HELP! Low fps

[GermanCaptain 2]

Hello everyone,

 

I have a really bad problem with P3Dv4. I just installed it yesterday and I'm getting horrible fps.

At first I thought it was about my settings but playing around with the sliders, I noticed that independently from any change in setting, I only get about 5-12 fps.

Furthermore, my CPU is only at 20-40% usage all the time.

As mentioned: it is NOT because of my ultra high scenery settings as it didn't improve at any settings.

 

I'm currently only using P3D clean install without any addons.

 

Please help me!

[Chock 17,769]

Well, if the option sliders appear to be making no difference, that would indicate that either P3D isn't installed correctly for some reason, or your computer is at fault somehow. So, first thing I would try, is reinstalling P3D, but it would help us to know your computer specs and operating system in order to offer more suggestions.

[vp49p3 216]

You may wish to delete the .config file and let it rebuild, as a last ditch attempted fix before reinstalling.

[GermanCaptain 2]

 

5 hours ago, Chock said:

Well, if the option sliders appear to be making no difference, that would indicate that either P3D isn't installed correctly for some reason, or your computer is at fault somehow. So, first thing I would try, is reinstalling P3D, but it would help us to know your computer specs and operating system in order to offer more suggestions.

Sry, forgot that:

I'm usingt the following:

- Intel Core i5-4690 4*3.5 GHz

- 8GB DDR3-RAM

- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT730 @ 4GB

- Primary Drive: 500GB SSHD

- OS: WIN7 Home Premium 64bit

 

Theoretically, P3D should work fine on that system...

Another guess was, maybe the GPU is to weak / old for that

 

EDIT: Deleting the .cfg file did not change anything

[Chock 17,769]

Well, I can tell you that I had P3D V4 running okay on an older computer up until recently which had a very old ASUS GPU with only 2Gb of memory, there was 8Gb DDR3 on the motherboard and a first generation i7 processor at 2600 was in the thing, which is a much lower clock speed than your i5 has. It wasn't flying along with those specs, but it could get 30 fps with the iFly 737 NG at an add-on airport so long as I didn't push the option sliders too far over to the right, so it wasn't P3D which prompted me to get rid of it, it was when they added trueSKY clouds to Flight Sim World, it couldn't handle those well at all, but as noted, it ran P3D V4 sufficiently well for most things, and that was on Win 7 64 bit too.

Your system is better than that old one of mine was, so I suspect it ought to be doing better than your reported 5-12fps. Yeah the GPU isn't that great, but then again P3D doesn't completely rely on the GPU anyway, an i5 is perfectly adequate for P3D V4, especially if you overclock it a bit, and 8Gb of DDR3, whilst not the fastest RAM, is more than acceptable to run the thing.

So, here's a few things to try:

Run P3D at a lower resolution, it looks pretty okay at settings such as 1360x768. Drop the texture sizes down to medium. Drop the anti-aliasing settings to the lowest in P3D and untick things like the dynamic 3D autogen vegetation and HDR lighting and high resolution ground textures, drop the AI traffic to some low settings, you can lose the cars and boats, they are nice but you can live without them. Knock the autogen and weather radius settings down to some mid to low settings, turn off detailed precipitation and volumetric fog. Lose the detailed water settings and turn off bathymetry. Only have the shadow stuff ticked for maybe a few things you cannot live without, but don't have the shadows on autogen buildings, that kills your frame rates. Open up your GPU's control settings and choose every option you can which will override a program's settings, so that your GPU is doing that work.

See how it does on those settings. I reckon you should be able to get 25-30 fps with the default Beechcraft Bonanza at a big airport. If it can manage that, then there's probably nothing wrong with the installation or your hardware and you can see what else you can tweak from that point in the P3D options.

[GermanCaptain 2]

4 minutes ago, Chock said:

Well, I can tell you that I had P3D V4 running okay on an older computer up until recently which had a very old ASUS GPU with only 2Gb of memory, there was 8Gb DDR3 on the motherboard and a first generation i7 processor at 2600 was in the thing, which is a much lower clock speed than your i5 has. It wasn't flying along with those specs, but it could get 30 fps with the iFly 737 NG at an add-on airport so long as I didn't push the option sliders too far over to the right, so it wasn't P3D which prompted me to get rid of it, it was when they added trueSKY clouds to Flight Sim World, it couldn't handle those well at all, but as noted, it ran P3D V4 sufficiently well for most things, and that was on Win 7 64 bit too.

Your system is better than that old one of mine was, so I suspect it ought to be doing better than your reported 5-12fps. Yeah the GPU isn't that great, but then again P3D doesn't completely rely on the GPU anyway, an i5 is perfectly adequate for P3D V4, especially if you overclock it a bit, and 8Gb of DDR3, whilst not the fastest RAM, is more than acceptable to run the thing.

So, here's a few things to try:

Run P3D at a lower resolution, it looks pretty okay at settings such as 1360x768. Drop the texture sizes down to medium. Drop the anti-aliasing settings to the lowest in P3D and untick things like the dynamic 3D autogen vegetation and HDR lighting and high resolution ground textures, drop the AI traffic to some low settings, you can lose the cars and boats, they are nice but you can live without them. Knock the autogen and weather radius settings down to some mid to low settings, turn off detailed precipitation and volumetric fog. Lose the detailed water settings and turn off bathymetry. Only have the shadow stuff ticked for maybe a few things you cannot live without, but don't have the shadows on autogen buildings, that kills your frame rates. Open up your GPU's control settings and choose every option you can which will override a program's settings, so that your GPU is doing that work.

See how it does on those settings. I reckon you should be able to get 25-30 fps with the default Beechcraft Bonanza.

Quite what I was thinking...

I already downscaled all graphics settings (no dynamic vegetation and lighting, no bathymerty, no HDR lighting, no traffic, etc.) to an option where I got close to 12fps... -.-

Now maybe I'll try reinstalling P3D and gonna fly FSX until I get P3D running...

[GSalden 4,656]

Uninstall your graphics card drivers and install the last version as clean install...

Last week suddenly I also had 4 fps and nothing helped. As a last resort I un- and reinstalled my graphics cards drivers abd the framerate is back up.

Also check if you case ventilates enough..

[GermanCaptain 2]

3 hours ago, GSalden said:

Uninstall your graphics card drivers and install the last version as clean install...

Last week suddenly I also had 4 fps and nothing helped. As a last resort I un- and reinstalled my graphics cards drivers abd the framerate is back up.

Also check if you case ventilates enough..

Tried that. No improvements...even worse.

GPU Temp is well within the green...just like every other parameter, except for the GPU usage, which is at 100% all the time

 

No idea, what I should try next other than reinstalling P3D

[downscc 1,327]

If you have your display setting for AA set to any one of the SSAA options, change to MSAA.

[GermanCaptain 2]

1 minute ago, downscc said:

If you have your display setting for AA set to any one of the SSAA options, change to MSAA.

Tried all of these settings, so that's not the problem

[Maarten Otto 18]

Windows 7 could be the limiting factor and give you problems. Even though LM states it can run under W7, I had CTD’s on a daily basis without any logging in event viewer. My advice is to upgrade to Windows 10 and re-install P3D. Microsoft is still offering a free upgrade  to W10 so it won’t cost you a thing other then 40 or so minutes. And if you don’t like it you can revert back to W7. You have nothing here to loose only gain a better performing P3D.  Mine is running stable now and it was a free upgrade.

[GermanCaptain 2]

That's an interesting advice...but it shouldn't be the Problem at all

On the other hand, when I did the upgrad on my PC some time ago, something went wrong and I had to completely reset my PC and reinstall my OS and everything, so I'm not quite happy with your advice even though I'm very thankful :)

[virtualstuff 758]

Is your GPU usage also 100% at low settings?

[GermanCaptain 2]

Just now, awf said:

Is your GPU usage also 100% at low settings?

Yes, it is

[virtualstuff 758]

How is your performance with other software? not related to P3Dv4...