Upgraded from 570gtx to 780Ti - first results.

[BMagann 11]

Well, I have done about two hours flying, and here is what I have found:

 

For the default autogen scenery, 5788x1080, sliders at second to highest setting, no external shadows, flying over non-city terrain, my frame rates went from about 22 to about 33. It was also noticeably smoother. Unlike many folks I was still getting stuttering with my old card, and that is better now. It still slows down to the low 20's over the stock NYC scenery. Since I live near NYC and fly a lot in that area, I find that a bit disappointing. Still, there is an improvement in the default scenery performance. On a more positive note enabling shadows did not translate into a very noticeable hit on performance.

 

I also made as close to an apples to apples test as I could. I like Megascenery, and I use Aerosoft Manhattan. I loaded both of those, and turned off all the autogen scenery and shadows in P3D. Over generic northern Westchester County my fps was only in the low to mid 20's. In NYC I was down to 15 fps. In FSX with the new card I am seeing 70's over the non-city scenery and mid-30's (!!!) flying right over the heart of the city at 1600 feet.

 

Two conclusions I draw from this are: 1.) The video card does help a good bit with the P3D default scenery. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it is much better, and 2.) Addons that are not optimized for P3D are likely not going to work as well on P3D as they did on FSX. I had hoped that once the graphics were "offloaded" from the CPU that P3D would eat the old sceneries for lunch, but that does not seem to be the case.

 

It will likely be a long time until I can fly P3D and get the kind of experience that is most pleasing to me. I enjoy flying regional turboprops on intercity routes over real world scenery and departing and landing near real looking cityscapes. Right now FSX does that better. I sincerely hope that over time P3D will have sceneries that provide an even better experience. There is no reason why it can't. I am essentially into this sim for $900, so you better believe I am not just going to abandon it!

[AirborneZed 168]

There are many sceneries that aren't being rendered my the gpu and it's a shame. Sceneries such as lvfr kmia to name one. You can tell by just monitoring you card's load when spawn at these places.

[BMagann 11]

Using different planes will also give different frame rates, but I'm sure everybody has already figured that out. I ported a PA-28 over from FSX and it does better over non-city Megascenery  than most of the default P3D planes, although it too bogs down to 15fps in the city. I hope that it is possible for the 3rd party scenery folks to make adjustments so their products will work better with P3D. I suspect, however, that this is going to be an expensive process!

[Dillon 2,197]

Using different planes will also give different frame rates, but I'm sure everybody has already figured that out. I ported a PA-28 over from FSX and it does better over non-city Megascenery  than most of the default P3D planes, although it too bogs down to 15fps in the city. I hope that it is possible for the 3rd party scenery folks to make adjustments so their products will work better with P3D. I suspect, however, that this is going to be an expensive process!

So in essence like was the case with FS9 to FSX, add-ons have to be made/adjusted to work in P3D to get the most out of them. An FS9 port over in many cases ran like crap in FSX. This is interesting... How can one make their scenery use a certain kind of memory? LVFR has to figure out how to make his scenery access VRAM versus RAM on the machine. I was hoping the transition to P3D for FSX add-ons would be smooth as it's hard starting all over again. I guess there's more going on under the hood in P3D v2 than we realized. It may look similar to FSX but adjustments need to be made with add-ons to get the most out of it. At least some FSX stuff works.

[rparson99 32]

And the leap to 64bit will be even more of the same.

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

 

[Dillon 2,197]

And the leap to 64bit will be even more of the same.

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

Very true. I guess that old, "this has always been the case with new versions of FS" applies. I was hoping this wouldn't be the case this time around as there's allot of great FSX add-ons. I'm sure once optimized for P3D they will out perform their FSX counterparts problem is as always not everything get's converted over. Take PMDG's MD11, they've stated they won't convert that product. The MD11 is outstanding and we'll never see another one on that level created (it's not a real popular model like the 717).

[stevem72 10]

I've thought all along that P3D v2 ready is hugely different to P3D v2 optimised and again will be different to P3D v2 native!!

 

There is a feeling of deja vu here but at least LM are still in the game and developing the sim.

 

 

 

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[chatman 29]

So, considering that you have a high demand for performance (5788x1080) I might see a nice improvement going from a GTX570 to a GTX 770 or 780 with a standard 1920x1080 setup, right?

[DescendDescend 25]

 

 

For the default autogen scenery, 5788x1080, sliders at second to highest setting, no external shadows, flying over non-city terrain, my frame rates went from about 22 to about 33. It was also noticeably smoother. Unlike many folks I was still getting stuttering with my old card, and that is better now. It still slows down to the low 20's over the stock NYC scenery. Since I live near NYC and fly a lot in that area, I find that a bit disappointing. Still, there is an improvement in the default scenery performance. On a more positive note enabling shadows did not translate into a very noticeable hit on performance.

 

Any chance you could wind the settings up to see if you get 'out of graphics memory' problems. I am contemplating a 780Ti or a Titan but the Ti has less memory than my present card.

[BMagann 11]

Well, I'm probably not the guy to ask. I have never had one of those, either in FSX or P3D. However I did crank everything up and fly around today and had no problems. But like I said, that might not mean anything because I have never had any problems like that in the past either.

[Q_flyer 766]

Are you using the internal frame rate slider in P3D ?

[BMagann 11]

Yes, set to 33.

[BMagann 11]

With the frame rate limiter at unlimited, both autogens set to max, building shadows on. tree shadows off, I can now fly right down 5th Avenue and keep a healthy, smooth 24fps. Of course north of Central Park it looks nothing at all like the real NYC, but thems the breaks. The 780ti makes a huge difference for the default scenery. If the default scenery is good enough for you, then the sim really sings with the equipment that I am now using.

 

I want to use photo-scenery. You can never get everything that you want, can you? But I do think based on what I am seeing today that eventually this will be a great sim. At some point there will be photo-scenery that is optimized for this sim. Eventually there will be detailed city scenery optimized for this sim.  Eventually we will get SLI support. (Oy, another 780ti? That sounds like grounds for a divorce.) And eventually the 780ti won't cost a mortgage payment. The future should be ok.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I wonder with all the interest here in the GTX 780 TI, that the AvSim marketplace couldn't look into a group buy on the card from a wholesaler. The audio visual website, AVSForum.com has group buys, but they are generally arranged by vendors and/or members.

 

EDIT:

 

I just checked. Provantage has a group buy policy, but you must buy at least $5,000 of EVGA products to qualify for a discount:

 

http://www.provantage.com/corporate-accounts~xvolume.htm

 

Of course, the  EVGA GTX 780 TI is running anywhere from $680 to $750 at most online stores, depending on the overclock and the onboard cooling, so it wouldn't take too many to qualify for a purchase.

Edited December 3, 2013 by jabloomf1230