Top end hardware - poor results

[paulh1 0]

Hi Guys
Any suggestions?

Current new computer specs

Intel Core i9 7900X 3.3GHz  13.75MB CPU
Corsair 32 GB Kit (2x16GB DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black C16 2666MHx Ram
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX1080Ti AORUS Waterforce Xtreme Edition 11GB GDDR5X Graphics Cards
Gigabyte X229 Aorus Gaming 7 LGA2066 ATX Desktop Motherboard
Acer Predator XB321HK 32" 4K G-SYNC 4MS IPS LED Gaming Monitor
WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND 2.5" SSD Harddrive

Prepar3dv4 Simulator Options                        (Note -  If it hasn't been mentioned here it is not ticked)

Traffic - airline traffic density =0
          General aviation traffic density =0
          Airport Vehicle density = medium
          Land and sea traffic =  all zero
Display  -FXAA = Off    AA = 4xSSAA  Texture Filtering = Anisotropic 8x  Texture Resolution = Ultra-4096x4096 
          Display Resolution = 3840x2160 x32  Auto-fill Main View = tick  VSync = OFF  
          Target Frame rate = unlimted  Mipmap VC Panels = Tick
World     Level of detail radius = Ultra  Tessellation Factor = High Mesh Resolution = 19m Texture Resolution = 1m
          Senery complexity = Extremely Dense  Autogen draw distance = Medium  Water Detail  = Medium
          Autogen vegetation density = Very dense  Autogen building density = Extremly Dense
          Reflections - User Vehicle ticked  Special effects detail = Medium  Special effects distance = medium
Lighting  ENABLE HDR LIGHTING = Ticked  Brightness =0.83  Bloom = 1.00  Saturation = 1.19  Dynamic reflections =off
          Dynamic Lighting = Ticked   Landing lights illuminate ground = ticked  Shadow quality  = medium
          Shaddow draw distance = Low  Internal Vehicle tick cast+receive  External vehicle tick Cast+receive
Weather   Cloud draw distance = 100mi  Cloud coverage density = Maximum  Detailed clouds =ticked
          Volumetric fog = ticked  detailed precipitation = ticked  windshield effects = ticked
          Enabled turbulence and thermal effects on vehicle = ticked   rate of change = no change

          Notice that in display settings under display. Even though I have two graphics cards it will only allow me
          to use 1  1 or the other, not both. Whats the point to two graphics cards when you can only use one?
          I also use Orbx scencery. However in Orbx options all have been turned off except for major and minor  roads.

Software in use with the simulator
    1. Active sky 2. GSX 3. Navigraph Charts desktop + Simlink 4. Chase Plane 5. PMDG Queen of the skies 747v3
    6. Pro-ATC/X  7. Ultimate Traffic live  8. WAMA (where are my aircraft)

So Bottom line guess what frame rate I am getting out of all of this?   Answer Between 14 - 25 fps
So As you can understand I am very dissappointed. A guy I know who builds computers looked at the system, and noted that when a game or simulation takes along time to load it is poorly written or programmed. Just like my graphics cards. Surely they would have allowed for multiple or upgrade hardware to run the sim. I guess my point is dont go out buying high end hardware. There is no point untill major changes are made. So as Ryan Batcund mentioned  "Even though P3D is newer portions of the code date back to 2003-2006 from FSX.  It still needs the fastest CPU". So even though prepar3dv4 is 64 bit, its still a dog.
So if anyone has any ideas of improving frame rate, without degrading everything, I would like to hear about it.

Regards  Paul Hursey

Edited July 17, 2018 by paulh1
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[Holdit 551]

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along, but in the meantime, you could try turning bloom off, reduce autogen density and LOD radius a notch or two, and see what effect that has.

[ryanbatc 12,775]

You'll want to overclock that for starters.  Even though P3D is newer portions of the code date back to 2003-2006 from FSX.  It still needs the fastest CPU - the 8700K OCed to 5 GHz would be best.

Oh yeah noticed you're at 4K.  That'll be tough to get 30 fps average unless you overclock 

Edited July 17, 2018 by ryanbatcund

[Midnight Music 252]

Just some thoughts to try. From my own experience I think that 4xSSAA is overkill when combined with the resolution and display monitor settings you have. Try 4xMSAA or 8xMSAA combined with Anisotropic 16x. Also cut Autogen back to dense or normal. Combined with scenery complexity at Extremely Dense again it is overkill. Also bring buildings back to dense or normal. I keep my mesh resolution at no more than 5 and texture resolution at either 60cm or 30cm. With the high end graphic settings you don't need to push it here. Everything still looks great and FPS improves a lot.

Your settings:

Display  -FXAA = Off    AA = 4xSSAA  Texture Filtering = Anisotropic 8x  Texture Resolution = Ultra-4096x4096 
          Display Resolution = 3840x2160 x32  Auto-fill Main View = tick  VSync = OFF  
          Target Frame rate = unlimted  Mipmap VC Panels = Tick
World     Level of detail radius = Ultra  Tessellation Factor = High Mesh Resolution = 19m Texture Resolution = 1m
          Senery complexity = Extremely Dense  Autogen draw distance = Medium  Water Detail  = Medium
          Autogen vegetation density = Very dense  Autogen building density = Extremly Dense

 

Lee

[downscc 1,327]

Ditto Lee...... SSAA is a performance killer.  You don't need it on a 4K display (the more resolution you have on a display the less you need AA).  I use 2xMSAA, others use 4xMSAA.

[Cargostorm 151]

Paul, do you remember what your fps was without addons, only with the default, vanilla P3D? On the default start airport and default flight you should get >80 fps with the hardware you have. This will be reduced by the addition of 3rd party addons and complex aircrafts.

I would follow the advice as to the settings  and also check if there are any unnecessary background processes going on. Also try with hyperthreading On/OFF in the BIOS.

As said before, the sim will benefit from OC. A rate of only 3.3 GHz is not much. If you go > 4 GHz, the sim will shine.

Surely, something must not be right in your setup.

[Michael Moe 493]

Did you install the little SLI bridge that comes with motherboard or Graphic card ? Two cards of yours is really helping with 4K, shadows and dynamic lighting. 

You need to use SLI in Nvidia Control panel. P3dv4 will use it. But start to plug the bridge between the cards first. 

Then use Nvidia inspector monitor GPU funktion to see the load of those two. 

Thanks Michael Moe 

 

[Montie 124]

Single core clockspeed is still favorable when it comes to P3D. So 3.3ghz on a multi core cpu does little for performance.

[Bob Scott 7,714]

The "heartbeat" of the sim is the main thread that runs on Core 0...if it runs slow, so does everything else.  3.3 GHz is...slow.  You want to get that up near 5 GHz to make the most of the rest of your hardware.

Your friend's conclusion about loading time being an indicator of poorly written code is wrong, IMHO.  The load time is driven by processing hundreds of thousands of scenery files, AI aircraft, etc to enable the simulation to run anywhere in the world.

I run a quad-core 7700K at 5 GHz and a pair of 1080Ti GPUs in SLI (properly bridged with a high-bandwidth SLI bridge, as Michael noted above)...I use 4xSSAA in daytime (4xMSAA at night with DL on) and I use a 30 Hz 4K TV for a primary display, and I can keep it locked at 30 fps most of the time.  I suspect that if you can get that i9 up to the high 4 GHz range you'll see a major bump in performance.

Regards

 

[AnkH 2,233]

And another poor guy fooled by some self pronounced experts spending thousands of dollars for a rig that achieves results not better than a rig half of the prize... Slow single core clocks, 2x16GB sticks of relatively slow RAM on a quad channel mainboard, SLI and let me guess, a 1000W PSU. No further comment needed. Follow the tips and tricks and you will still get the best out of it, but you wasted a lot of unnecessary dollars here...

[Matt Webb 171]

Open up task manager and see what the current bottleneck is.  Are CPU cores at 100% or the GPU or neither?

[zmak 331]

Get Process Lasso and  let it work in the background. It will free up stuff hogging the CPU

[Lenny777 299]

You're not OCing it? 3.3 won't cut it. By the way, you didn't mention it or I missed it - is that watercooled?

 

[fluffyflops 1,845]

10 hours ago, downscc said:

Ditto Lee...... SSAA is a performance killer.  You don't need it on a 4K display (the more resolution you have on a display the less you need AA).  I use 2xMSAA, others use 4xMSAA.

dan when you run 4k what Texture filtering setting do you use ?

 

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Reduce this:

Level of detail radius = Ultra