The ideal system today for XP-10

[Luis_KMIA 242]

Right now I'm in a slow transition where I see myself using FSX 75% of the time, and XP-10 25%.  I hold on to FSX because of the hundreds of add-ons that I accumulated over the last four years.

 

In FSX, I always see the question, what's the best system with all sliders to the right, but since FSX never followed up with service packs for today's computers, there are many limitations.

 

However, since XP-10 is designed for current systems, and the team is constantly pushing newer versions, is it fair to ask if there is a system that can handle all the "melt my CPU" settings?  My current specs allow for a good XP-10 experience, but not quite in the extreme settings.  As high-end add-ons for XP-10 come out, I'm sure it will mean more system demands.

 

Happy flights!

[starflight 8]

Laminar keeps saying there's no system with even high end parts that can run XP10 at max settings smoothly all the time. Last year I got what I considered the sweet spot in price/performance (i7 3770K, 4GB GTX 670), beyond which I'd have to spend a lot more for fewer gains.

 

In the air: generally no issue unless I'm seeing lots of clouds.

 

But even with CPU and GPU moderately overclocked, and without everything on max, my system will drop to below 25fps near a number of custom sceneries.

[learn-by-flying 37]

Quick question (possibly a stupid one), I'm asking because I do not know, can x-plane use a number of computers to run the simulation? One for graphics, one for the flight model,  avionics....etc

[z06z33 763]

Quick question (possibly a stupid one), I'm asking because I do not know, can x-plane use a number of computers to run the simulation? One for graphics, one for the flight model,  avionics....etc

I know it can run on unlimited number of cores and that it loves my fx8350s 8 cores all running at 4.5 ghz

[starflight 8]

Quick question (possibly a stupid one), I'm asking because I do not know, can x-plane use a number of computers to run the simulation? One for graphics, one for the flight model,  avionics....etc

 

No it can't. It can't even divide up the primary tasks (flight model and graphics) between cores on a single CPU. All cores are maxed out as part of scenery loading, and remaining cores may be used for up to 20 aircraft run by the built-in AI, but that's about it.

 

Explanation by one of the developers: http://developer.x-plane.com/2011/12/tips-for-better-frame-rates-pt-1/

 

"(A quick detour on CPU cores…more is better-ish…to a point. 9 women can get together and do 9 different tasks in 1/9th of the amount of time it would take 1 woman, but 9 women cannot have a baby in 1 month! The point is, if X-Plane has multiple tasks going on (like AI traffic, scenery pre-loading etc), then multiple cores helps get the tasks done quicker. But if there’s only one task going on (like rendering), your other cores will NOT help you do it any faster.)"

 

Also: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=55346 which goes into more detail why more cores and multi-processor systems won't help much.

XP10 doesn't benefit even from multi-GPU SLI or Crossfire setups, for similar reasons:

http://developer.x-plane.com/2011/10/x-plane-sli-and-crossfire/

[Bunkers 52]

I've just bought a new system:

 

i4770k

16GB 1600mhz ram

GTX 780 GPU

 

No OC so far. I'm running almost all settings to the max or close and it does struggle a bit at 19-25 fps at airports (truscenery Tampere and similar), 30+ at altitude. I'll try to find rendering options that will give me from 25 fps and upwards and I could post them here. 

 

No doubt XPX will bring any system to it's knees with everything maxed, especially if you max out antialiasing. It's good though that it behaves more rational compared to FSX, which is more complicated to get to run smoothly. 

[steve310002 1,198]

 

 

XP10 doesn't benefit even from multi-GPU SLI or Crossfire setups, for similar reasons:

 

Ok, I understand about SLI etc. not benefiting but what about newer single GPUs?

 

Do you know if there is much difference between upgrading to a nvidia 780 versus a 770 (680) vs a 660? Is X-plane GPU limited based on current GPU architecture?

 

I wish to upgrade my GPU to one of the above but can't decide whether the power of a 780 will be utilized or is it more important to have the 4gb of VRAM that come with some 770 models?

 

The nvidia 780 costs a lot more than the 770. If it gave me extra results in X-Plane 10 then it'd be worth it but if it has no extra effect on X-plane than the 770 then I'd probably save the cash. In other games apparantly the 780 is 20% faster than the 770. I'm curious if this would see the same gains in X-plane 10.

 

By the way, I am running on an i7 920 (3.8ghz). From what I read, even though it's an old i7, there's not much difference for games between that and the newer CPUs especially when overclocked (and especially if X-plane is CPU limited). As far as I know it shouldn't bottleneck  a new GPU like the 780 or 770 but any thoughts or opinions on differences in GPU's and performance would be most useful.

[Luis_KMIA 242]

Good information - thanks all!

[Alexandru 0]

It seem that XP will consume all the graphics card memory that you can throw at it. I'm currently torn between a faster card with less memory or a slightly slower one with more memory onboard. A mate of mine got one of the recent GTX line from nVidia and reckons he should have opted for the, albeit more expensive, one with greater memory not having seen much of a gain going from a 1Gig DDR3 to a 2Gig DDR5. I think I'll go for a 3 or 4Gig card. A good tip is to resize your XP window and see does frame rate improve. If it does then you are card limited but not CPU limited.

[Bunkers 52]

A good tip is to resize your XP window and see does frame rate improve. If it does then you are card limited but not CPU limited.

Thx for that suggestion, never thought of it.

[greggerm 312]

9 women can get together and do 9 different tasks in 1/9th of the amount of time it would take 1 woman, but 9 women cannot have a baby in 1 month!

 

 

Probably the BEST analogy I've ever seen for the discussion. I need to remember that one.

[laserit 93]

I've got an I980X running art 4.3ghz with a 4gig GTX680, I'm quite happy with the performance, but I have this one question which is nagging at me, that I haven't yet seen a satisfactory answer for. 

 

How does XP-10 preform with a Titan?

[starflight 8]

For more accurate comparisons against different setups, there are command-line options to run timedemo benchmarking tests.

 

First, restore X-Plane to a near-fresh state:

1) move all custom sceneries and plug-ins to a temporary storage folder

2) backup and remove your X-Plane preferences so a default window size (1024x768) is used

3) unplug all flightsim hardware (joysticks, panels, etc) so X-Plane doesn't try to calibrate them at startup.

 

Then run the benchmark tests:

4) In a command line, go to the X-Plane directory, and run the following command:

 

X-Plane.exe --load_smo=Output/replays/test_flight_747.fdr --fps_test=1

 

Obviously anything else being done on or by the computer in the background during the test will slow things down.

 

5) test will run for 2-3 minutes. When done, open up the Log.txt and find the line that says "FRAMERATE TEST", e.g.:

 

FRAMERATE TEST: time=142.3, frames=11265, fps=79.16

GPU LOAD: time=142.3, wait=4.2, load=2.9%

 

Save this in a different file if you want to keep track of performance at different settings, e.g. overclock, disabling hyperthreading, driver version...

 

6) repeat steps 4 and 5 with --fps_test value at 2, 3, 4, and 5. Repeat each fps_test if you want an average fps.

 

Each fps_test's settings are defined at the bottom of Resources/settings.txt. None of them test all settings at maximum, but the most challenging is fps_test=3 which puts the most load on both CPU and GPU: HDR, high shadows, high object count, but basic antialiasing.

 

One of the more interesting results: on my i7 3770k, disabling hyperthreading (reducing logical cores to just 4) results in gains of 2-10 fps depending on fps_test... except for test #5, which saw an fps LOSS of 20%.

I've just bought a new system:

 

i4770k

16GB 1600mhz ram

GTX 780 GPU

 

We'd all be interested to see your system's results from the benchmarking/timedemo notes I just wrote about

[Bunkers 52]

We'd all be interested to see your system's results from the benchmarking/timedemo notes I just wrote about

I tried a test but I get hundreds of "FRAMERATE TEST" sentences. Is that right?

[starflight 8]

I tried a test but I get hundreds of "FRAMERATE TEST" sentences. Is that right?

 

I don't remember there being that many FRAMERATE TEST lines, but I wasn't looking for those in the Log.txt. After a test, I always searched for "fps" in Log.txt; it should only appear one or two times.