Prepar3D computer hardware upgrade

[Arismac 10]

Would the wise men please take a moment or two to advise me what my next upgrade should include. I use the machine exclusively for Prepar3D. After twelve months and about 3,000 mostly P3D hours and the bugs are starting to appear such as taking longer to load scenery, occasional black patches and slower response times from the cockpit.

 

No stutters or stammers and the only scenery that brings my current computer to its knees is ORBX at YBBN. I have most settings on maximum. I have not overclocked because I do not know how to. Cost is not a consideration. Also posted at P3D Forum. Many thanks.

 

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 | EVGA GTX580 | Intel Core i7 3960X | Corsair 16GB Kit (4x4GB) | Vertex-3 480GB SSD | VRaptor 930GB | Thermaltake 1200w PSU | Corsair H100 Cooler | Win 7 64bit | Prepar3D v1.4 | MS FSX | AS2012 | My Traffic 2012 | Plan-G |

[WR269 367]

Wow, your machine is way better than mine and i have very good frame rates at YBBN.

 

I dont think you need new hardware, probably reconfigure what you have.

 

Have you tried defragging your drive? What are your graphics settings? Do you use Nvidia Inspector?

 

 

[Arismac 10]

Thanks for your prompt reply Will. I only have a good machine because of a large compo payment from DVA. I would swap it in a heart beat for a round of golf. All suggestions will be welcome and no I do not use Nvidia Inspector and I will head off now to try and learn more. However I do not want to compromise on slider settings in P3D as I am really enjoying, almost trouble free, all Orbx can provide.

[WR269 367]

Fair enough, I would highly recommend de fragging your drive first, and visit Word Not Allowed's page for some really good tips on how to get the most out of your machine.

 

I only have an i5 3470 with an old GTX460 and getting 20fps at night in YBBN steady with the best graphics I have ever had in ORBX, so if I can, you definitely should with the hardware you have.

 

[Arismac 10]

Thanks again Will. This is how my GTX580 looks at the moment

 

[WR269 367]

Ok, there are a couple of things you can try with inspector. You can set it up as per Word Not Allowed's guide and either use the frame rame limiter on it or via p3d.

Personally i get good results with the inspector limiter.

[Arismac 10]

Thanks Will, I shall try tuning and report back.

[TheGrunt 44]

If yuo are running P3D from SSD, don't defrag it!

 

When it comes to scenery loading times, you really can't help it if you add more and more complex scenery: it will take more time. And for the hardware: Dude, you can't get any better. You could of course change your graphics card to GTX680, but the benefits aren't that big and your 580 should do the job just fine. When I went to GTX670 from 480, I got only marginal improvements. Responsiveness is a strange thing, because even though my P3D is loaded, I don't experience that at all.

[Arismac 10]

Thank you I think you have answered my question. Not much point in upgrading until the 580 shows real signs of deterioration. There seems to be a general wisdom that it takes about two years for the next generation video cards to be really worth buying. I also should wait until I see where P3D goes next. Many thanks.

[b0gey_dead_six 11]

When upgrading video cards in FSX/P3D you improve your MINIMAL fps, maximum FPS may not improve much. Faster cards = more AA without performance loss = higher minimum fps