Swapping 780GTX for 1080 - decent boost in FSX?

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

A good friend is upgrading his 3 month old 1080 for the 1080Ti and has offered me the 1080 for a price agreeable to both of us.

My 780 GTX still satisfies me but a few extra fps would be handy at places like Heathrow etc. My computer is overclocked and has an Intel i7 4770K overclocked to 4.4GHz. I have 8Gb RAM running FSX:SP2 on Windows 7 64-bit.

Given the new card is 3 generations removed from my 780 can I expect a decent improvement running on a 32" Sony TV at 1920x1080? One monitor only.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Let us know the result!

 

I have a similar system, and would like to hear your findings..

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

I was hoping you were going to tell me Bert! I'm visiting him on Tuesday and will collect it then. Should have it installed Wednesday all being well.

One other question. Is it a good idea to uninstall the drivers before swapping them and then download and install the new ones? Seems the right thing to do.

[Gavenger 18]

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

One other question. Is it a good idea to uninstall the drivers before swapping them and then download and install the new ones? Seems the right thing to do.

100% yes, do this.  you could arguably download them ahead of time, but yes...absolutely uninstall your GPU drivers before shutting the system down to remove and replace with new card.

[lownslo 590]

Display Driver Uninstaller is very easy to use, and offers a thorough cleaning of the system when changing video drivers/video card.

Download DDU here: http://www.wagnardsoft.com/

Looking forward to your card update report!

Greg

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

Thanks for the advice Greg. I'll setup a few scenarios for fps tests and run them before and after. Expect results in 7 days or less.

[Ted Striker 338]

I'm seconding Bert's comment. I'm still on a 780gtx also! The good thing about the 1080 vs. the 1080 Ti is you can still use the 376.33 drivers that don't have the VAS leak.

Ted

[TheFamilyMan 279]

I upgraded a 780 to 1070 (lesser card).  The biggest noticeable boost in performance was for clouds, which for me is a big deal.   My 1070 laughs when confronted with layers of dense cloud cover:  no FPS drop, nor stutters, using 4x GSSSAA with DX10 fixer, ASN and REX soft clouds on a single 2560x1440 display.  Running a 4.5Ghz 4770k with fast DDR3.  Enjoy that 1080, good call IMO.

[Hoang 108]

Hi,
FYI I upgraded from GTX 1060 to GTX 1080. For FSX:SE, I only see a slight difference. However when changing to P3D, huge huge difference.
Cheers,
Hoang Le

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

Thanks Hoang. Can you describe "huge huge difference"? Increased fps? If so, by how much assuming you ran tests before you changed.

[Hoang 108]

On 4/8/2017 at 1:12 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks Hoang. Can you describe "huge huge difference"? Increased fps? If so, by how much assuming you ran tests before you changed.

Sorry I did not test GTX 1060 that much in P3D because I only use it for my initial setup before changing to GTX 1080.  I wanted to stable my video card drivers and settings before changing the settings in P3D.

However, I had a very detail test in FSX:SE. As much as I hate to admit, GTX 1080 did not boost my FPS at all, the only thing I can find is less stutter when panning around and when the simulator loads airport/sceneries as I fly along. GPU load in both of the cards were only around 20%,sometimes 30%. The simulator does not use GPU that much. Not worth the upgrade.

On the other hand, I noticed a big boost in performance/smoothness in P3D. My FPS with GTX 1080 using PMDG/FSLabs in VC view always above 30 except heavy airports (Uk2000 EGLL,Flytampa EHAM) where it sometimes goes down to 25 and when heavy clouds(maximum cloud layers, multi layer TS clouds in AS16) where it goes down to 20 , but the smoothness is still there, no stutter at all. When monitoring the GPU load, P3D always use more than 50%, lots of time 99%.

Overall I am happy with the upgrade, but the most important is changing to P3D where GTX 1080 shines.

I should have moved to P3D earlier.

Cheers,
Hoang Le

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

Thanks for that reply Hoang, very interesting. As I fly FSX:SP2 and mainly FS Labs' Concorde-X it sounds like fps may not change significantly but smoothness may improve.

But of course I'm upgrading from a card much older than your 1060 so perhaps I will see more benefit. I know P3D makes more use of the GPU than FSX and it is my long-term plan to switch to P3D but only when it's 64-bit and (hopefully) FSL have modified Concorde to work with that version.

I wouldn't normally have changed the 780 but the offer of a discounted 1080 was too good to turn down.

[Hoang 108]

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks for that reply Hoang, very interesting. As I fly FSX:SP2 and mainly FS Labs' Concorde-X it sounds like fps may not change significantly but smoothness may improve.

But of course I'm upgrading from a card much older than your 1060 so perhaps I will see more benefit. I know P3D makes more use of the GPU than FSX and it is my long-term plan to switch to P3D but only when it's 64-bit and (hopefully) FSL have modified Concorde to work with that version.

I wouldn't normally have changed the 780 but the offer of a discounted 1080 was too good to turn down.

You're welcome! Glad you have a good offer for the GTX 1080, I bought mine at pretty reasonable price due to 1080Ti.

I was thinking the same, to wait for P3D until 64bit. However recently I get tired of my FSX setup where I have a very good computer but the simulator still having poor performance. After spending thousand of dollars into a computer, I want to get more from it, so I give P3D a try.

I didn't know FSL haven't update their Concorde to be P3D compatible, they should have done it by now?

Cheers,
Hoang Le

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

They provided a P3D version last year. They have to do updates with it as LM sometimes change things that cause some things to 'break'.

But the VAS usage has been reduced by around 400-500Mb so it's possible to fly from EGLL to KJFK with 3rd party airports and not run out of VAS.

I'm probably going to get DX10Fixer as that improves things a lot with FSX as well as adding those nice cockpit shadows.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

I've installed the Nvidia 1080 8Gb card. Before I did so I setup a test scenario overlooking Aerosoft's Heathrow Xtended from above T5 looking east so the whole airport is in view with London in the distance.

One scenario was clear skies; another with four cloud layers - 3/8 Cumulus, 5/8 Cumulus, 7/8 Stratus and 2/8 Cirrus.

Testing both with my 780 GTX 3Gb card using the Trike had frame rates between 30-34. The same but with the cloud was hardly any different.

You can probably guess what's coming next. The same scenarios with the 1080 8Gb card produce the same results. This is with FSX:SP2 of course. Were I to test with P3D I'm sure the faster card would give me better performance. I intend to switch to P3D but unsure when to jump. Another option is to stay with FSX and invest in DX10Fixer. I've heard good things about it. Reduced VAS usage, cockpit shadows and maybe a few more fps.

So I'm thinking this card is more of a long-term investment than an instant fps boost. FSX is CPU-bound. I knew it of course and this is the proof.