Your typical CSB thread...

[BimmerCop 332]

For those that aren't up to date on Internet jargon, CSB stands for Cool Story Bro... LOL

 

Anyway, I just wanted to share a quick story...

 

In my never ending quest of trying to get the stutters out of my P3D setup, I have tried EVERYTHING under the sun, and each time, I was always left scratching my head wondering why my sim continues to stutter like it's going out of style.

 

Ive tried it all. DSR, NI, nVidia CP, in-game settings, vSync on, vSync off, FPS limited, FPS unlimited, etc etc etc... And to make things even more frustrating, I believe I have a decent system. Nothing cutting edge but it should at least give me decent performance.

 

i7-3770K @ 4.8GHz / HT OFF

8GB DDR3 2400MHz RAM 10-12-12-31-1N

GTX680+ 4GB @ 1280MHz GPU / 6000MHz RAM

256GB Samsung 840 SSD HDD

Windows 7 x64 SP1

Samsung 46" HDTV 1080P

 

Like I said, nothing to write home about by today's standards, but it should hold up it's own with moderate settings within P3D.

 

What really caught my attention the past few days was a thread where affinity mask was being discussed and the general consensus was that P3D really benefits from having as many cores as you can throw at it. This got me thinking. I have a CPU which has HT built-in (albeit always disabled) and potentially, I have an additional 4 cores available and just kept dormant.

 

So, I went ahead and enabled HT on my CPU and of course, I had to drop the speed down to 4.7GHz due to the increase in heat. This allowed me to drop my vcore a notch and after a few hours of OCCT/Linx, my system is humming along nicely. Low to mid 80s Celcius while running OCCT/Linx. Not too shabby considering that HT is ON and running 1.2GHz above stock speeds! Also, while running P3D, temps barely break 60C.

 

Anyhow, went ahead and made some quick Prepar3D.cfg tweaks in order to start preparing my sim for photoreal scenery such as MSE. I added/changed the following tweaks:

 

[Display]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT =80

TextureMaxLoad=30

 

[Main]

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.20

 

[TERRAIN]

LOD_RADIUS =9.500000

 

 

I quickly started P3D and after running task manager, I quickly noticed that core 0 was pegged at max activity while cores 2, 4 and 6 showed some activity. Cores 1, 3, 5 and 7 were quiet. Ok, so I taxied to the runway and proceeded to take off. Immediately after takeoff, I started seeing the activity on cores 1, 3, 5 and 7 starting to pick up! I wanna say that as I did some circuits around the airport at 2,000', I can clearly see that ALL cores were getting a workout!

 

Now, comes the best part. Almost all my stutters were GONE! I was still getting some, especially on turns, so I decided to play around with the display settings within P3D. Prior to enabling HT, I always had to keep vSync ON/Triple Buffering ON and UNLIMITED FPS, in order for me to get decent performance, but with stutter nation, of course.

 

After tweaking, enabling HT and experimenting, I ended up with Vsync OFF, Triple Buffering OFF and FPS slider set @ 30, and now my sim is running almost stutter free! I still get an occassional stutter but I can live with it. It is what it is.

 

The fact is that by enabling HT on my system and fine tuning it with the settings I posted above, I can say P3D is running as smooth as FSX used to, BUT with all the goodies and eye candy that come with P3D such as cloud shadows, VC shadows, etc. Ground textures are extremely sharp, down t the horizon. Barely any blurries at all. I have yet to see a blurry or texture swaps.

 

What I have learned this evening and what I hope others might learn from my CSB moment of the day, is that always try out everything available. You might never know. What doesn't work for many, might be exactly what YOU need to do on YOUR system. Like I said, it's always been said that HT should be off and thus I always played by those "rules". This evening, I decided to go against that and lo and behold, that was exactly what my system needed.

 

And with that folks, I conclude my CSB of the day.

 

 

 

[olealm 12]

Good for you!

 

Funny thing is, I have been running HT ON and In-Game V Sync OFF since Prepar3D v2 was installed. However, the other day (together with installing the new 344.48 drivers) I ended up disabling HT, and enabling In-Game V Sync (in addition, half refresh rate has always been enabled in Cpanel). Well, this gave me a totally smooth experience!

 

Guess this is just another proof that mileages vary a lot in the Simworld

[BimmerCop 332]

Good for you!Funny thing is, I have been running HT ON and In-Game V Sync OFF since Prepar3D v2 was installed. However, the other day (together with installing the new 344.48 drivers) I ended up disabling HT, and enabling In-Game V Sync (in addition, half refresh rate has always been enabled in Cpanel). Well, this gave me a totally smooth experience!Guess this is just another proof that mileages vary a lot in the Simworld

Exactly! Each PC is unique and there are so many variables. I learned the hard way that it is best to just find what works best for your setup, even if it means doing things frowned upon such as enabling HT, well at least in my case. LOL I'm glad you were able to sort it out as well!

[vgbaron 3,486]

Exactly! Each PC is unique and there are so many variables. I learned the hard way that it is best to just find what works best for your setup, even if it means doing things frowned upon such as enabling HT, well at least in my case. LOL I'm glad you were able to sort it out as well!

That's the point exactly. there is no "one size fits all" tweak. Way too many variables in hardware and software to do that. People need to evaluate a new tweak on THEIR system and either keep it or let it go.

 

Vic