I have been reading about P3D/FSX and many hardware setups people are experimneting with forthe last 14 months, and I thought I had built the system that woud give me the ultimate machine to run FSX/P3D (v2.2+) at decent fps with all settings and sliders to the right (with everything set the maximum).

I wanted as "realistic" a flying sim as possible. I builta system and even bought a complete Cessna simulator cockpit with seats and all.

 

BUT ... I am getting 2-4 fps with settings maxed out. Of course this is unacceptabel. FSX gives me 10-12 fps, also unacceptable.

 

Witj all setting to lowest possible settings gets me 40 fps, but I do not want to fly with such ridiculous settings, I am better off "imagining" I am flying than simming with these low settings.

 

My question to all; what is the rig that will give us 40+ fps of P3D v2.4 (and FSX) at maxed settings (all settings full)?

 

Just imagine what can be there and list what you think will achieve this. Forget the cost for now, I am curious as to what will get P3D and FSX to really "work" as their photos suggest!

 

Somehow I am getting desperate that there really is no system capable of running these programs with the maximum settings and am wondering why the heck do they offer us such unachievable settings?

 

I am sure none of us can afford a Tianhe-2 to "fully" enjoy P3D/FSX!

 

Lets have it ... what can we build?

Manageing settings in the sim will easily get you way higher fps than 40, with almost no visual impact. Just know which sliders not to max out. And of course addons will impact fps, but you didn't say anything about that, so I assume you are talking about an vanilla install?

 

I get around 70 fps, many of the sliders maxed except autogen buildings (dense), trees (very dense), tesselation (low), traffic sliders (60% WOAI airliners, 15% road, 10% AI ships all packages, 0% GA), shadows quality on high (and all shadows on). 1920 x 1200. This is using the A2A Cherokee, Ftx Nor, ASN weather (cloud density high, 3 cloudlayers 60 miles), Rex soft clouds. This is in rural areas, over cities is another story. So I locked the fps to 35, and that is smooth enough.

 

[email protected], Gtx 780 oc, 8gb 2400/cl9

What are your current specs and settings? As figgios said above, it might be possible to reach your desired level of performance by turning down settings that won't ruin the entire look.

My setup is build for 2 monitors, both with VC view and I run 20+ FPS in worst cases and with high settings. So with one VC view the FPS doubles and I can run 40+ up to even 70 FPS, in some places.

Still thinking of switching my i7-4770k for an i7-4790k, hoping to OC to 4.7-4.8GHz, but at 4.3GHz it's already doing very nice.

Thank u for your quick responses guys.

 

What I now have is as follows:

 

ASUS Z87K motherboard,

Intel i7 4790, (not overclocked)

DDR3 2666 MHz RAM,

Radeon R9 295 x2,

3 x Benq projectors (1280x800 each) running in AMD Eyefinity with 3840x800 combined resolution for a 225 Deg cylindrical screen with 3 views forming the complete 225 Deg warped using Immersive Display Pro,

TRC1000 based on Flight1 G1000 Student Pro software running F1 generic Cessna T182T airplane, no Guages showing,

No addons except FSUIPC,

One monitor running on the internal integrated GPU of the ASUS motherboard, I use to do my windows work on,

Crucial 240 Gb SSD drive,

Win 7 Home x64,

Microsoft Defender and Comodo internet security (disabling these made no difference),

 

All this seems not to be enough to reduce any decent fps!

40 FPS at everything maxed? Well, let's see:

 

12.5 GHz, 16-core Intel CPU (overclocked)

32GB of ludicrously expensive RAM

SLI with 6 GTX 980 Titanium Black Extreme Edition with 8GB memory each

8 SSD's in RAID

Two small nuclear reactors,Phase-change cooling (liquid nitrogen recommended)

 

My point is that no matter what system you get, you have to compromise with the sliders. This is even true for FSX, which came out almost a decade ago.

Turn shadows off, I read that this kills fps with amd video cards.

I have been reading about P3D/FSX and many hardware setups people are experimneting with forthe last 14 months, and I thought I had built the system that woud give me the ultimate machine to run FSX/P3D (v2.2+) at decent fps with all settings and sliders to the right (with everything set the maximum).

 

If you've been reading about both products then you'd have also come across a huge majority (if not all) admitting that compromises have to be made regardless of how powerful their system might be. Agreeably, there are certain optimizations, settings, etc that may not ruin the overall look of your simulator but as 'JimmiG' said, you'd need a system as powerful as that and I'd still have my doubts at running both products with all sliders to the right.

Same goes for the specs you posted. I believe it's been said for quite some time that nVidia GPUs seem to perform better than AMDs for FSX, at least. You may be able to yield some decent performance from your current system but that will only come from turning up the sliders that matter the most, while relaxing others that bear no influence on the type of flying you want to simulate.

 

Still thinking of switching my i7-4770k for an i7-4790k, hoping to OC to 4.7-4.8GHz, but at 4.3GHz it's already doing very nice.

 

The OC on an i7-4790K only gets past 4.6 GHz on a chance few winners of the chip lottery.

Likely its a 4.6, maybe 4.7,and rarely for 4.8

Unless you want to tolerate excessive temps and/or CTD's

....

 

All this seems not to be enough to reduce any decent fps!

 

Reduction of fps is easy, just max every out

Looking at your specs, I don't see what else you can buy to make your experience much better. The only real mistake I can find is the R9 295X2, because Prepar3D will never take advantage of CrossFireX (AMD are saying that this is because Prepar3D does not have an exclusive fullscreen mode), so if you can, return that and get a high-end NVIDIA GPU like the GTX 980 instead (and if they finally decide to let Prepar3D take advantage of SLI, you can add a second card later). Also, if your CPU is the 4790K, make sure to overclock it. If it's the locked version though, there's a problem because of the 3.6GHz clock speed.

 

And now we need to find the bottleneck that causes your low FPS. The biggest CPU performance hog is the buildings autogen. If you have it set above Dense, try lowering it. Also be careful about your traffic. Try to keep traffic density below 50%, airport vehicles below Low, and car traffic not higher than 10%. Now if the bottleneck is on your GPU (which would not be surprising since only one of the two GPUs are being used), the first thing you should try is using only one of the projectors since the total resolution is quite high. If you still see low performance, reduce your shadow settings. If you still see no improvement, then it's definitely your CPU getting bottlenecked.

40 FPS at everything maxed? Well, let's see:

 

12.5 GHz, 16-core Intel CPU (overclocked)

32GB of ludicrously expensive RAM

SLI with 6 GTX 980 Titanium Black Extreme Edition with 8GB memory each

8 SSD's in RAID

Two small nuclear reactors,Phase-change cooling (liquid nitrogen recommended)

 

My point is that no matter what system you get, you have to compromise with the sliders. This is even true for FSX, which came out almost a decade ago.

:blink:  Ummmmmmm! Where do we get liquid nitrogen from?  ^_^

If you've been reading about both products then you'd have also come across a huge majority (if not all) admitting that compromises have to be made regardless of how powerful their system might be. Agreeably, there are certain optimizations, settings, etc that may not ruin the overall look of your simulator but as 'JimmiG' said, you'd need a system as powerful as that and I'd still have my doubts at running both products with all sliders to the right.

Same goes for the specs you posted. I believe it's been said for quite some time that nVidia GPUs seem to perform better than AMDs for FSX, at least. You may be able to yield some decent performance from your current system but that will only come from turning up the sliders that matter the most, while relaxing others that bear no influence on the type of flying you want to simulate.

 

 

I believe it's been said for quite some time that nVidia GPUs seem to perform better than AMDs for FSX, at least. You may be able to yield some decent performance from your current system but that will only come from turning up the sliders that matter the most, while relaxing others that bear no influence on the type of flying you want to simulate.

 

But many posts around say the opposite! AMD is better for P3D than nVidia! The debate continues endlessly with both sides presenting their findings.

It is very confusing and hecktic to follow hundreds (if not thousands) of separate opinions and advices.

It is also very difficult to figure out and measure what it is for me that some see as acceptable and others see as not.

The term decent is varaible and depends on the one using it. Decent to me may not be so to you and visa versa.

Since I am new to all this, even when I have been reading a lot, what are the settings that you consider matter most and which ones do not make a difference?

I appreciate the insight and the time youare taking to help out. :smile:

I tried both AMD R290x and GTX 970 on P3D and to be honest, I didn't see that much of a difference except that I can run the Nvidia with 2x MSAA and get the benefits of 4x MSAA using the new MFAA implementation. I am also running DSR 1.5 resolution and everything looks pretty sharp without an FPS hit.

 

 

Reduction of fps is easy, just max every out

 

It was a typo   but you made me laugh, thanks.

 

Looking at your specs, I don't see what else you can buy to make your experience much better. The only real mistake I can find is the R9 295X2, because Prepar3D will never take advantage of CrossFireX (AMD are saying that this is because Prepar3D does not have an exclusive fullscreen mode), so if you can, return that and get a high-end NVIDIA GPU like the GTX 980 instead (and if they finally decide to let Prepar3D take advantage of SLI, you can add a second card later). Also, if your CPU is the 4790K, make sure to overclock it. If it's the locked version though, there's a problem because of the 3.6GHz clock speed.

 

And now we need to find the bottleneck that causes your low FPS. The biggest CPU performance hog is the buildings autogen. If you have it set above Dense, try lowering it. Also be careful about your traffic. Try to keep traffic density below 50%, airport vehicles below Low, and car traffic not higher than 10%. Now if the bottleneck is on your GPU (which would not be surprising since only one of the two GPUs are being used), the first thing you should try is using only one of the projectors since the total resolution is quite high. If you still see low performance, reduce your shadow settings. If you still see no improvement, then it's definitely your CPU getting bottlenecked.

I appreciate the  feedback.

I am disappointed I did not come across someone to advise against the R9 295 X2 and it being Cross fire and P3D not using that! Do you think using three AMD R9 290's, one for each projector would help? I need these three projectors working in Eyefinity to produce the 225 Deg screen projection I want.

I will start on the suggestions youhave tomorrow and report back what I find.

Again, thank you.

We may be getting somewhere but I am still interested in the specs of a realistic gaming rig that can run P3D at almost maxed out settings?

AMD or nVidea? i7 4770 or 4790 overclocked or not? RAM, SSD, motehrboard ...etc?

Any idea why MS or LM would put out settings that are truly unachievable ... except with liquid nitrogen cooled systems? :wub:

@ammarmalhas

Try these settings initially - you will have both cloud shadows and volumetric fog along with good performance to start with. More traffic, more shadows, virtual cockpits, etc will slow it down but at least you will have some reference to start with. I have a three monitor system with separate views(left,center,right) - not NVsurround with a single stretched view.

Note: Do not use the integrated GPU at all! Get another video card if necessary!

 

P3Dv2.4 Settings

 

CPU = 4790K at least at 4.2 Ghx  HT=OFF  

GPU = Nvidia 660Ti (Driver = 344.80)  or better

 

Nvidia Inspector Settings 

      Antialiasing Mode : Override any application settings

      Antialiasing Setting:  8xSQ

      Antialiasing Transparency Setting : 4x Supersampling

 

      Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Application Controlled

      Vertical Sync:   Use the 3D application setting

 

 

 

Settings Graphics

   FXAA = ON  MSAA = 8 Samples  Texture Filtering: Aniso 8X  Texture Res = Medium Vsync = OFF  Frame rate = Unlimited

   Hardware Tesselation : ON  Wide Aspect:On Mipmap VC Panels: On

Settings Scenery

    LOD = Medium  Tess : Medium    Mesh Res = 10m  Texture Res = 15cm

    Scenery Complexity = Very Dense   Autogen Veg : normal  Autogen Building : Normal

    Water Detail : Low    Reflections: User Vehicle  Bathymetry: Off

    Special Effects : Medium

Settings Lighting

    Landing Lights Illuminate Grnd: On  Lens Flare: off   HDR : Off

    Shadow Quality: Low Enable Terr: On  Cloud Shadow Dist : 10000   Object Shadow Dist 6000

     Object Type External Vehicle Cast  Only

Settings Weather

     Cloud Dist 70m

     Volumetric Fog: On   Detailed Clouds: On Cloud Density: High

Settings Traffic

      Airline Traffic  20%

 

Performance Test:

    

    Load Flight -> Prepar3D Default or similar default airport

    Set weather theme at Building Storms - no precip

    Views->View Mode->Cockpit->Cockpit  then set View Zoom to 0.6  (using +,+,+)  (no VC showing)

    Frame rate should be about 100 fps

 

Now for 3 Monitors

    View->New View->Cockpit->Cockpit then Undock and set their zoom factor to 0.6

     - do this twice Frame rate should be about 35->40 fps and smooth (use arrow keys and SHIFT to set view rotation)

 

Now you can try other settings but keep it smooth!

This topic simply reminds how frustrating things have been in the last ten years:

 

1. Intel's CPU clockspeed has been stuck below 5GHz forever.  

 

2. P3D/FSX has also been stuck at saturating the single core in every heavy scenery, never uses multiple cores efficiently.

 

If any one of the two can have a good improvement, our simmers' life would be so much better. I'm dreaming a 10GHz CPU though, the quickest solution to fly P3D maxed at more than 40fps...