I would believe that your 3GB Vram is filling up quite fast with your settings, atleast it does with my 3GB GTX780. It seems the memory used number you see in settings is a "one time" reading when sim loads, and doesn't include all the textures you load into your VRAM while flying. I see you use afterburner, scrolling down the hardware monitor you can monitor your memory usage with it, and in my experience when the memory is capped while flying the result is something like what you describe. When memory is full, it can't load textures into it to be ready when they are needed, and have to swap them mid-flying which results in low fps like you have. With simheaven OSM and photoscenery, you might have to turn objects and trees almost to a minimum due to its high density in big cities. My experience is that in big cities, OSM + photoscenery kills your VRAM, even if it might not otherwise be too much of a problem. Turning down the object density one-by-one I get very little increment in fps, but once i get down enough (=enough so that the objects dont fill your VRAM 100%) i get a jump to 60 fps or so. 

 

 

So check your VRAM usage, if it's at 100% or close to it, reduce the object density. I also have noticed that fiddling with settings might leave some stuff in the VRAM which will only clear by restarting sim, so you might not see good improvement in VRAM by turning object density down by one notch, but once restarted that setting might be much better fps-wise.

Does anybody have a list of what affects the CPU, and GPU? I.e what settings impact the CPU, what ones impact the GPU and what ones are combined?

 

 

Ian

@lanrivaldosmith :

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2011/12/tips-for-better-frame-rates-pt-1/

 

at the bottom of the post there is a table that can help

thank you

Some tests... again, at LEMD airport, parked in first Gate, starting from my current rendering settings (link in previous post)

 

- Objects from "too many" to "default" -  + 1  fps gain
- Cars from Syberia to Los angeles (one before max) : - 5 fps drop
- Trees: From Tree Hunger (max) to spare (min):  + 1 fps gain
- Number of roads from extreme to default:   + 1 fps gain
- World detail distance: from high to low: + 7 fps gain
- Airport Detail: default to extreme : + 1 fps drop
- Shadow Detail: from Global (High) to 3d on aircraft: +4 fps gain
- Water refletion: from Complete to Low: +2 fps gain
- From HDR (4x SSAA+FFAA) to HDR Off with 4x antialiasing: +16 fps gain :blink:  (went from 18 to 34)
- From HDR (4x SSAA+FFAA) to HDR (2xSSAA+FFAA) + 1 fps gain

 

Yes, we all know HDR is a FPS killer, but honestly, I'm surprised to see so much fps drop using a overclocked 780 TI card. HDR is 100% GPU in theory. (Not sure if there is anything faster out there)

Is this in windows 8.1 or 7?

Windows 7