Upgraded Graphics Card then Worse Performance

[TRAVIS1992]

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No, then Yes for data gathering/attempting to fix.

Brief description of the issue:

I upgraded my graphics card from a GTX 1080 to an RTX 3080 And now get worse performance most of the time, with occasional to rare better performance sometimes.

The Graphics usage is often below 50% usually around 30%. Frame rates are often below my GTX 1080. My last thread (supposed to be a hyperthread) is peaking to max often. The Dev FPS tool often says main thread is limiting.

There seems to be major programming issues on how resources are used in MSFS, as this should not be a problem for someone using 4K resolution, as the CPU is not hit as much since there will not be as much FPS. I have played with settings a bit to see if I could get different results, but it has been mostly the same.

Other triple A games such as Red Dead 2 have no issues using full use of the new graphics card. Also drivers have been clean installed and uninstalled with DDU to try to fix the issue.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Any flight.

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

Specs:
-Asus Hero 12 MOBO
-Intel i7 10700k
-G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3600
-Asus GTX 1080(Old)
-Asus RTX 3080(New)
-Samsung 980 PRO M.2 2TB
-Resolution:3840x2160

Peripherals
-Honeycomb Alpha
-Honeycomb Bravo
-Thrustmaster TPR Rudder Pedals
-PropWash Simulation COM & NAV Radio (Usable via software and FSUIPC7)

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

1.25.9.0 (Only because I just got the graphics card).

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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

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[skypilotYTS]

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read through the whole thread but I would do the following;

1. down fresh install of the GPU drivers. Select advanced and do a clean install.

2. Once done, launch Nvidia Control Panel and reset everything back to default.

3. if you have multiple GPU or an onboard one. Ensure You are set to use it as the main GPU.

4. Reset your MSFS graphic settings back to default.

5. Turn off vsync both in MSFS and Nvidia Control Pannel.

6. Reboot abs test. If it has resolved then start fine tuning your settings.

[XR219]

Have you tried maxing you’re LOD settings to 400 and 200 respectively?

Have you also emptied your Nvidia shader cache since changing the card?

I’ve a 3070ti with most settings on ultra and have no issues.

[CasualClick]

Moved to Community Help until this is shown to be a verifiable bug.

[skypilotYTS]

If you’re already getting that low of performance, increasing LOD will not help, it will hinder.

[XR219]

Strangely, it didn’t for me. Giving the CPU more to do by increasing the LOD reduced the time the Direct 3D thread was running on the CPU and gave the GPU more to do.

[TRAVIS1992]

The only thing I have not done is what @XR219 mentioned is emptying my Nvidia shader cache. I am not sure how to do this. Maybe I did it when I did 2 clean installs, and one of the times after using DDU to uninstall.

Edit: Also to clear this up, I only have the 3080 in my system, the 1080 is fully removed.

[TRAVIS1992]

At the main menu, you can see I have no apparent problems. While I understand that not much is going on in the main menu, it might give some more information or clues.

Here are my “normal” graphics settings, including the same settings that were set during the original post.
For testing purposes after upgrading, I did bump up the shadow resolutions and cubemap reflections, but even when I change them back to the same exact settings at when I had the GTX 1080, it had identical results as now.

[skypilotYTS]

I personally think 400 Terrain LOD is too high for that system.

I run a 3090, 5950X and 128GB of RAM. I feel the difference when it’s at 400. It’s playable but it pushes the limits at 4K.

Delete your shader cache can be found here

https://docs.knaldtech.com/doku.php?id=clean_driver_installation

[TRAVIS1992]

For more information:
After attempting to clear out Nvidia Cache(to the best of my ability with a youtube video),
I am still finding myself with the same issue.

Why is Core/Hyperthread 15(really the 16th one) being swamped?
This is likely causing the GPU to slow, I am almost sure of it.

On the original post, I landed at Whitehorse CYXY. The weather was worse, and it was after an hour and 15 min flight. Here I loaded onto the runway at Whitehorse. This is somewhat normal frames rates, but still being heavily limited as you can see the usage in the screenshot.

[skypilotYTS]

Do you have hyper threading turned on in BIOS? Everything I’ve seen posted previously says turn it off.

[TRAVIS1992]

I had no issues on the 1080 with 400 Terrain LOD.
I adjusted it 100 just now, and have very little difference, +2fps, sometimes a little more.

I do not have this folder and I even looked manually:
%username%\AppData\Local\Temp\NVIDIA Corporation\NV_Cache

I also do not have the specific option to turn on and off the shader as shown, only this:

[skypilotYTS]

With the 1080 your GPU was the bottleneck so the CPU was the one waiting, now you’ve reversed it and your CPU is the bottleneck.

I asked above not sure if you saw. Do you have hyper threading turned on in BIOS? If so turn it off.

[TRAVIS1992]

It is, I will test that next. But I don’t think that is an appropriate long term fix if that is a solution.

[skypilotYTS]

Most of the guides / tuning suggestions say to turn it off.

Quite a few posts on this forum about it as well.

[TRAVIS1992]

Thank you for the information.

I am going to have to do more testing later.
I changed my hyperthreading to off in the bios, and somehow Windows decided to destroy all my settings and then some. It cleared out my community folder besides 4 items, It removed/damaged my nvidia driver, and turned things on in task scheduler that have been off for ages, amongst other things I am finding. I will probably get back to you guys tomorrow once I have things squared away.

[bucsgolf142293]

Turn all your other settings to ultra and play around with rendering up or down. Terrain LOD needs to be between 100-200 sorry.

I run an i7-9700k with a 3070 and getting smooth results on ultra and am rendering 120% on 2K.

Check out the many great YouTube setup guides and also check out flying Fabio’s settings.

At the end of the day get it passable then turn off that dev mode and go have fun.

[Hueybart]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

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If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

[TRAVIS1992]

Passable is better than the 1080 I was using before. And it is not hitting that in all scenarios. I am not sure what you are not seeing when CPU usage is 33% or less and gpu is 50% or less, yet I have no issues in other major games, it is just here on MSFS.

On a different note. After I changed my BIOS setting of no hyper threading, my MOBO decided we should go to the old boot drive, which is why I was having so many problems in my last post. I will try some more testing later in the day like I previously suggested, but at least I am back to normal testing again.

And terrain load at 100 is still giving me major limitations. It is slightly better, but still not using nearly full GPU and still killing the last CPU, although since hyper threading is off, it is peaking out the 8th actual core instead of the hyper thread core. Which likely means that the new programing is probably trying to spread the load with all cores, but something is pointing it towards the last core instead of the first one.

Likely a test attempt to get the sim to stop relying on the primary first core if I would take a guess. Which might help some, but isnt helping me.

@bucsgolf142293 I have been flight simming for over 20 years, and mostly know what does what, and how cpu/gpu is supposed to affect performance. 2K is very far different than 4K when it comes to a lot of things. It is comparing apples to oranges. If Fabio is using 4K, then I am interested, but I am not interested in combing through many hours of youtube videos to find where he shows his settings. Please provide more info if you really want to help me fix this. I appreciate the pointer, but I am not going to watch 30 hours of his video for 2 min of his opinion that might not be based on 4K resolution, 10700k cpu, 3080 graphics card. If I am wrong, give me a good link please, and I will greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

[bucsgolf142293]

He does and he downsamples. msfs-settings | The Flying Fabio

I think it is more important to look at latencies than at the utilization because you’re just not going to see CPU and GPU utilization high and there is no sense chasing that - we have to wait for better optimizations.