with an i5) Try disabling multiplayer, etc.

1 Like
5

Are you using Global settings in Graphics? If not, I suggest doing so, and start with Low.

Use a Low-impact cockpit (C152 - analog gauges only) and a Glass Cockpit (suggest C172 G1000) as your baseline planes for testing. Airliners have serious FPS impacts all on their own.

Traffic is one of your biggest ROI. Use Offline AI, reduce the count down to 10 each for GA and Airliner. For ground, leisure and commercial marine, try 5.

Turn down your static planes, personnel and vehicles at the airports - to 5.

Those are the biggest CPU cycle consumers outside of the cockpit, with the exception of a High or Ultra refresh rate on Glass Cockpit.

6

I had the i5 8400 and now have a i7 10700kf and did not gain much fps because my gpu is also limiting.You may likely get a bigger performance bump due to having a much more powerful gpu.
The i5 8400 is bound to limit you especially with a 3070 and it was limiting my 2060super now with the i7 smoother sim, smoother performance with glass cockpit planes and also I can increase LOD sliders without having those long pauses my 8400 did and it does make some difference if you fly at high altitudes.

I would highly recommend getting an 8core 16thread cpu unlocked.i7 9700k will be decent upgrade but a cpu with multithreading may help you with DX12,

To sum it up I only got an fps increase with airliners and glass cockpit aircraft.

7

My system:
i5 10400
RTX 3070 FE
32GB DDR4 running at 2666
MSI MAG MORTAR B460M WiFi
1TB NVME
4K HDR 60Hz TV

Updated motherboard and GPU bios to use resizable bar. Using hardware GPU scheduling. You hear a lot of suggestions about game mode, game bar, Nvidia control panel tweaks and so on but I found none of them made a difference on my system. I let game manage settings in Nvidia control panel.

You can’t expect a solid 60fps currently. Maybe with DX12 and CPU’s in a year or two with DDR5 memory. That’s when I’ll upgrade for now I’ve found only some settings make a difference and quite quickly you’ll reach diminishing returns. After at first individually tweaking each setting I now think it’s best to just choose one of the low, medium, high, or ultra settings. I use medium.

  • Airliners are much more demanding than turboprop’s and can cost about 10fps

  • Level of detail for objects and terrain, I keep at 50 for both returns a few fps

  • 100% resolution scaling at 4K HDR 10, some say 80% I didn’t find any real benefit

  • I haven’t tried the traffic settings, reducing vehicles as suggested by CasualClick, seems logical though

  • I’ve turned off vsync as otherwise I’d have to limit to 30fps

  • I haven’t found reducing live data beneficial, maybe 32GB helps? I wouldn’t want to lose bing data, photogrammetry.

  • Switching views, showcase is the least taxing sometimes the difference can be 10fps compared to cockpit or external view. I use a smaller monitor for cockpit gauges so I don’t have to always be in cockpit view.

In a turboprop I can expect sometimes as high as 50fps in showcase and dropping to about 35fps around complex areas even in cockpit. Average around 40fps feels very smooth.

A 747 from Newark to LaGuardia flying over Manhattan I can average around 31fps. It can get a bit framey at times dropping to low 20’s but then returning to above 30fps.

Overall the game for many flights in a turboprop the world looks so realistic and runs for the most part smoothly in 4K HDR. I’m quite pleased because I was expecting a 3070 to be only capable of 1440p. In reality I’ve found there isn’t any benefit dropping the resolution to 1440p, 4K runs just as well and looks pretty spectacular.

8

Forget looking at FPS and enjoy the game.

4 Likes
9

Agree with @HamiltonFred here, stop chasing FPS and set the sim up to a level that you enjoy else you may as well be playing PC Building Simulator.

Having said that, I appreciate some people enjoy this aspect of the hobby, pushing and tweaking the hardware, and I just purchased a new PC for FlightSim (my last was approaching 10 years old) but even now I don’t chase the FPS, as a matter of fact I haven’t even bothered checking it, but it looks great and feels great how I have it setup at the moment and not everything is cranked up.

2 Likes
10

I have i9-10900K, 3080, 32GB RAM, M.2 SSD so a pretty decent system. With the graphics tuning fairly high and on 4K I get 25-50 FPS depending on the situation, with occasional stutters. The game is totally playable at 30+, its slightly noticeable 25-30, starts to get irritating below 20. It doesn’t feel any different whether you are at 30 or 50 to be honest. So, optimise settings to reduce load on your CPU (other traffic is a good suggestion above), and you will find you can turn some of your graphics stuff up quite a bit and it will look nicer without impacting FPS. Get to 30-40 FPS in some circumstances then turn the framerate monitoring off!

3 Likes
11

@WintryImp08818
Until a few versions ago I had no problem achieving locked 60fps in non-glass cockpit aircraft at mid to high settings in rural areas with my old PC.
Locked 60 is essential for me if I need a 100% smooth flying experience, e.g. when doing aerobatics.

Most likely since the latest WU I can’t achieve the 60fps anymore which is a major setback for me.

Locked 30 is fine for slow sightseeing and IFR flying, but doing steep turns and seeing the trees stutter across the windscreen is an immersion killer for me.

2 Likes
12

True very true

13

Yea das also true same here non glass I can’t achieve 60-70 and with glass around 40-45

14

Can* I mean

15

Stop chasing frames in a simulator, you really don’t need too, as long as you it’s smooth and not stuttering it’s fine.

My system i9 10850K
Rtx 3080
32GB ram

In 4K every ultra and locked to 30fps and it’s buttery smooth apart from low level flying around London.

Even if I lowered my settings and took vsync off , and lowered resolution to 2k or 1080 I doubt I’d get near 60FPS

16

Well, that’s exactly the problem. It’s not buttery smooth on my install if don’t achieve 60fps, which was no problem until a few versions ago.

17

Internet speed? Rolling cache?
Try a test area with manual cache on

18

I’m using rolling cache and I’m staying in the same tiny area, so there’s nothing to load.

I’d love to use manual cache, but you can’t really use it due the still broken zoom function.

19

I take it from the comments here no one owns or owned an i5 8400.As much as I agree with the comments here forget about fps its important to have a well balanced system.
The op has a 3070.The i5 8400 is two gens old and its also locked @3.8ghz with only 6 threads. That is bound to bottleneck anything more powerful than an rtx2060 in a cpu bound game let alone enough to bottleneck a 3070.
imo its always a good idea to have a faster cpu rather than having an overpowered gpu with a low tier cpu.

20

It’s stuttering a little bit but I ain’t complaining…