I get considerably better framerates in P3D (v3 and v4) than in FSX because so much more of the rendering workload is moved over to the GPU using DX11...especially important with very high (e.g. 4K or multi-monitor) resolutions.

Smoothness and frame rate are only loosely related--sure, the display is never going to be butter-smooth at 15 fps, but the real killer to smoothness is jitter--variation in the timing between frames rather than the speed at which the frames arrive.  Past a certain point (I think around 20 fps), jitter matters a whole lot more than frame rate.  I've seen acceptably smooth at 20 fps and I've seen horrible stutter with frames averaging 45 fps.  At any rate, the OP's 4.7GHz 8700k is easily capable of holding the framerate in P3D at a steady 30fps--I do it daily with a 7700K using two less cores.  So these discussions about smoothness at 15 fps are a red herring, really...with the OP's system, a nice smooth 30 fps should be easily doable, provided the graphics system isn't overtaxed with heavy AA workload at high resolutions, and a 1060 driving a standard HD monitor with moderate AA is a reasonably balanced (but not high performance) graphics subsystem that should be able to support moderate levels of weather and autogen and with fairly high image quality.

Regards

Ok made the switch! High settings and still getting butter smooth camera and 30+ fps in most location with orbx, pmdg, active sky... God knows what some people were on about! A GTX 1060 6GB can handle P3D V4.4 completely and utterly fine. 🙂