XP10 Performance issue, i7-6700K vs. my SurfaceBook tablet

[be77solo 125]

​Thanks everyone for the feedback!  I was hoping there was a trick I was missing.  Disappointing, as I've been totally happy with the AMD card on everything else, but as it stands at least on my machine, X-Plane 10/11 is broken.  Plus I just like trying to support the underdog.   

 

Would be very helpful to borrow an Nvidia card to make the comparison. With that CPU and RAM I'd expect triple FPS than what you showed in XP10.

 

And man, 704 steam entries...wow, I must point that out to my wife when she run mad for the new yoke 

 

Ha, well, in my defense that is 13 years of Steam sales and bundles, but yeah it's grown to a silly level over the past decade. Shhhh

 

Do wish I had a Nvidia card laying around to try out, would be a great test, but no such luck.

 

Well, guess it's back to P3D for now it seems, but I do think I'll keep XP10 installed on the Surface for road warrior fun on business trips.

[Longranger 148]

​Thanks everyone for the feedback!  I was hoping there was a trick I was missing.  Disappointing, as I've been totally happy with the AMD card on everything else, but as it stands at least on my machine, X-Plane 10/11 is broken.  Plus I just like trying to support the underdog.   

Well, Laminar won´t change anything in the X-Plane 10 code. While they plan to add a Vulcan implementation to X-Plane 11 in the long run, they don´t really expect, that this code will be a breakthrough for AMD. They have the same problem as most other developers, that don´t work on AAA titles. They won´t write different code for every different card. Thats the idea behind Direct X 12 and Vulcan. AMD wants to simply produce the card. Let the game developpers write their own drivers. The total opposite to OpenGL: Describe what you want to do, the driver will do the rest.

[be77solo 125]

Well, Laminar won´t change anything in the X-Plane 10 code. While they plan to add a Vulcan implementation to X-Plane 11 in the long run, they don´t really expect, that this code will be a breakthrough for AMD. They have the same problem as most other developers, that don´t work on AAA titles. They won´t write different code for every different card. Thats the idea behind Direct X 12 and Vulcan. AMD wants to simply produce the card. Let the game developpers write their own drivers. The total opposite to OpenGL: Describe what you want to do, the driver will do the rest.

 

I understand what you are saying, but I just don't see it in reality.  I understand updated drivers "optimize" performance in AAA games, meaning a little boost in performance, but this is a different story.  I've shown that a 1GB tablet with a slow mobile GPU runs their software better than a full fledged desktop with the latest Intel CPU and a comparable GPU in every other application to a Nvidia 980.  Laminar simply has broken support for AMD cards for whatever reason.  Other OpenGL stuff works just fine, and better on AMD hardware in some cases, a bit slower in others, but it's always similar.  In X-Plane, it's not even in the same universe.

 

But, hey, at least Austin is excited about static tire dynamics, which are absolutely crucial when trying to fly a plane lol.... 

[Murmur 3,941]

But, hey, at least Austin is excited about static tire dynamics, which are absolutely crucial when trying to fly a plane lol.... 

 

Indeed they are crucial when trying to fly a plane, because the current tire model does not allow realistic crosswind landings, and hopefully this will be improved ASAP.

 

Improving the tire model and improving performance on AMD cards are not related, so I don't see what is your point. Austin's task is to work on the flight model, while Ben's task is to work on the rendering engine (and scenery etc.). It's not that if Austin stops working on the flight model, he could magically work on the rendering engine and improve it. Different tasks for different people.

[be77solo 125]

Indeed they are crucial when trying to fly a plane, because the current tire model does not allow realistic crosswind landings, and hopefully this will be improved ASAP.

 

Improving the tire model and improving performance on AMD cards are not related, so I don't see what is your point. Austin's task is to work on the flight model, while Ben's task is to work on the rendering engine (and scenery etc.). It's not that if Austin stops working on the flight model, he could magically work on the rendering engine and improve it. Different tasks for different people.

 

Lol, meant as much as a joke as anything, but no, based on Austin's post, I don't see his static tire model having any effect on the broken crosswind landing situation?  How could it, he's talking about modeling a "weld" that holds the tire in place when stopped, zero movement.  A crosswind landing doesn't fit this scenario, does it?  And, as he already stated, current tire models are "good enough for a racing sim".  They just don't seem good enough for a flight sim ha.

 

But, that's off topic.  It's just frustrating that the head coder is so easily distracted on getting a nose strut to compress and uncompress properly, when the game is literally broken for those of use with AMD cards.

 

I promise not to bring back up the tire model post.  I did however report bugs, posted on the X-Plane Q&A support sight, and sent a long detailed email to Laminar with my findings.

 

If by chance I ever hear anything back other that simply "buy an Nvidia card" I'll report back.

[Longranger 148]

 

But, that's off topic.  It's just frustrating that the head coder is so easily distracted on getting a nose strut to compress and uncompress properly, when the game is literally broken for those of use with AMD cards.

Head Coder? Austin? Sorry, I think you miss the point. The basic flight model is his child, so it is his job to improve and fix it, since he is also the boss. But I think the title head coder is more the job of Ben. He is also responsible that other developers can break out of the basic flight model if they want to.

 

The big problem with any problem with AMD graphics cards: In most cases you won´t find anyone at AMD that might help you or at least add a presumed correction into their drivers. Everybody that uses OpenGL has probelems with AMD, while DirectX only works on Windows. One of the major reasons why OpenGL puts everything on the shoulders of the drivers, so if a producer doesn´t put so much manpower into his drivers...

[be77solo 125]

Head Coder? Austin? Sorry, I think you miss the point. The basic flight model is his child, so it is his job to improve and fix it, since he is also the boss. But I think the title head coder is more the job of Ben. He is also responsible that other developers can break out of the basic flight model if they want to.

 

The big problem with any problem with AMD graphics cards: In most cases you won´t find anyone at AMD that might help you or at least add a presumed correction into their drivers. Everybody that uses OpenGL has probelems with AMD, while DirectX only works on Windows. One of the major reasons why OpenGL puts everything on the shoulders of the drivers, so if a producer doesn´t put so much manpower into his drivers...

 

OK, owner, coder, cheerleader etc, whatever you want to call Austin, X-Plane is the only sim or game I own that doesn't work properly on my video card.  P3D is gorgeous and smooth fully modded, as is DCS World with all the modules, Il2 COD/BOS, Aerofly, FSX, FSX:SE, ProjectCars, Forza, Doom (which also runs on OpenGL) and every other modern day game.  But sure, it's not a problem with X-plane.  Many of these are also multiplatform as well.

 

Not trying to derail this thread, as I know others do share this problem based on a couple days of research, just not many on avsim who all buy the same hardware (stick with Nvidia!!!).  I will report back when I hear back from Laminar.

 

Thanks again all for the help and links!

[Murmur 3,941]

P3D is gorgeous and smooth fully modded, as is DCS World with all the modules, Il2 COD/BOS, Aerofly, FSX, FSX:SE, ProjectCars, Forza, Doom (which also runs on OpenGL) and every other modern day game.  But sure, it's not a problem with X-plane.

 

Whenever a new GPU driver version is released, the release notes always list several performance improvements and resolved issues for various software/games.

 

e.g. http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst15-7WINReleaseNotes.aspx :

 

"Up to 10% in Tomb Raider on AMD Radeon™ R7 and AMD Radeon™ R9 200 series and up ^*"

 

another example, http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst14-9WINReleaseNotes.aspx :

 

"Murdered Soul Suspect

AMD Radeon R9 290X (2560x1440, 4x MSAA, 16x AF) – improves up to 50%"

 

"Assassin's Creed IV

Improves CrossFire scaling (3840x2160 High Settings) up to 93%"

 

And tens of other games are listed there, with the expected improvements.

 

So yes, it's possible that it's not a problem with X-Plane, but with the AMD drivers themselves. Of course this does not exclude the possibility that in the future, X-Plane could offer performance improvements for this issue.

[be77solo 125]

 

Whenever a new GPU driver version is released, the release notes always list several performance improvements and resolved issues for various software/games.

 

e.g. http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst15-7WINReleaseNotes.aspx :

 

"Up to 10% in Tomb Raider on AMD Radeon™ R7 and AMD Radeon™ R9 200 series and up ^*"

 

another example, http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst14-9WINReleaseNotes.aspx :

 

"Murdered Soul Suspect

AMD Radeon R9 290X (2560x1440, 4x MSAA, 16x AF) – improves up to 50%"

 

"Assassin's Creed IV

Improves CrossFire scaling (3840x2160 High Settings) up to 93%"

 

And tens of other games are listed there, with the expected improvements.

 

So yes, it's possible that it's not a problem with X-Plane, but with the AMD drivers themselves. Of course this does not exclude the possibility that in the future, X-Plane could offer performance improvements for this issue.

 

I 100% understand what you are saying, but the problem is AMD users aren't losing 10% due to driver optimizations improvements from Nvidia; for apparently the past year or two it's over 100% lower performance. This isn't a matter of optimizing high settings or crossfire (sli) as you shared, but basic we are stuck at under 30fps with low settings on high end machines. Even Ben, which Longranger says is the rendering guru of X-Plane doesn't know why.  If you read the links he posted, Ben is open in his comments that there is a weird bug in X-Plane that crushes performance on some machines with AMD gpus.  He has no idea why, and that bothers me that that's just acceptable.  My only point was that I'd like to see this be a priority.  It seems it currently is not.  Hence, I've decided to be the the squeaky wheel to Laminar.

[sizziano 172]

Indeed they are crucial when trying to fly a plane, because the current tire model does not allow realistic crosswind landings, and hopefully this will be improved ASAP.

 

Improving the tire model and improving performance on AMD cards are not related, so I don't see what is your point. Austin's task is to work on the flight model, while Ben's task is to work on the rendering engine (and scenery etc.). It's not that if Austin stops working on the flight model, he could magically work on the rendering engine and improve it. Different tasks for different people.

 

There is literally nothing about Austin's ppst that specifies he has improved the tire model WHILE MOVING. Static is what has been improved.

 

OK, owner, coder, cheerleader etc, whatever you want to call Austin, X-Plane is the only sim or game I own that doesn't work properly on my video card.  P3D is gorgeous and smooth fully modded, as is DCS World with all the modules, Il2 COD/BOS, Aerofly, FSX, FSX:SE, ProjectCars, Forza, Doom (which also runs on OpenGL) and every other modern day game.  But sure, it's not a problem with X-plane.  Many of these are also multiplatform as well.

 

Not trying to derail this thread, as I know others do share this problem based on a couple days of research, just not many on avsim who all buy the same hardware (stick with Nvidia!!!).  I will report back when I hear back from Laminar.

 

Thanks again all for the help and links!

 

Have you tried a complete driver uninstall and reinstall? Using a program like DDU preferably.

[Murmur 3,941]

There is literally nothing about Austin's ppst that specifies he has improved the tire model WHILE MOVING. Static is what has been improved.

 

I know, but the fact that he is working on the tire model is at least promising that he could also improve the tire dynamics while moving.

 

Moreover, when a wheel is rotating without sliding, it is actually the static friction, not the dynamic friction, that gives the tire its sideload and brakeload capacity. So, since we don't know the details of how the tire dynamics are actually implemented in X-Plane, it is also possible that a change in the modeling of the static friction, also effects the aircraft when moving.

 

I doubt it though, the important thing as I said, is that he is working on the tire model and hopefully also the dynamic tire modeling will be improved.

[Longranger 148]

I Ben is open in his comments that there is a weird bug in X-Plane that crushes performance on some machines with AMD gpus.  He has no idea why, and that bothers me that that's just acceptable.  My only point was that I'd like to see this be a priority.  It seems it currently is not. 

And I don´t think that there is any way to make it a priority. The major problem with bugs like these is: You have to find someone at AMD to work with you through this situation, or you have to find someone who knows this problem! For AMD OpenGL does no longer have any priority. Even in 2012 and 2013 it was difficult to find someone at AMD. Today it gets even difficult with NVidia. In OpenGL the driver is responsible for most of the work and it is a black box. You don´t even know if your code will be executed in the CPU or the GPU! Without a huge amount of luck her won´t be able to find anyone this year, even in 2013 it sometimes took a few months.

In the mean time he can be much more productive and change something in the code that he can fix.

[be77solo 125]

Would be very helpful to borrow an Nvidia card to make the comparison. With that CPU and RAM I'd expect triple FPS than what you showed in XP10.

Well, in the interest of "science" (that's how I justified replacing a perfectly good video card at everything else with another card :wink:  ), I picked up an EVGA Nvidia 1070 SC video card.  Would have loved to go 1080, but just couldn't justify paying the difference.

 

And, what do you know, I'm getting triple the FPS in X-Plane 10 and 11 is running quite nicely with all the eye candy turned on in the 35-60 fps range depending on where I'm at.  Plus, turning on avionics now has a minimal effect (maybe 1 less fps compared to 10-15 drop on the AMD card).

 

Not entirely sure how I feel about this, as it's nuts Laminar can't support an AMD video card and won't tell us as much directly, while every other program I run can.  After a week or so of active back and forth with support they basically just abandoned my problem.

 

But, irregardless, it's a really nice/fast/quiet/cool video card, and man, X-Plane is quite impressive these days when it's not stuck at low settings and 25 fps!  Really impressive.  Still won't be leaving P3D, but unlike over the last fifteen years of buy latest version, try it, and then forget it for 6 months, X-Plane 10/11 will be staying installed.  10.50 was really a big jump from when I first bought version 10 at release years ago, and 11 is improving on that and looks gorgeous.  I particularly love the OSM scenery setup, awesome to fly over for sure and makes even generic scenery feel alive.  Once more airports are properly done in 3D it will be fantastic.

 

Any who, got long winded there, bottom line, X-Plane is great on Nvidia GPU's, but very disappointing on AMD GPU's.  To the point that it's not even worth bothering with X-Plane if you have an AMD GPU at this point (I know others will probably disagree, but seeing both side by side with everything else exactly the same on otherwise current hardware, it's true).  It's a huge difference, with clearly a problem somewhere that's causing the huge drop in performance.  I was hoping they'd be more helpful and/or I could help them troubleshoot such problem, but that wasn't the case.  And for the record, P3D performance did improve as well, in the sense I could crank up more shadows, etc, but it runs great on AMD hardware already.  That's just an FYI to any readers that stumble across this thread for added info curious about flight sims, not to knock one or the other.  Both sims are great and I enjoy flying them both.

 

Thanks all for the help in this thread.