CPU & GPU underload - low fps

[vivoune 0]

Hi there,

 

I'm trying to configure my P3D but I'm having a real hard time getting decent fps, my issue is that as I contently monitor my hardware (custom water cooling rig) I noticed my CPU and GPU utilization barely ever got higher than 35% for the GPU, 45% for the CPU and about 40% of my Ram was ever used.

 

The CPU is an i5 3570k overclocked at 4.6Ghz

The GPU is a GTX 970 4Gb Gamer edition from MSI. P3d doesn't even get its fan started no matter the fps.

16 GB of DDR3 ram (4x4) at 1600 MHz 

Note that the resolution is for an extra wide 34" Screen 3440x1440

Changing to lower resolutions such as regular 1440p & 1080p resolutions didn't have any impact on FPS.

 

In terms of 3rd party I am using

-Active Sky Next,

-EZDok,

-Fftx Global, Vector and EuropeLC

-REX 4 textures with the low level clouds replaced by their latest soft cloud software.

-### AI Traffic 5.0

 

I have been benchmarking the sim these past few days trying to find good settings but the only thing that seem to impact fps are the traffic options. I have placed a Carenado B1900D in New york KJFK mega airport in a very cloudy day at noon, thinking that if I can get decent fps here I should be fine pretty much everywhere. fps were observed on various views (cockpit, spot, top down) on all bench & always at the same spot (G Ramp Medium 8).

 

I fiddled with all the options one sub section at a time and most didn't have any significant impact of the fps one way or the other, at this time with all traffic options at about 30% and the whole rest of the sim options almost cranked up at the max (for testing purposes) I get about 15-20 fps with a CPU & GPU utilization around 30-40% and about 60% ram free.

 

FXAA ON

MSAA 8 SAMPLES

Texture Filtering 4x

Texture Resolution 4096x4096

Changing the above OFF or to their lowest setting didn't impact fps at all.

 

level of detail radius Ultra

Tesselation factor Ultra

Mesh Ratio 5m

Texture Ratio 30cm

Land detail Texture ON

Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting only gained a couple fps.

 

Scenery Complexity Extremely Dense

Autogen Vegetation Extremely Dense

Autogen Building Extremely Dense

Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting gained about 4 fps.

 

Ticking all options ON or OFF in the Reflection section didn't impact the fps in any way.

 

Ticking all options ON or OFF in the Special effect section didn't impact the fps in any way.

 

Landing lights "illumate grounds", lense flare and HDR also had no impact.

 

Shadow quality Ultra

Enable terrain to receive shadows ON

Terrain Shadow Cast distance 80 km

Cloud Shadow Cast distance 80 km

Object Shadow Cast distance 12 km

Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting didn't impact the fps.

 

Same goes for the weather section, no impact at their minimum or at their absolute maximum

 

Removing all traffic gains about 16 fps up to 32 while setting all traffic (Company, General Aviation, Airport vehicle, Road vehicles, Boats) to 100% bring it to 8 fps.

 

I didn't try to mess up with 3rd party addons options yet. But the under usage of the hardware concerns me, it's frustrating to hardly reach 20 fps with CPU, GPU only at 1/3 or their capacity and still 10gb of ram free. Anyone else in the similar situation ?

[jimh 23]

Hi,

 

I'm no expert.  What do you use for monitoring?

 

I use Process Explorer, and use Core Temp to monitor CPU load and temps.

 

I have to dial back P3D settings to keep my i7 47900k load below 100%, and it's o'clocked to 4.8.

Like you, my GPU is a GTX970, which is never above 50%, while driving 3840x1024.

 

Could your i5-3570k be working much harder than your monitoring shows?

 

Jim

[pgde 571]

I don't have any specific answers but here is my hardware:

 

I7-4790k, normal clocking 4.0 Ghz

Coolermaster 240M CPU water cooler

Radeon Factory OC'd R9 270x 2 Gb

16 Gb (2x8) DDR3 G Skill Ripjaws RAM

All on Samsung 840 SSDs (1T, 500 Gb)

Running ASN, Megascenery Earth 2, All FSDreamteam airports, Ultimate Traffic 2, FTX Base, some ORBX airports, etc etc

 

I am getting a solid 28-30 FPS. I'm not really into the 3rd party aircraft -- scenery is what I like. Temps are running between 48-53 with all 4 cores max'd out. Core usage ranges between 60-100% depending on what phase of the flight one is in.  Note that before I added the 240M cooler, my temps were well over 80 degrees with the stock cooler. My GPU monitor shows a load of 70% or so with 1700 Mb used of the 2 Gb, 52 degrees. I'm running graphics at 1440x900 since that is the max my monitors can support. Most everything max'd out.

 

Following up on the above post, I would use System Monitor II (http://www.myfavoritegadgets.info/).

 

P.

[vivoune 0]

Thank you for your answers and angle on the problem. Although I've never had a problem with the monitoring softs I use I also have used different monitoring softwares to be sure, which includes Core Temp, aida64, MSIAfterburner, RealTemp & GPU-Z. All readings were consistent across all softs. I also tested all my hardware through stress tests and everything looks good.

 

Like you, having a solid 28-30fps would indeed be nice and I think my hardware can handle it if I can find what's holding it back. But I don't even know where to start to be honest, all other softwares, games and simulations I use call for a full load on at least the CPU or GPU if not both when the fps are starting to get a bit low. I did a fresh install of P3D just a few days ago to be sure although I havent tested it fresh out of the egg addon free.

 

The cooling is a custom water cooling setup I'm using for 2 years now, 6 Noctuas on a push-pull configuration allows for a steady 38-42°C on full load so Temps can't be the issue at least.

 

P3d is installed on a 10 000rpm HDD, the OS (win7 64b) and most addons on an SSD.

[pmb 5,137]

Hi,

 

I have a much weaker system (see sig) and get decent performance, say around >30 fps in normal sceneries. 20 fps with traffic in KSFO (FB + ORBX) in a C172. I now have fps locked to 20 fps for getting smoother experience. My CPU is working around 80 % most of the time (with core 0 close to 100 %), the GPU around 80-90 %, depending on scenery etc.

 

I share your observation that most of the in-simulator slider settings don't have much impact on performance. However, shadows and autogen do have in my case.

 

Here's a suggestion to proceed: Move your prepar3d.cfg, exe.xml, and dll.xml files to a save place, delete the shader cache and have the simulator making new ones. I wouldn't be surprised you would get excellent performance (and perhaps CPU usage) this way. You can work backwards adding entries from the saved files to isolate possible issues. I did this a couple of time just to find a single exe.xml entry making my sim stutter once.

 

Another hint: Do you happen to have some suspicious Nvidia Inspector or driver settings? I suppose not, as high NI inspector settings would drive your GPU up well, but would just check. I use 4xSGSS to get rid of shimmering, which taxes the GPU. Without SGSS my GPU is pretty much idle (50 % or so). This is a 760, thus if you have a 970 and don't use SGSS or even "worse" Anti-Aliasing Techniques I can well imagine your GPU essentially being idle. For most users (including me) the simulator is still much CPU-limited, thus I'd supppose the CPU is your bottleneck, too.

 

Kind regards, Michael 

[vivoune 0]

Thanks your for your help I will try your suggestion and will report back asap that's appreciated.

 

Yes P3d is still very much a CPU oriented software, my CPU would absolutely be the bottleneck but neither CPU nor GPU even get past 50% usage at any time in session, only at startup does the CPU reach 70% at times while loading and then get back to about 35% no matter the fps in game. I'm not using any Nvidia specific settings though and to be honest I never really expected my GPU to be fully used nor have as big as an impact on fps as the CPU, I'm already happy P3D has dedicated many features to the GPU. I just would like my CPU to be used at its full potential instead of sitting at 40% usage while the sim struggle to get past 20 fps.

 

EDIT: Removed prepar3D.cfg, dll.xml & exe.xml but no change insued, CPU & GPU still stuck at around 30-40% utilization while waiting at KJFK with a bit less than 20 fps.

 

I found out that really only one core was being used, the first one is overloaded at 98% while the second core is at around 20%, the last two nearing 5% utilization, thus creating an average total CPU utilization of 30-40%. Is this normal and P3D that inefficient at multithreading?

[vivoune 0]

Sorry for the double post, no editing allowed.

 

I'm also trying to reduce the screen resolution, as usually the pixel density is the biggest fps drainer in any graphical software but the screen resolution option in-game doesn't change anything at all. How does one change its screen resolution in P3D?

 

Ideally I'd try to get from an extra wide 3440x1440 to a regular 2560x1440 and just fly with black bars on the sides, maybe that could give me back enough fps to near the 30 fps .

[shipdriver 20]

I found out that really only one core was being used, the first one is overloaded at 98% while the second core is at around 20%, the last two nearing 5% utilization, thus creating an average total CPU utilization of 30-40%. Is this normal and P3D that inefficient at multithreading?

This is normal and is the same for FSX (upon which P3D is based). Total CPU usage is a pretty useless measure, Core 0 loading is how you determine how overloaded the CPU is for P3D and FSX. You have very high settings in place, you should try and dial back some. I run 4.8Ghz and I wouldn't run those settings unless I am in very remote region. Building autogen is still very CPU-based. Traffic is an fps killer in both FSX and P3D, especially since your CPU is processing planes hundred of miles away.

[pmb 5,137]

About far away traffic: This can be mitigated, at least. If you use UT2 it has "in-game settings" where you can set the radius of AI planes to be displayed (and some more things, like the maximum numer of planes). I set mine pretty low. If you use another AI program or internal AI there should be a freeware utility (AI Traffic Optimizer, or similar) with essentially the same functionality.

 

This really helps. Running with the full radius of AI aircraft and high settings for airliners as well as GA would completely kill my simulator.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[vivoune 0]

Yes I found out Autogen and Traffic are the two fps killers. I'm using My traffic 5 along with DukeSan27's Traffic Optimizer tool to get back 5 fps.Shipdriver I'm not running these settings while flying, like I said in the first post, it's for testing purposes. It saddens me that P3D is still as inefficient as FSX to some extent.

 

At such resolution 3440x1440, I guess it comes down to either remove traffic or autogen as I can't seem to get both to work together even at their low settings while staying over the 20 fps.

 

Does any of you know how to change the screen resolution? The in-game resolution setting isn't changing anything.

[jimh 23]

Hi Vivoune,

 

As I understand, P3D does not use multithreading.  In Task Manager, I have Prepar3d.exe set to high priority, and Affinity set to All Cores.

 

To monitor, I have Core Temp sitting on top of my full screen view (3840x1024).  Using Orbx England, and UK2000 EGLC, I test by flying out over central London, by far my heaviest area.  I watch the individual core loadings.  If they reach 100%, more or less as a group, then I'm certain to get blurries, quite apart from low stuttery fps.  Average CPU use always seems ridiculously low.

 

I move sliders to the left, and reduce settings bit by bit, until those loadings are below 100%.  Individual cores at 100% briefly is ok.

 

>>Texture Resolution 4096x4096<<  I use 1024x1024

 

Follow Michael's advice about Traffic.  Get Air Traffic Manager and use it.  I have My Traffic, and using Air Traffic Manager has gained me around 7fps in the above scenario.

 

This is simply my "not very technical" way of achieving smooth flying over perfectly sharp scenery, on my own system of course.  I hope it might help you to get where you want to be with your own system.

 

Good Luck, Jim

Sorry, I don't know if it's possible to change screen resolution in P3D.  When I setup my three monitor setup at 3840x1024, and later installed P3D, the Sim offered me the correct resolution, plus one higher and lots lower.

[vivoune 0]

Yes jimh I thought P3D took full advantage of multiple cores, I was wrong. Thank you for your help guys.

 

I can't find any setting that support both even minimal traffic & minimum autogen scenery at the same time and yet staying above the 20 fps at 3440x1440 screen resolution.

 

Note that this is while flying around one the most demanding places like in Los Angeles Int KLAX & New York Int KJFK. I oscillate around the 30-40 fps in less demanding places, so I guess I'll just limit myself to lesser demanding part of the world until Prepar3d finds a way to let go of its FSX core legacy in order to takes advantage of nowedays hardware.

[jimh 23]

Your display has a million more pixels than my three monitor display.  When I had an i7-2600k running at 4.8, plus a GTX680, both were running flat out with nothing to spare.

 

To get some headroom, I had to bite the bullet and buy a Z97 mobo and an i7-4790k, and overclock it to 4.8.

 

Wide display setups kill the CPU, but are great for immersion in the Sim.

 

Jim

[vivoune 0]

Yes, though pixel density is supposedly being handled by the GPU mostly, I'd like to try to at least drop the extra wide resolution and get back to a standard 1440p resolution but the in-game screen resolution option is innoperative for a reason that eludes me.

[jimh 23]

My impression is that the amount of work transferred to the GPU has been exaggerated somewhat.

 

My CPU works extremely hard, while my GPU coasts along at around 40%.  I'd like a lot more transferred!  

 

Perhaps, if you upgrade to 2.5, the screen resolution problem within P3D will be resolved.

 

Good Luck, Jim