Decided to finally make the switch to P3D from FSX. I've had a stable experience with FSX but figured with all the good news coming out of V3 that I'd be making a good choice.

 

Here's my setup:

i5 3570K @ 4.2ghz

8GB 1600mhz ram

GTX 660

27" monitor (1900x...somewhere around there)

 

 

This is the performance difference I'm seeing with fairly similar settings between the platforms.

 

Imaginesim ATL with Aerosoft A319

   FSX - ~22 fps with my settings looking at the entire terminal complex

   P3D - less than 8fps

 

I was thinking maybe it was just ATL but while en route to DFW I was getting less than 20 the entire time and back down to 10/11 once in DFW. I lowered the settings significantly and the result was nearly no difference.

 

Really not sure what could be going on to produce such a variance between the two.

I have a very similar setup. Turn off tessellation. That's probably the biggest framerate eater. Turn off bathymetry (I think that's how you spell it). You can also turn off cloud shadows. I personally have them off as I usually fly larger aircraft, so I really wouldn't notice them anyway.

What settings are you using in P3D? Remember, settings in P3D do not equal settings in FSX and some settings do not exist in FSX such as HDR and tessellation. Also, do you have an Nvidia Inspector profile and if so what are the settings? Have you included any cfg file tweaks and if so, which tweaks. Also, P3D moves more processing to the GPU and that 660 might be a bit lacking for some settings. The more information that you can provide, the more and better answers you will get.

Here are my settings...

 

https://gyazo.com/2edd1477103162b98c2f25576d813825

https://gyazo.com/f5811a322e8fa28c3562c0c20e3185bb

https://gyazo.com/ffaf7d17782be9ee5f8bcc366bac2601

 

Traffic is at 0 and cloud settings are at low and 60 miles.

 

Here's my inspector settings

 

https://gyazo.com/63663ea342ea6a1bcc264ef300709314

 

 

No cfg tweaks either as I read those aren't really needed for V3.

 

I've looked at upgrading the GPU. Does P3D support SLI? I can pick up another GTX 660 off eBay for $60. Other option was I was looking at the GTX 970 as a replacement, albeit more expensive.

 

I should also notate that I use FTX Global and Vector along with Active Sky Next coupled with REX Texture Direct with Soft Clouds (medium resolution settings on all clouds).

scenery objects  =   put the 3 of them to Normal         

 

Image and Texture Quality = Medium         

 

Enable Terrain to receive shadows  I would Un-tick this box,  very hard on a system 

 

Water Detail  Put it to low, you wont notice much of a difference anyway 

 

Mesh Resolution   Try this at 10/15 

 

Using 4 SSG on NI can be hard enough on a system.  Maybe stop using NI until you stabilize your Fps.  Try locking your Fps at 30 as well.    

Delete your shaders file as well to clean it out 

Actually, it is recommended you get rid of NI altogether.   It is not required in P3D.   If you make any changes do it via NVIDIA's control panel.   All you really need is to tell the video card you prefer Maximum Performance and if you fly with locked frame rates set the control panel's Prepar3D to Adaptive V-Sync.     SGSS is going to eat your lunch, even at 2x.  Dump it.   Also, KATL is brutal, PERIOD.   I have a beast of a machine and if I leave my Scenery Complexity at Extreme like I do for every other airport I own I get single digit FPS because of all the tiny objects and 150+ Jetways that KATL spawns in.  Great looking eye candy but not practical for flying.   Just my two centers from experience.

Big time Brian, Scenery objects/Complexity is a killer alight 

As I said, my system is nearly identical to yours (750ti is the only difference). I have pretty much the same settings except tessellation is OFF and scenery complexity is set to dense.

I run REX4 2K clouds, several airport addons (FSDT, FlightBeam, FlyTampa, etc.), FTX Global, PMDG NGX, Majestic Dash 8, Aerosoft Airbus, ASN. The lowest I've seen my framerate go is 24-ish FPS at FSDT KJFK in a thunderstorm generated by ASN. 

scenery objects  =   put the 3 of them to Normal         

 

Image and Texture Quality = Medium         

 

Enable Terrain to receive shadows  I would Un-tick this box,  very hard on a system 

 

Water Detail  Put it to low, you wont notice much of a difference anyway 

 

Mesh Resolution   Try this at 10/15 

 

Using 4 SSG on NI can be hard enough on a system.  Maybe stop using NI until you stabilize your Fps.  Try locking your Fps at 30 as well.    

Delete your shaders file as well to clean it out 

 

Just implemented these settings minus one thing. Moved SSG down to 2. FPS at ATL are now a steady 28. I'm doing a test flight right now ATL (Imaginesim) to YUL (Flytampa) in the 320 and I'm sticking to the 30 locked FPS. 

 

Clouds do seem to be an issue, once I entered the clouds on climb out my FPS dropped to 12 each time I passed through one. I also noticed that my WOAI seems to be significantly worse on FPS when compared to FSX. I turned AI to 10% in ATL and my fps dropped to 10 again. I'm guessing there's some sort of compatibility/optimization issue as there were probably only 15 planes on the ground.

 

 

- The Nerd

Before I started this flight I tried JFK myself to see what I got compared to you. ASN had all cloud cover with rain and I was only getting 14-16 with no AI on (includes FSDT and Aerosoft 320).

What kind of clouds are you using and what resolution? If you have REX, try DXT format and either 512 or 1024 resolution.

Just implemented these settings minus one thing.

 

Good stuff,  as Brian correctly stated you might be better off getting rid of SSG altogether to have a smooth Sim and just experiment with NivdIa control panel and P3D control panel.  But its an improvement,  which is great.  

 

 

 If you make any changes do it via NVIDIA's control panel. 

 

Brian,  when your changing settings in the NvidIa control panel,  do you change Global  or  P3D.exe.   Which works best 

Here are my settings...

 

https://gyazo.com/2edd1477103162b98c2f25576d813825

https://gyazo.com/f5811a322e8fa28c3562c0c20e3185bb

https://gyazo.com/ffaf7d17782be9ee5f8bcc366bac2601

 

Traffic is at 0 and cloud settings are at low and 60 miles.

 

Here's my inspector settings

 

https://gyazo.com/63663ea342ea6a1bcc264ef300709314

 

 

No cfg tweaks either as I read those aren't really needed for V3.

 

I've looked at upgrading the GPU. Does P3D support SLI? I can pick up another GTX 660 off eBay for $60. Other option was I was looking at the GTX 970 as a replacement, albeit more expensive.

 

I should also notate that I use FTX Global and Vector along with Active Sky Next coupled with REX Texture Direct with Soft Clouds (medium resolution settings on all clouds).

 

Another couple suggestions to see if they impact performance:

Uncheck Wide-view Aspect Ratio and see if that makes any difference.

Uncheck for Sim Objects casting shadows and change the Shadow Quality setting to Low.

Also, play around with the water reflections to see if that helps performance.

 

In terms of a video card, go for the 970. The sim utilizes VRAM and if you go SLI with two 660 cards you will still have only 2G of VRAM. The 970 is a very popular and useful choice of many simmers and I am sure you will really like it. With that card you could turn up the visuals and really see what P3D is all about.

I have also a very similar setup. The only difference is the GTX760 4GB card.

 

I did uncheck the tesselation option yesterday evening and that gave me the smoothest experience I ever had. Even my fps dropped to around 18-20 in heavy clouds, the sim was very smooth.

 

So maybe you'll give it a try. I'm not sure if it brings any side effects however.

Hey all, OP here. Couldn't get logged in to my original account (might have just been the firewall here at work, some sites simply don't work right, mostly forums).

 

I did pull the trigger and bought an ASUS GTX 970 4GB OC. Had a spend $200 on Newegg get $50 back with Amex plus a Raise gift card for 10% off on the remaining 100 so not a bad deal at all!

 

I did some playing around and got some decent FPS. I had pretty much what everyone suggested on minus the 2x on NI. SFO HD and FTX NorCal plus the Aerosoft 320 and party cloudy I was hitting 27ish FPS looking at the airport so not bad at all IMO. Mind you this is without the new card which should arrive Friday.

 

One thing, once I turned AI on I noticed my FPS dropped to about 10 again. This led me to searching around for why this package was so heavy on FPS and I learned the package I had was from a company I won't name that isn't legitmate it seems. Needless to say that has been uninstalled (I in no way condone piracy or anything along those lines, believe me I understand as a part time photographer). Are there any decent AI packs out there that are fully P3DV3 compatible? I used WOAI for the longest time in FSX but ended up with that other pack when I grew tired of having to download/install each airline on its own.

 

Other upgrades I'm looking at in the next month or so are possibly either upgrading to 16GB DDR3 2188 (I believe is the clock?) ram vs my current 8GB at 1600 and/or a dedicated SSD drive. I'm just a little hessitant to spend $150+ on a hard drive when I have other expenses to look at like buying the P3D license for my NGX (plus the 777 is on the wishlist). With P3D being 32 bit still is it even worth upgrading to the 16GB? Price wise the ram isn't bad considering I can pick it up off Newegg for ~$65 plus maybe 10% off via Raise.

 

In terms of performance, what kind of settings will I be looking at with the new card when it arrives? Any suggestions on what to try out?

Skip the RAM and go for the SSD - 8G is more than enough.

 

I really like MyTraffic6 but ANY AI program will give a performance hit if you set the slider too high.

 

 

Vic