I'm having problems with FPS being lower than usual and upon checking processor state, I noticed that the core 0 is only giving me about 60-70%, instead of the 95-100% I'm used to. Sometimes I see it go up to around 80% and this is immediately noticeable on the FPS, but not long after it drops back to around 60%.

 

I'm using P3D2.4 with FTX Global/Vector/OpenLC with freeware airports, FS Global, REX4, ASN and some Vidan Design airports and prepar3d.cfg is not tweaked.

 

Anyone who has any idea on what can be wrong here, or how to fix it?

With REX and ASN you may want to try a CPU affinity mask that leaves one core free. Other than that, you can check your GPU usage when the CPU is not fully utilised. MSI afterburner (amongst others) will help you with that. If your GPU is flat out then your CPU will wait.

I'm having problems with FPS being lower than usual and upon checking processor state, I noticed that the core 0 is only giving me about 60-70%, instead of the 95-100% I'm used to

 

 

See what else is running besides P3d. I suggest Process Explorer:

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

Given that the main P3d thread tends to run on Core 0 on most computers and this thread is what limits performance (unless one has an incredibly weak GPU), it is unusual to not see  Core 0 at the max (or close to it). If something else is hogging the other CPU cores, Core 0 might not get that much usage.

It is indeed the GPU that is fully loaded. At points where it releases a bit of tension and it runs 80-99%, the CPU core 0 behaves normally, but most of the time the GPU is maxed out.

ASN on or off doesnt make any difference and I tried some affinity masks, but no change at all.

 

I'm not sure if looking at a different list of what is running, from another program, would make much difference, since I dont know what should be in that list, other then what's in task manager. What I do know is that there cant be anything running that hasnt been there all along, since nothing changed, not in software, nor settings.

 

Seeing that this has been taking up 3 days already, I should have done a reinstall in the first place, instead of looking into it. Would have saved me a lot of time.

So that's what I will be doing first and testing after every addon and if I find some anomalies I'll be back with the results.

Take some load from your GPU. Do you use nVidia Inspector?

Spirit

I havent been using NI since P3D2.3.

I indeed saw that I can lighten the load on the GPU by lowering settings and then the CPU use comes up again, but the thing is that my PC always has been able to run the software and settings I'm using right now, so there must be something wrong.

When I know everything works as it should and I can lighten the load with NI, that would be great, of course, but fixing the symptoms with a workaround, knowing that the original problem is still in my system, only makes me nervous about what else could go wrong.

 

But non the less, thanks for the tip. I thought that LM blocked NI from doing anything in 2.3 and up, but if it still has effect, I'll check it out and see if it will have any benefits for me.

I guess that something has changed on your system what puts more load on the GPU. Driver update maybe. I use the 344.80 and it's fine for me.

 

I always use NI and I doubt that LM is blocking something with NI because NI is only a tool to set more parameter than it's possible to set with the CP for the GPU together with the game.

 

Try it and you'll see.

Spirit

 

 

I guess that something has changed on your system what puts more load on the GPU. Driver update maybe. I use the 344.80 and it's fine for me.

 

I've experienced a small drop in performance with 344.75 (2-3 fps). Sometimes just deleting the shader cache fixes these kind of issues.

I was counting that NI would gain me a few % on GPU, giving me a few % more on my CPU... For testing I'm running only my main monitor, because power usage on my GPU is just under 100% and I can see it moving, instead of one maxed out straight line that doesnt show how much room it actually takes up and then the difference NI makes is 15-20% even. With only the main monitor, I'm running 80-85% now and CPU is close to 100% as it should be.

Still, with a second view projected on my panel monitor, the GPU still maxes out, but CPU is already up to 90-95% so that's a lot of improvement already!

 

Unfortunately, the GPU is still pushing the CPU down, so I'm still hoping to find the cause for that. If I can get that fixed and on top of that use NI, that 15-20% I gained on my GPU might be able to give me a couple of extra cloud layers.

And I though I had seen it all...

 

My GPU kept being maxed out, pushing CPU down, until I limited my frame rate. On my system, this has never worked well and makes me loose about 8-10FPS, but it dropped GPU use (with both monitors running) back to around 50-60% even.

However, when flying in and out FPS-heavy areas (ESI Isle of Man), FPS dropped to 10-12, so that wasnt working either. Then I restarted P3D with the limited frame rate, restarted it and set my frame rate back to unlimited and GPU use came up a little, around 60-65%, so that's very nice and my frame rate was back at around 20-24FPS, so that's plenty for a smooth ride.

Even after several reboots, it keeps up the same values on GPU and CPU, so it seems to be fixed now. Let's hope the same trick will do the job in case it might happen again.

Your "solution" doesn't surprise me in the least.

 

I don't know what it is with P3d, but after a long period of time (weeks to months), performance degrades even though there is no visible change to the settings in Prepar3d.cfg. Often renaming the cfg file and letting P3d recreate it is a tonic for performance. Of course, then you have to go back and redo all your IQ settings, etc.. But even after doing that, performance stays improved. It's like the "magic" that one sometimes see when deleting the shader cache.

I certainly have to "ditto" this one. Things just slowly degrade unless you refresh the cfg file.

 

Vic