P3D? Frame rate issues

[The flying guy 0]

Hello, I'm new to this or any forum. I'm a pc builder and fsx enthusiast.

I have been working on a customers pc for the last few weeks trying to solve his low frame rate issue.

He has p3d and by the looks of it an airbus of some kind installed.

When flying in an area such as klax or ksfo with his airbus the frames drop down to 8-12.

This only seems to happen with his addon planes, stock aircrafts all get 40-55 fps in the same locations.

As for settings, only thing that impacts frames is the scenery complexity slider.

Moving that 1 notch to the right gives him 15-18 but it looks horrible, moving it 2 notches to the right and the sim becomes a slides how lol. My diagnosis is as follows, it seems the addon aircrafts utilize the same core on the cpu as the scenery slider and she just gets overloaded.

I built him the exact same pc I got which is as follows.

-gigabyte 990fx uad3 MB

-FX 8350 overclocked to 4.8 on a custom water cooler loop (temp stays at 42 C)

-asus R9 290X also overclocked

-16gb of ram running at 1833mhz

-windows 7

-everything's on a 1tb samsung 850 pro ssd

 

This system runs my fsx really well so I assumed it would do fine for him since from what I read p3d has better coding and is an updates fsx.

I loaded up my fsx on his machine to try it out and it performs just as well as on my rig so the hardware is all good. Must be something to do with his addon aircrafts.

Are these aircrafts really that cpu demanding?

Also tried a Cessna c182 and that has low fps like the airbus, but I'm not sure if that's an addon aircraft.

 

thanks in advance

[Alpha Floor 237]

Hi Flying Guy!

 

I'm not an IT expert or anything, just will share my humble opinion:

 

FSX is predominantly CPU-heavy. You can throw him the best GPU in the market that he won't care and let you fly at 10 FPS. Pretty troll application in that sense, many people have been frustrated by this.

Also it's a 32 bit application as you surely know, it's limited to one core and 4GB.

 

So yes, FSX NEEDS an overclocked and fast CPU.

 

 

 

Are these aircrafts really that cpu demanding?

 

Yes, the problem with FSX is establishing priorities. You just can't have it ALL and pretend to fly at a decent 30FPS.

 

Good weather, clouds etc.

Scenery detail, photorealistic scenery, good mesh etc.

Airports with high detail

Objects: Lower autogen as much as possible. I would get rid of cars, ships and "moving" things which hog the CPU.

AI traffic, I'd get rid of it altogether, it's useless bots anyway (my personal preference)

And of course: addon aircraft are very demanding.

 

My personal priority is:

1. Aircraft
2. Weather
3. Airport
4. Terrain Mesh
5. Everything else

Everything I said is subject to being "overriden" by the IT pros in this forum

[The flying guy 0]

Ok thank you for the prompt response.

In my testing I didn't get any OOM issues on his system.

I will try and set a decent compromise between scenery and fps.

I kinda figured this would be as good as it will get unless like you said invest in a better cpu.

I will talk to him in a couple of days to see what his expectations are and decide the route to follow.

I'm guessing the amd 9000 series chips wouldn't yield any better performance so I'm sure he will need an intel rig.

Thanks again for the confirmation on this issue. Greatly appreciated.

[Alpha Floor 237]

For Flight Simulation I prefer Intel for the CPU and Nvidia for the GPU, but I'm sure other people think otherwise

 

Also don't run any tests on the default aircraft because those are useless. If your costumer will always be flying with high-complexity addons, choose a "benchmark" addon aircraft like the Aerosoft Airbus, and test that under different configurations

[The flying guy 0]

I figured you would say intel as I see a majority of people using that instead of team red.

I have nothing bad to say about either brand, they all serve their purpose and seems intel is on top for single core applications.

I will do all the setup using his airbus and will leave at that untill he invests in stronger rig.

Thanks again, this sure is a nice forum to be a part of.

 

On a side note I can't wait till amd launches their new ZEN line of cpu's, it should be a game changer for team red. I'm going to be ordering one when their available (maybe 4th quarter of 2016) and doing some testing. Really excited about this new chip.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

I figured you would say intel as I see a majority of people using that instead of team red.

 

ATI/AMD did not come on board as quickly as Intel and NVidia to support Vista/Windows 7 and this was when FSX (P3D is based off of the FSX engine) was first released.  AMD publicly stated they opposed Microsoft's upgrade from Windows XP and refused to provide compatible drivers for the new OS.  I had an ATI Card and Intel processor at the time and got rid of my ATI card as well as thousands, maybe millions of other users.  So, FSX was developed using Intel processors and NVidia cards as anything else was incompatible and Intel and NVidia quickly updated their processors/drivers for the new operating systems.  This is one small reason why many use Intel instead of AMD.

 

Since then, AMD has gotten better but, can they be trusted anymore should there be another Windows upgrade?

 

In regards to P3D settings, try some of the settings as suggested by the moderator of our P3D Forum (and a Beta tester for LockHeed Martin) - http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html

 

Best regards,

[Glynn 405]

 

 

Also it's a 32 bit application as you surely know, it's limited to one core and 4GB.

 

While the main thread runs on one core it also uses the other cores for texture loading.

 

FSX on 8 cores with Phil taylor ex ACES product manager

[Donald Traill 8]

Just to clarify; it seems if your friend upgrades his hardware what will get him the most bang for the buck is a new video card, The Nvidia card with the best price/performance tradeoff is the 970 IMHO.

 

Donald