Underwhelming upgrade to GTX 770

[EGLD 436]

Hi There

 

I've returned to the simming world after a long time away after the release of Prepar3d v2 has spiked my interest.

 

I saw some nice improvements like for like from FSX to P3D2, so I bought a GTX 770 4GB card.

 

However, as usual I rebuilt the PC after a major upgrade, and now can't activate P3D2 until they get back into the office and reset my activation count :(

 

So I thought I'd give FSX a dust off and see how it performs with the new card

 

Very disappointing!

 

I'm starting to think as well that I'll probably persevere with FSX for a while until more addons support P3D, so I'd really love to know if there's some killer tweaks I'm missing out on here.

 

My system is Win7-64, i7 3770k 3.5ghz, 12gb RAM, GTX 770 4GB

 

I fly mainly in the UK so with FTX England, the Quality Wings 757, UK2000 Gatwick and My Traffic about 50% AI, I see about 15-18 FPS on the ground, and on approach down to about 10FPS

 

Seeing as I'm about where you guys were a few years ago now, is there something I'm missing, or is that really the best I can expect?

 

I see people referring to their sims running smooth with great FPS, and I really thought I'd bought myself access to this exclusive club!!!

 

I've overclocked the i7 to 4.10ghz, any higher and it crashes. I only have the stock heatsink and fan that comes with the CPU. I've applied the FSX settings in nVidia inspector, disabled hyperthreading, enabled bufferpools, highmemfix.....I know there's tons been written on forums about all this, but could any of you look at the above and say "well actually yeah that's about as good as it's going to get"

 

thanks!!!!

 

[tkellogg 23]

Fsx and p3d prior to version 2.0 are heavily depedent on the cpu. Don't despair I think you'll see a lot of improvement with the new card in versiin 2.0 of p3d.

[EGLD 436]

That's what I'm hoping

 

I have tried to bump the CPU, and going from 3.90 to 4.10 made quite a big difference

 

But any more than that, and it just crashes

 

When people refer to having their sim running smooth, I guess they have found a nice balance of tweaks, configs, backing off the display settings in FSX quite a bit, and heavily overclocking their CPUs?

[Bob Scott 7,716]

Get that 3770K modestly overclocked to ~4.2 Ghz and you'll see that 770 shine in FSX.

 

Regards

[EGLD 436]

Get that 3770K modestly overclocked to ~4.2 Ghz and you'll see that 770 shine in FSX.

 

Regards

 

aren't I almost there at 4.10? or would it make a big difference getting it to 4.2?

 

I feel like I must be missing something obvious, I have everything maxed in display settings, which i guess is a mistake

 

it's crazy though, if i back off the autogen, the sim just looks poor compared to all the modern games that this card can take in it's stride, like Battlefield 4/Skyrim

[ant_1984 20]

Get rid of that stock heatsink and put in a decent aftermarket one, something like a cheap Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo would do the trick.

 

The stock heatsink is only just acceptable for running that CPU at stock speeds, you really shouldn't be overclocking on it.

 

Throw in a cooler like the one I mentioned above and you're temps at stock speeds will come down and it will also give you more overclocking headroom. You can spend as much or as little as you like, but the Hyper 212 Evo is probably the best budget cooler.

 

As for your performance, yo're talking about a detailed addon airport with fairly high levels of AI aircraft, so what you're describing is not really out of the ordinary. If you want more FPS you can either overclock higher, or otherwise you need to drop back on some AI or some of the detail at UK2000 Gatwick. You'll probably see more benefit from dropping back your settings.

[EGLD 436]

thanks!

 

will give that cooler a go.....

[EGLD 436]

that did the trick

 

I found a similar cooler in stock in my local Maplin

 

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/akasa-ak-968-x4-performance-multi-platform-cpu-cooler-n48hr

 

I had successfully overclocked my 3.50 to 4.10 on the stock heatsink and fan using the Easytune software, and hadn't managed to get it higher

 

It was running noticeably cooler (30'c compared to 40-50'c) at idle with the new cooler

 

I tried the next step up which is 4.43 which would cause an FSX crash during loading, but it ran up fine and FPS on approach to UK2000 Gatwick at Xtreme level in the Qualitywings 757, with FTX England, REX and MyTraffic at 50% yielded between 15 and 20FPS which is plenty fast enough with all scenery sliders at max, really asking a lot of it at those settings I would say, plenty of scope to tune back those display settings if I needed more performance

 

I wish I knew more about overclocking because I think I can push it further. It still doesn't get hot at these settings, but when I try the next step up (4.68) Windows just crashes, and it won't get past the BIOS. I'm sure it's a voltage setting or something not heat now, but I've got a big jump in performance from this

 

thanks a lot guys!!!

[ant_1984 20]

Nice work!

 

Just keep on eye on temperatures with that cooler. It's not quite up to the grade of the Hyper 212 Evo I mentioned to you (Hyper 212 has more heatpipes and a larger/better and probably quieter fan on it), but so long is it's working for you then that's great.

[DeskPilot518 15]

This is what you want!

Matt Davies FSX 2013 Tweak guide.

 

 

Personally, I have found this guide to be excellent, and beats starting at mound of mounds of written tutorial information.

It has made ALL the difference. Even my sucky labtop gave me all it could using this guide.

The guide is about 20 minutes. Starts out with FSX settings (in FSX), then FSX cfg tweaked thru bojortle's tool, then adds newest tweaks to the CFG, and finishes up with Nvidia inspector settings.

 

On my system NGX flys as smooth as silk with 2048 HD REX clouds over payware scenery.

Yes, there is maybe the slight stutter on takeoff, but those are rare. Must have virus software off with NGX, but not my other planes.

 

 

But usually its butter. NGX is by far the heavy hitter. Airbus X is better on FPS.

None of the other planes give any real FPS problem.

 

One thing I noticed though it that on my system, FXS likes to be around 30-40 FPS for smoothest performance with no stutters. So if I am using the NGX, I set to unlimited and get about 30 fps. If I am using a plane like the Twin Otter or Cessna I set FSX to 45 limited (where is usually stays at).

 

SPECS:

I7 OC to about 4.2

EVGA 780 but not overclocked at this time. (Might not even have too at this rate).

8gb 2133 mhz ram.

H110 cooler.

[MikeT707 1,181]

Just wondering if you have gotten a chance to install P3D yet.  It would be really good to hear how the platform performs with that card.