Right so I’m literally want to pull my hair out with this. Playing the sim today and every time I go to “busy” areas LAX, New York, Schiphol to name a few my frame rates always drop and stutter, this was on medium settings, after using the GeForce app to optimise.
Do I need a new GPU or what I’ve asked around different websites and I’m getting mixed messages. Will a new GPU help with the above? I really don’t know what to do even on the lowest settings and all the LOD turned right down doesn’t help.
My current specs are
i7-11700k
RAM 46gb (I think recently upgraded but know it’s above 32GB)
2TB SSD
8GB RTX 3070
4k TV
I was looking at a PC system that used an i9 CPU and a RTX 4090 24GB GPU but I don’t fancy dropping £4200 on a new PC for MSFS to run decently. So any advice on what I should do?
You should try being GPU bound. See this link. Set your settings exactly as the reference settings, then go through the analysis to customize.
Looks like you are over budget on VRAM. Try Texture Resolution Medium or Low.
Get the VRAM issue sorted with lower texture resolution, less shadows, less supersampling, etc. As long as you stay under the maximum VRAM for your GPU, you will be fine.
The settings in the reference section are designed to make you GPU bound. However, compare your hardware to his, and adjust accordingly. In the analysis section, if it says No CPU impact, you can raise that setting to add load to the GPU. Don’t worry too much about the FPS impact right now. After you get it tuned you can adjust the DLSS level to get back your FPS.
See this is were I’m getting confused now, that’s a great link you’ve provided thanks. I used the GeForce Experience app to optimise the settings, and a lot of them that the GeForce Experience is setting is medium or below. At quiet airports and surrounding areas I’m getting about 25-30FPS nice and stable.
There would be an improvement, however whether it’s worth the cost is another question, especially with MSFS2024 having better multicore optimization. You should get better FPS with your current CPU anyway so the upgrade would be even less worth it once MSFS2024 comes out!
It would help. That card is not geared up for the resolution shown (screen and post = 2160p) and it’s saying it’s used 8.2gb of only 6.8gb available so that definitely needs to come down.
There are new AMD CPUs being shown in a few weeks time at computex - june 3. The I9 has issues, I would not consider them atm.
Wait for new benchmarks after they fix the power issues. Nvidia are announcing new GPUs within 3 months. So that 4090 will be a lot cheaper soon.
Right now is the worst case for cost effectiveness. I would only buy if I really had to.
I think you can get a much better experience out of your current hardware. Set the TV to 1080p (I have a 4k monitor set to 1080p), set the Game Resolution to 1080p. Start with Texture Resolution at Medium. That should get you down in VRAM usage.
I had a 10900k and a 3070, it was ok but was allways cpu bound, i upgraded to a 14900k and a 3080ti this combination works amazingly well. The 3080ti has 384 bit memory interface which makes all the difference for high resolutions. Im locked at 60fps everywhere which matches my monitor hertz so its butter smooth, no stutters except for the last couple of miles on approach to heavy airports like heathrow, lax, when it drops down to about 55fps.,allmost all settings ultra,heavy traffic, fstl, lots of addons. on 32 inch 4k, i think its all about getting the right combination. However the best computer in the world is still a slave to the struggling asobo servers which can mess things up,and the last couple of sim updates havent helped. as we are near to fs2024 release you should proberbly wait now and see how your system performs. Overall though fs2020 is massively cpu demanding. no wonder the guys trying to run this on xbox are having issues.
If you want to run 4K resolution then yes a new GPU with a lot more vram will help. So either turn down the resolution to 1080p using the guide linked above for all the other graphics settings, or if you want 4k resolution then yes a new setup will be needed. And you don’t need a 4090gpu and a 14900k cpu. For a single monitor 4k scenario or even a single monitor and a few small touchscreens, a far better choice would be a 4080 super (using frame gen to double your frame rates) and an AMD 7800x3d cpu and 32gb ram. This will not cost you as much as the 4090 and the cpu is better than the intel for MSFS (the AMD cpu performs better, runs cooler and doesn’t have stability problems like the 14900k does if it’s run on any sort of overclock). Oh and 48gb ram is an odd choice and can actually cause some problems as you likely are using 3 sticks of ram. Generally pairs of 2 sticks work best so either 32gb (2x16) or 64gb (4x16). And Part of the reason your cpu time is so high and stuttering is that your vram is maxed out and when that happens the system swaps things in and out of the normal ram which greatly slows down frame rendering. So turn down to 1080p which uses less vram or you will need a GPU built for 4K like a 4080 super. I’ve built 3 PCs for MSFS over the last few years and would be happy to help more if you want to message me and we could chat that way or over audio/video.
It wouldn’t make a difference for the OP in their current situation. While using shared memory for the overflow is not ideal, it still isn’t making the GPU the limiting factor in this case.
The GPU frametime is less than half that of the CPU, and we can see from the frametime graphs that the GPU is smoothly and consistently generating frames and so isn’t responsible for the stuttering. When we look at the CPU graphs we can see that it is responsible for the stutters.
Because the post/screen resolution is 4k, but the render is only 1080p, we can possibly infer that the OP is using DLSS in Performance mode. i.e. even though they are outputting 4k, they are still only rendering at 1080p (before upscaling) anyway. Which means that lowering their resolution to 1080p without DLSS would only make a small/negligible difference. But it still wouldn’t make a difference overall because the GPU is not their limiting factor.
If @ColdSTE lowered their CPU load to improve their performance/stutters, then was GPU limited or getting inconsistent GPU frametime that was affecting them, would it be worth changing GPU graphical settings to lower VRAM usage etc.
double check your CPU isn’t throttling back clocks,
double check your memory is running at XMP speeds
try going back to DX11
try running sim without any addons
try running the sim with no other background programs, steam minimized, etc.
try checking task manager (run as admin to see all processes) to see if anything is hogging CPU while running sim
try running sim without multiplayer
maybe try clearing rolling cache?
which aircraft are you flying? steam gauge planes like the C152 are the lightest on the CPU, and airliners are generally the heaviest.
if the issue simply is an underpowered CPU, you can try the SU15 beta (doubled my performance in my case), and FSR3 frame gen.
I have a 9900k (slightly worse than 11700k) and my framerates only really drop below the 20’s when I’m landing at a busy addon airport, with photogrammetry or otherwise custom addon scenery, in either the 787 or 747, with FSLTL AI traffic injected and multiplayer enabled, and with TLOD and OLOD sliders at 100.
The level of poor performance you are getting is out of the ordinary, but is entirely plausible depending on the scenario depending on the factors mentioned above.
Your post was generally all great advice. But there are 24GB RAM modules. I’ve wondered myself whether 2x24GB would be a good option, saving a little money over a 2x32GB set.
MSFS 2024 with multicore enhancements is not far away now.
