Building out a new rig and I found a BIOS setting called “X3D Gaming Mode”
Curious if anyone has benchmarks or other performance data for MSFS (both versions preferably) comparing having that enabled or disabled.
Thanks!
Interesting. I wonder what it does.
Windows Game Mode favors X3D cores when it detects a game like this sim.
And the Windows Power Plan you use affects core parking, if I’m not mistaken.
I have a 7950X3D. I turn Game Mode off, and set the system to use Ultimate Power Plan. I use Process Lasso to assign the sim’s .exe process (and only that one) to the X3D cores, and Bitsum’s other app, called ‘Core Park’ to disable core parking.
I’ve done a lot of testing, and found that gives me the best results with this CPU. I bought the 7950X3D when I bought FS2024, and don’t use FS2020 any more, so I don’t have any comparative data for the latter.
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I’ve got a 7900X3D myself. I guess I can just try turning it off and on when I’ve got things set up and see what happens.
I highly recommend testing the perfomance as you change those variables (one at a time) using the free test software CapFrameX.
I’ve got a 7800x3d and have it enabled but don’t see much difference either way. It says in AMD write up that it works better in some games and not others so checking it on your own rig is the way to go.
What’s the motherboard manufacture? AMD added some tweaks to their AGESA v1.2.0.2a (which is embedded in your bios by the motherboard manufacturers) to modify certain bios parameters to improve performance of their 9000 series x3d chips. Some manufacturers like Gigabyte have extended those benefits to the 7000 series chips also.
Each motherboard vendor implemented those tweaks a little differently so it would be best to check on your motherboard vendors web site.
My motherboard manufacturer (Asrock) only implemented the performance enhancements for the 9000 series x3d cpu’s so I don’t have any direct experience with it since I have a 7000 series x3d.
Don’t use it. It turns off your logical cores for physical ones. Made my 7900X3D worse.
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AFAIK all it does is disable SMT (ie hyperthreading, so you will have as many threads as physical cores, instead of twice as many threads) and it disables one core or something. Wouldn’t recommend it unless you have many cores to spare.
I know there are a fair few topics around this, but I am going to post here with some latest findings and “questions”! Maybe can get some thoughts from you all alI don’t really get what is happening!
It may be too late to really find out now in my case, because I am finally going to send my PC back to the seller (under warranty) for a new motherboard, as I still think there is something wrong with this one (separate topic, but I cannot post with 2 sticks of 32gb RAM in – that is on the QVL list). It’ll be away for a whole week so I will be without sim, but for the greater good! Let’s hope it solves that issue and maybe changes this Core Handling behaviour.
I thought about also swapping in a 9800X3D instead of my 7950X3D (and pay for it) but I am going to stick with the 7950 for now as it’s not even the bottleneck for my settings anyway. But trying to understand the dual CCD a bit more and what is the expected behaviour and the best way to deal with it.
- So the below is based on my current board: Asus ROG Strix X670E-F (latest BIOS 2704)
- New board will be: MSI MAG Tomahawk X870E
NOTE: This is all with Windows 24H2, SMT and SVM Disabled, and I stopped using Process Lasso, so that Scenario is not here for now, as I didn’t REALLY understand how to set it up for the best anyway and just another layer of software that I am trying to eliminate or need to reinstall when my PC comes back with a fresh Windows installation on it.
Scenario 1
No Game Bar / Gaming Mode OFF / High Performance power plan / No Process Lassoo
Gameplay, not so heavy scenery:
Idle on menu:
- It is using MAINLY the non v-cache cores, but overall load is low.
- Not sure what the spikes are about.
Scenario 2
Game Bar and Game Mode ON / Balanced Power Plan (so the 'recommened AMD way)
- Definitely using the V-Cache cores now.
Scenario 3
No Game Bar / Gaming Mode OFF / High Performance power plan / using these settings in BIOS (these are new options since the last BIOS flash I did!):
At first I flew in LIGHT scenery, and it was STILL ONLY using the non v-cache cores at first - but very smooth:
…then I arrived at a bit of a POI (still light scenery) and then it seemed to switch, and STAY on the top set even when I flew back over the area where it was only on the lower half:
And a few minutes later, similar, but still has these GAPS that seems to flick to one of the performance cores for a duration???
- Why does ONE core drop out and change to the other CCD?
- Is it a concern and does it impact the sim (freezing etc) in any way?
Gameplay in pretty heavy scenery:
- Again it is flipping one core between the v-cache and non v-cache side. Should it be doing that?
- I don’t want to use the TURBO GAME MODE in BIOS, as from the description that totally disables the other CCD, so I would have to keep going into BIOS to benefit from this CPU’s features - pointless?
I do run some background apps, but seemingly they have zero impact on the CPU anyway:
- In summary, what is the best way to handle this CPU these days?
None of these scenarios REALLY seem to make much difference in the sim. I still get hitching, and it’s worse in some areas than others, so I am putting it down to the software and the MS servers… which NO AMOUNT of tweaking and hardware things we do on our end could solve. Am I right?
I know you @BegottenPoet228 did quite some deep dive into this stuff. Did you find the same thing?
The testing I did used CapFrameX to measure real-world FPS and frametimes with many of the same variables you used:
Game Bar ON/OFF
Game Mode ON/OFF
Different Process Lasso configurations (including BitSum’s Core Park utility.)
Different Power Plans
I came to the conclusion that the 7950X3D works best with this sim when I use Lasso to control process affinities and priorities. I got the best results doing this with Game Bar OFF, Game Mode OFF, Ultimate Power Plan, and BitSum’s Core Park set to disable core parking.
Setting CPU Affinities took a fair bit of work, but basically, flightsimulator2024.exe is set to High Priority, and gets exclusive access to cores 0-7 (the X3D cores) except that there are some OS processes that shouldn’t be touched, and are allowed to use all cores with Normal Priority.
Many, if not most of the OS processes are assigned to cores 8-15, and set to Idle Priority.
I followed most of the recommendations in this video when setting up Lasso.
With that said, if you don’t want to use Lasso, then I think you’ll be happier with a 9800X3D, with Game Bar ON, Game Mode ON, and Balanced Power Plan.
I also did some RAM and Advanced CPU BIOS tweaks, but honestly, I don’t think they changed the outcome of the CapFrameX tests all that much (maybe +5%) although the RAM tweaks did noticeably improve my 1% Lows, which makes sense, since those are related to system latency, which in turn is strongly related to memory subsystem I/O.
I agree that @ 4K I’m definitely not being CPU bottlenecked. But @ 1080p I know my 7950X3D is pretty much optimized using my settings.
Sorry to hear about your motherboard problems. I personally boycotted ASUS quite a while ago, after a horrendous support experience. Recent events as detailed by Gamers Nexus solidified my decision. ASUS can suck it, as far as I’m concerned.
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MSI X3D Gaming Mode Enhances Gaming Performance on AMD Ryzen Processors
X3D Gaming Mode makes sense when paired with CPU Game Boost. I recently tested X3D Gaming Mode with CPU Game Boost
As we can see, this doesn’t have much impact on FPS. I repeat, I am currently testing new RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 - 64GB - CL26
( F5-6000J2636G32GX2-TZ5NR) and after the tests, I will return to my BIOS settings where I have X3D Gaming Mode and CPU Game Boost disabled.
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My goodness this game is enough to drive you bananas.
I’ve just had the worst experience I’ve ever had in the four years of flying this sim. I’m gonna wait and see what a fresh Windows and a new motherboard does because this is just crazy 
It’s been running really well since the latest Sim Update beta and the released SU1. Really smooth… until a group flight today. Flying in London and when I spawned in it was really stuttering with sound crackling and cutting out, the view in VR freezing and the whole game pausing for like 6 to 10 seconds. Throughout the whole flight, it was really bad. The worst I’ve ever seen including up to 20 SECOND pauses where it looked like it was going to CTD< but it actually didn’t. It came back and carries on like nothing happened.
Really strange that nobody else was having this except at one point we ALL did CTD, but that is a different issue (I assume, and one which I’ll probably make a separate post about because it’s 100% percent reproducible that in one particular spot near Kensington Palace in London, everyone crashed at the same exact point, LOL).
But man, oh man, what is going on here with these MASSIVE pauses? I just found it’s not even that it was BECAUSE of a group flight. I was flying yesterday had a great flight with about 30 people kicking dust up everywhere and it was running absolutelyfine, did not miss a beat. I was impressed, but this was away from photogrammetry.
Today after the group flight disaster in London, I’ve flown on my own and it’s doing the same thing. The sound keeps clipping (crackling) out and little pauses at the same time. Then some bigger pauses, and then it comes back to life. Just now as I approached some photography area I had an almighty 30 SECOND freeze, everything locked up even Task Managers Performance Graph display stopped scrolling – the whole computer is frozen. But it came back!
What could it be?
I’ve also been having USB disconnecting and reconnecting, like my keyboard or the headphones and also having issues with Discord where people can’t hear me but I can hear them (mic‘s not working). And when the computer freezes sometimes all Discord audio stopped as well, but sometimes I can still carry on talking and I can hear people whilst the freeze is happening.
Can anyone tell me the answers to my previous questions up above about why it is suddenly swapping one core for one of the cores on the other CCD for no apparent reason and why it’s not using the other cores when there is clearly a demand for more processing power?
You can see in this latest graph that it is spiking out at the top but even when it’s NOT hitting 100% on any individuial core/thread, I am still getting this same behaviour. I really don’t understand it.
London, when it was glitching REALLY bad (notice the Ethenet is also really spiky):
Alone, during the 30 second freeze (what the…):
My settings are not incredibly high for VR. I have most things on Medium, no air traffic, no fauna, no ships, 36fps target only, not the highest resolution, DLSS Performance.
Even in London when I was too scared to use VR after reloading the game after that CTD we all had, it was still cutting out in 2D (not quite as bad or as often). First time I have flown 2D in 15 months hahah
As for the upgrade to the 9800, in a way I think it’s a downgrade because it’s only got 96mb of L3 cache where my 7950 has 128mb. I’ve got no problem buying and using Process Lasso if I need it, but just not quite sure exactly what I need to set where, that was my problem. I think I had it right but I’m not sure if it really made any difference with the way I had it. I will look again but I was rather hoping using the latest tricks in the BIOS would be a good solution.
I think it ran better when I had NO things set anywhere lol.
Lots to digest there, but as for this:
I installed a debloated Win11, following the instructions in this video. It’s really a simple matter of setting some options that result in an XML file that you load onto the retail Windows Media USB. You can do it with an Win11 ISO file as well, but I presume you have the retail USB drive.
I’m a believer.
I see those pauses/freezes as well with 12900ks + 4090 and they always produce this effect:
- momentary CPU increase
- momentary GPU decrease
- spikes in main thread
- spikes in manipulators
However in my case they last less than 1s but are still noticeable. I have air traffic disabled. In particular I found some interesting situations:
-
Starting from San Diego, heading north every minute or so freezes happen as new scenery loads. Repeating test with lowest settings (and all kind of traffic and fauna disabled) gives the same result as with ultra settings in basically the same locations. Disabling frame generation or antialias makes no difference either. FPS just changes from 80 to 50 due to missing generated frames. However reducing settings does not increase FPS in a noticeable way (you just get 10 FPS more when reducing to lowest).
-
Flying over northern Greenland (basically has terrain only without scenery) still reproduces the freezes, even with lowest settings too. This shouldn’t happen at all as almost nothing is rendered/downloaded here except a very basic terrain mesh.
I think there’s something not working well here. Disabling all addons leads to same results. The freezes appear to be generated at the game threads level (game simulation itself freezes) and they are clearly not affected by settings nor scenery complexity, but still seem to be linked to certain locations in the scenery area (when those new locations are loaded). SU1 made this even worse than before patch. Other option is that game is still handling scenery in the background even if it’s not displayed/rendered. This could explain that settings do not affect results nor improve the freezes.
Cheers
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No it’s pre installed by the seller and I asked if they could install a lighter one and they said they are not allowed as their contract with Microsoft means they have to put the same image on all their builds, so it’s the full Win 11. I could reinstall my end but I’d need a new license key I think. I’ll probably just uninstall the apps I never use like the Phone Link and all that jazz.
Going to jump in here as I have a 7900x3d with 2 CCD’s, 1st one has the extra v-cache same as 7950x3d. The only difference is I have 12 cores/24 threads versus 16 cores/32 threads.
I’ve got mine set up as follows:
- Utilize all 12 cores/24 threads
- Virtualization ON (in bios)
- Game Bar ON
- Game Mode ON
- No Process Lasso
- Ultimate Power Plan
- Bios CPPC set to driver for loading apps on CCD’s
The result is all games are always loaded on CCD0 and CCD1 cores will never be parked and will run other apps/OS tasks. Taskmgr looks like this while simming (note 1st logical processor is running the sim mainthread):
So you can see all the work is distributed fairly evenly among the threads and while I do get the normal stutters everybody else gets (mostly micro stutters) the sim runs really good (2020 and 2024) even with additional apps. By merely changing the power plan to balanced, Windows will run everything on CCD0 with all the CCD1 cores parked (aka the AMD recommended way). It will run the sim very smoothly but I can tell it starts to struggle a little when I fire up additional apps.
I therefore run almost exclusively with the ultimate power plan. The only thing I need to be carefull about is when I click on my 2nd screen to run another app, the sim will jump over to CCD1, causing a momentary stutter. When I click back to the main screen where the sim is running, Windows will switch it back to CCD0 causing another stutter. This isn’t a big deal to me as I know why it’s happening and can control it.
I hope this helps!
Edit: you may want to use Revo uninstaller and uninstall the chipset drivers and reinstall with the latest. This should clean up how the chipset drivers interact with Win 11 in deciding where to run games.
You guys have drifted so far off-topic that I have no idea where we are anymore. It’s like you filed a flight plan but then decided to go on a world tour instead 
@Baracus250 could you please start a new topic and describe your issue in detail? You can copy your post #9 into it. Then, tag a moderator (or moderators) and kindly ask them to move posts #9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 into the new topic.
That way, we don’t end up stuck in a holding like a bugged autopilot 
I can do but I don’t think it’s that off topic. There are already threads similar. We don’t need another one IMO.
This is about X3D and if Gaming Mode is the best way after all. Turns out there are options and the “problem” I have seems to be a symptom of setting it up in another way. Why would you want to fragment this information for other people to find in future less easily?
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You’re definitely confusing the BIOS setting ‘X3D Gaming Mode’ with the Windows ‘Game Mode’ setting - these two have nothing to do with each other.
Your ASUS motherboard doesn’t even have the ‘X3D Gaming Mode’ setting.
This topic is about the BIOS setting ‘X3D Gaming Mode’ not the Windows ‘Game Mode’ setting, nor the CTDs or issues you’re experiencing with your PC.
That’s why it’s recommended to start a new topic.
I’m not really. These are all connected and different ways of setting up the X3D chips.
Not by name, but it’s a different name for the same sort of functionality, right?
I said I was making a different topic for the CTD as it’s nothing to do with the X3D chips. I did that here: CTD near Kensington Palace building, London
Anyway I still think this topic - whatever the name - is about getting the most out of our X3D line of processors, so this is valid information in this context.
If it bothers you that much and you really feel it’s an advantage to make yet another specific and granular topic about the same thing, that will be harder for people to navigate the minefield then I’m sure you have a hotline to the mods you could call. I won’t be offended but I can’t be bothered personally as I don’t see anyone has a problem with it.
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