There are lots of possible causes for the stutters. Obviously, some are caused by limitations of your PC’s hardware, that only an upgrade can fix, but there are a few things you can check out that can help narrow down the cause that do not require a detailed knowledge of how the sim interacts with your CPU, GPU & memory.
Does the problem happen when only flying the PMDG 73 or other similar 3rd-party aircraft? If you fly one of the default GA single prop aircraft into one of the airports where you are seeing the stutters, do you still see them? If not, that would suggest the issue lies with the 3rd-party aircraft.
Generally, larger airports have more scenery items to render, so if you see this while trying to land at major airports, but not while flying the PMDG 73 very low & slow over some tiny bush airstrip, that would indicate that it is related to the complexity of the airport scenery that the simulator is trying to render.
Some of the possible causes are:
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Your hard drive (especially the older “spinning disk” variety) is unable to deliver the requested data fast enough - i.e. the disk I/O (Input/Output) is maxing out at 100%. You can check this using the Windows Resource Monitor Tool. Expand the Disk Activity drop-down on the Disk tab. Solid-state drives (SSD) are much less prone to having this problem.
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I have noticed slight stutters occur when approaching a major airport, such as at Singapore, when there is a lot of multiplayer traffic. I suspect this might be because the sim suddenly has to render 20/30/40 multiplayer aircraft parked at gates, or in pattern / on final. Experiment with flying the same approach to a major airport such as London Heathrow with & without multiplayer or AI-generated traffic. If you consistently see fewer stutters without other aircraft, you might have to reduce the amount of other aircraft traffic.
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Are you using a rolling cache? If so, how large is it? There has been considerable discussion in various forums about the benefits & optimal size for the cache - for example, these posts: here, here and here.
Reading the various posts, the consensus seems to be that: -
The rolling cache is most beneficial for users with lower bandwidth and higher latency internet connections.
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The cache performs better on a SSD than the older HDDs.
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Very large sizes - greater than 32 GB - provide no additional benefit and could actually be detrimental to a stutter-free flight.
When flying into large airports, or over large metropolitan areas, I’m seeing an average of around 2-3 Mbps being received over my internet connection, or around 1 GigaByte per hour. I’ve set my rolling cache size to 5 GB, so if all this incoming data is streaming into the rolling cache (I don’t know if this is the case - I’m speculating here, but some of it definitely is), this would imply that I’ve got 5 hour’s worth of data in the cache before it starts being overwritten. The Disk Activity drop-down on the Disk tab of the Windows Resource Monitor Tool will show you what is being written to & read from the cache.
You might try experimenting with enabling / disabling your rolling cache, depending upon what type of internet connection you have, to see if you notice any difference. If you have a very fast, low-latency connection, and your rolling cache is on a very slow HDD, and/or the cache is on the same drive as the rest of the game content (packages), disabling the cache may help, though I have not experimented doing this.
[Edit, March 1st, 2024}
I now have experimented with turning off the Rolling Cache while on SU15 beta v1.37.5.0. It has made a significant improvement, as I have reported here.
[End Edit]
I agree with GFXONLINE that having more system RAM would be good. If you decide to upgrade your NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super, I’d suggest purchasing a GPU with at least 16 GB onboard RAM. I’ve got an Intel Arc A770, and with my Intel I7-1200K, I am running on the game’s recommended “Ultra” settings. I have super smooth flights, though I should point out that my monitor settings are 1360 x 768, 60 Hz @ 1080p. Stuttering is very rare - almost non-existent. As noted, I’ve only seen this when approaching airports with a LOT of multiplayer traffic so far. If I had a larger 4K monitor, I might not get as good results.