Frame Rate Help, this can't be right

[ryanbatc 12,772]

Actually ram is pricey this year

I had been waiting for it to drop since last year when I purchased the wrong ram .  16 GB for 90 USD.  Since I'm stuck in ddr3 it's about 120 usd this time around ick.  Instead of wasting my money on ram I do plan on a system upgrade sometime this year.

[ryanbatc 12,772]

8 hours ago, domae001 said:

What are your frame times for CPU and GPU? Just watch those (you can also make XP visualize it in a graph via the data output settings) and you'll know whether your CPU or your GPU holds back the sim. If your CPU timing is higher than your GPU timing, it's the CPU - turn down the CPU relevant settings (world objects, reflections, shadows) then. If your GPU timing is higher, it's the GPU, therefore in that case turn down the graphics settings (AA, Effects, Textures) until you're satisfied.

There's really no magic with XP11 in that regard. Just monitor the frame times, play with the sliders accordingly, monitor frame times again, repeat until you've found your personal best balance between visuals and performance!

How do I get the on screen graph?  I checked that box but nothing shows up.  For now I dumped it into a txt file.

Maybe you can dechiper these numbers.

Avg frame time:    .024

Avg CPU time:      .019

Avg GPU time:     .027

Edit ok I found that ctrl+g was my default open graph command.

So here it is for a short while.  This is default Baron flying about a 250 heading from KRAL.  I marked the spot in red when my Ortho ZL16 tile loaded.  There is apparently no legend for the colored boxes, so I'm not sure what is what.

This is autogen one notch from the top.  I typically run two notches from the top in socal because I prefer payware planes.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

How do I get the on screen graph?  I checked that box but nothing shows up.  For now I dumped it into a txt file.

Maybe you can dechiper these numbers.

Avg frame time:    .024

Avg CPU time:      .019

Avg GPU time:     .027

Edit ok I found that ctrl+g was my default open graph command.

So here it is for a short while.  This is default Baron flying about a 250 heading from KRAL.  I marked the spot in red when my Ortho ZL16 tile loaded.  There is apparently no legend for the colored boxes, so I'm not sure what is what.

This is autogen one notch from the top.  I typically run two notches from the top in socal because I prefer payware planes.

 

Well, the missing legend surely doesn't help, lol. The top graphs (orange and pinkish) seem to be f-act and f-sim, the other three are frame time, CPU and GPU time. You should display those three seperately to check whether they remain somewhat stable (just uncheck the orange and pinkish one). From what I can tell, you're actually doing fine with your system apart from the large fps drops of course. The CPU takes 0.19 seconds to do its job, the GPU 0.27 seconds, the entire frame takes 0.24 seconds (which doesn't make sense for an individual image since that number should be higher than any of the former two, but since it's an average, it makes sense). So your CPU is faster than your GPU, but once you get into an area with more autogen, that'll change as you've mentioned, so your sliders are actually fine.

It might be a fair assumption that the dips in fps are either due to low RAM or low VRAM. I'd monitor those two factors and correlate with your framerate. XP gives a rough estimate of VRAM usage in the settings menu (don't know if it can be graphed as well...). I have a GTX 1070 and found that XP11 can easily eat into the 6GB range when using max texture size, the GTX 970 has 3,5GB I believe. Low VRAM usually results in fps dropping to 1-2 fps, I do not know what effect low RAM would have though.

[Colonel X 1,428]

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I'm getting much better performance on a system with the same video card as you, at roughly the same resolution on a single monitor. The difference is my CPU and tons more RAM (32 GB). Also I'm not using any orthoscenery, which puts an additional load on the system.

So I suspect one big bottleneck in your system is that 8 GB of system RAM, which is the minimum spec listed for XP11. The recommended spec by Laminar is 16-24 GB or more. The "more" part really helps if you have anything else running in the background like a flight planner, web browser, etc. I'd look to boost your RAM as a first step. RAM is cheap these days.

You and I both need better video cards though. 

Please not the ram myth again. X-Plane in its current state never uses more than 16GB, having 24 or 32 won't do anything for you, not a single FPS. This has been thoroughly discussed here. The only scenario where you might scratch 16GB is using Alpilotx's UHD mesh. Usually, even with  LOT of scenery plus orthos, 12GB is the maximum X-Plane uses.

[Paraffin 2,197]

43 minutes ago, Colonel X said:

Please not the ram myth again. X-Plane in its current state never uses more than 16GB, having 24 or 32 won't do anything for you, not a single FPS. This has been thoroughly discussed here.

But without a consensus, apparently. 

Look, I'm not making a simple statement that "more RAM increases your frame rate." Obviously that only happens if RAM is the actual bottleneck, and that can happen if you're throwing a lot of scenery objects on top of HD or UHD mesh, and/or high res orthophoto scenery as well. 

If you don't think it's a good idea to have "16-24 GB of RAM or more," then you'll have to explain why that's the recommended spec on the Laminar web site.

Remember that it's not just what X-Plane itself wants to use, it's how much other stuff you're running along with it, like flight planners, web browsers, and anything else running in the background. A system with 24 or 32 GB of RAM simply has more than enough overhead available for anything you want to do with a flight sim and associated software running along with it, so you're never getting close to a RAM crunch. 
 

Quote

The only scenario where you might scratch 16GB is using Alpilotx's UHD mesh. Usually, even with  LOT of scenery plus orthos, 12GB is the maximum X-Plane uses.

I've seen it run over 16 GB plenty of times with UHD mesh, probably because extended .dsf loading is now on by default. Complex aircraft models will load a bunch of plugins in memory, and more planes are now using 4k textures. And again, the rest is available for system overhead.

I just have a hard time relating to the idea that it isn't a good idea to have plenty of RAM overhead in a computer system. This has never been a bad idea in my book, and we still don't know what's coming along in the future with seasons, weather, or anything else that might require more RAM.

[Colonel X 1,428]

Of course having overhead is good. I also agree that if you want to future proof your system now, 32 is the number to choose. That said, and taking into account that you shut down everything else while the sim is running (a browser doesn't hurt much of course), this argument has been the same in 2012.... now 5 years later, I still haven't seen X-Plane exceed 16GB and I throw a lot at it, even if it's just to test. It should be clear that as long as you stay away from the UHD mesh, there's no point to having more than 16GB - at the moment.

[ryanbatc 12,772]

9 hours ago, domae001 said:

 So your CPU is faster than your GPU, but once you get into an area with more autogen, that'll change as you've mentioned, so your sliders are actually fine.

 

Right, so am I to assume that a cpu and gpu frame time that is identical or very similar makes for less stutters and overall is the most efficient?  Tonite just now I actually spent about 30 min playing with settings to get those values as close as possible to each other.  In middle range autogen areas (like when I typically fly socal), I can really only run 4xSSAA+FXAA.  I adjust the AA slider to get a GPU response.  But if I leave the more urban areas of socal to the east I can run high autogen and sometimes I can do the max 8xSSAA+FXAA and the gpu/cpu frame times are still very similar.  I adjust the number of World Objects to get a CPU response.  This stuff is really interesting - I didn't know my way around XP frames until now.

In this image I'm still near Ortho, Socal, and I just left my payware KSNA airport northbound, with some fluffy clouds aloft.  This Carenado king air always seems to hurt my fps so I flew with it.  I had around 20 near SNA and then it climbed as I flew away (no surprise there).  But as long as I'm aware of my settings I think I can achieve a nice performance with my aging machine.

cpugpusame by ryan b, on Flickr

[soaring_penguin 428]

5 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Of course having overhead is good. I also agree that if you want to future proof your system now, 32 is the number to choose. That said, and taking into account that you shut down everything else while the sim is running (a browser doesn't hurt much of course), this argument has been the same in 2012.... now 5 years later, I still haven't seen X-Plane exceed 16GB and I throw a lot at it, even if it's just to test. It should be clear that as long as you stay away from the UHD mesh, there's no point to having more than 16GB - at the moment.

I have 24 GB, and have seen them used them all up and then some (swapping to the HDD really kills the immersion).  This was with photoscenery at ZL 18, simheavens w2xp sceneries + some detailed airports on top and a 3rd party aircraft.  Don't tell it can not be done :-) .

Since I dropped a notch to ZL16 or ZL17, I use standard scenery overlays instead of w2xp for my photoscenery and indeed, I rarely reach 16GB anymore. But it still feels like 24GB is the sweet spot for X-Plane 11.

[kakusso 12]

Remove the AI traffic, especially if you have addon planes, (AI uses them too). No more slow FPS on startup.

[Murmur 3,941]

6 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Right, so am I to assume that a cpu and gpu frame time that is identical or very similar makes for less stutters and overall is the most efficient?

Yes. I think it's not so much stutters, as the optimal balance of CPU vs GPU. In other words, the one with the higher frame time is the bottleneck at current settings and scene.

So, if your CPU frame time is less than your GPU frame time, you can increase the settings at right (objects, reflections, shadows, etc.) until the two numbers becomes close again and not lose FPS.

If your GPU frame time is less than your CPU frame time, you can increase the settings at left (visual effects, resolution, AA, etc.) until the two numbers becomes close again and not lose FPS.

In any case, Ben is working on further improving stutters and FPS for the upcoming releases.

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Right, so am I to assume that a cpu and gpu frame time that is identical or very similar makes for less stutters and overall is the most efficient?

 

19 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Yes. I think it's not so much stutters, as the optimal balance of CPU vs GPU. In other words, the one with the higher frame time is the bottleneck at current settings and scene.

Indeed, different times of GPU and CPU don't mean stutters, but indicate that you could set your sliders higher if you have that overhead in all scenarios. For instance, my GPU frequently gets bored in clear weather conditions (e.g. CPU time 0.25, GPU time 0.12), but that doesn't results in stutters, it only means the GPU has a chill life. Once I get into lots of clouds, however, that changes and GPU has a lot more work to do. So you should always set you sliders according to the most demanding scenario you are frequently facing. This will result in a performance overhead in not-so demanding situations, but guarantees a smooth sim.

Or you can adjust the sliders literally 'on the fly' when you notice your system cannot keep up the performance.

The only stutters I've seen on my machine were usually due to high VRAM usage, load times from the HDD for orthoscenery or a background process (like some automatic software updater or antivirus) briefly taking away CPU ressources.