System Spec' Advice

[Christopher Low 5,343]

Yes, it's important for users with less powerful PCs to note that a 2GB graphics card like the GTX 770 can handle P3D v4 surprisingly well if you steer clear of multi monitor/4K setups, disable dynamic lighting and external shadows, and don't go crazy with complex real time weather generation. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised when I discovered that my PC could handle the FlyTampa Amsterdam Schiphol/ORBx TrueEarth Netherlands combo pretty well when airborne (it struggles a bit more when on the ground). The fact that a 2GB graphics card can handle all of that detail (and I have everything ticked in the TE Netherlands control panel) speaks volumes about just how hard some users are trying to push P3D on their systems. I have seen comments on AVSIM (and elsewhere) that you really need 8GB+ VRAM to run P3D v4 acceptably well, which is quite clearly nonsense if you don't try to do the FS equivalent of accurately simulating the motions of all one hundred billion plus stars in the galaxy!

Edited March 27, 2019 by Christopher Low

[Mace 1,902]

1 hour ago, Benjamin J said:

Wow, that's incredible! I'm surprised you're able to do that type of flying with the rig you got, but good for you! I've been wanting to upgrade my CPU to an i7 9700k, because currently larger airports with details surroundings are bringing my computer to its knees. Meaning, I can land at LGA, EWR or even JFK well enough even in thunderstorms, but it means not looking at Manhattan at all. And let's be honest, what's the point of landing in NYC if you can't look at the skyline?

:)  Are you positive that the 9700k will bring you the ability to look at the NYC skyline?

I am not, that's why I soldier on with my 8700K @ 5.0 ghz.  I have a "city" settings profile for places like NYC.

I soldier on with the 8700K with the hopeful feeling that about a year from now something nice will be out.

[twister1853 7]

Wow - what a thread this has turned out be - great advice. 

Overclockers purpose built my PC a few years ago.

CPU:  i5-4670 3.40GHz (liquid cooled) can be overclocked to 4.3GHz .

RAM:  8GB DDR3 2400MHz (can easily go to 16GB DDR3 1866MHz - can't get any more 2400GHZ)

Power supply: Corsoir high performance 650W PS.

Monitor: 27" run at 1920x1080x32.

 

Christopher Low and Benjamin J have rigs very, very similar to mine

• Report post
• except theirs is i5 4690k : mine is i5 4670k.
• Typically, on FSX, I would run PMDG 737 800/900 NGX over Horizon UK photo' scenery or Switzerland X photo'scenery, UK2000 airfields and with  most sliders maxed out and real weather.
• Half of the time, I experience OOM .

Half of the time I experience OOM.

•  

 

 

 

Quote

Before buying P3D, could I have advice on the suitability of of my PC spec' to run P3D ?

The G/Card recommended spec' for P3D is typically GTX 1080Ti 8GB.  I have GTX 770 2GB .The Ram recommended spec' for P3D is typically 16GB DDR4 2666 MHz .  I have 16GB DDR3 1866 MHz .

 

 

 

 

 

[Benjamin J 751]

2 hours ago, Mace said:

:)  Are you positive that the 9700k will bring you the ability to look at the NYC skyline?

I am not, that's why I soldier on with my 8700K @ 5.0 ghz.  I have a "city" settings profile for places like NYC.

I soldier on with the 8700K with the hopeful feeling that about a year from now something nice will be out.

100% positive? No, but I have noticed a trend in your all's posts so far: you are all using OC'ed i7 processors, of both older and newer generations. I'm using an OC'ed i5-8600k. I'm hoping that an i7 will boost my performance somewhat, and then I'll take the 9700k since it's the newest one. Because if I'm upgrading anyway, and the price difference between the 8700k and 9700k is not that big, I might as well go with the newer generation. I will say I have no idea how a i5 at 4.8GhZ is different from an i7 at 4.9GhZ (the 9700k's turbo boost), but I guess it makes a difference...

I definitely feel like upgrading from my GTX1070 is not worthwhile. Most of the time it's at 30-50% usage, and I've seen it 100% only once in many months of using P3Dv4.

 

Raymond: Indeed, it does seem like you essentially have my rig if I were to have built it several years ago. My rig runs P3Dv4 overall very well. That said, it struggles in dense urban areas that feayure one or more hub airports, the worst offenders being the LA and NYC areas, which hit my rig harder than the also-very-dense Hong Kong area (FT's VHHX, T2G's VHHH and TC's VMMC). Also single hub airports in less dense areas, but coupled with OrbX regional scenery can be hard, such as EHAM, EDDF or KSEA. I have never flown into any London airport as yet, even though I have virtually all of them, so I can't tell you how that works (though I'm not optimistic)... I'm like a butterfly :) I flutter from one area of the world to the other as my interests change all the time. It's likely that sometime soon I'll fly into one the London area as I';ve bene itching to fly my Martinair PMDG 747 into EGSS, or take a FlyBe DH4 from EHAM to EGLC.

Now, in all fairness, I ask a lot from my computer. I love pretty pictures, and of course this comes at a cost. I have real world weather, and in winter the weather tends to be cloudy and hazy, which brings down performance. Then I have shadows enabled for nearly everything besides trees, I have 100% AI traffic, my sliders are set to high settings save for scenery complexity, which is a notch or two higher. I also enable dynamic lighting and dynamic reflections, though relfections and shows quality are typically set to low. I do have them set to display as far out as can be.

What this means is that flying the PMDG 747 around smaller airports or areas with less details (e.g. South America) my sim performs very well. It also means that areas like KLAX can be very stuttery. The NYC area can be similarly hard on performance, but I did notice that sat in the PMDG 737NGX at KEWR I can actually maintain 24FPS pretty well. KLGA and KJFK are much more of an issue however, and so I tend not to fly there.

And then there's the few rogue areas that, despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be that much going on, the sim still struggles. The best example of this is FT's CYYZ, which, for reaosns that are completely beyond me, performs much worse than I ever thought it would.

So with all that in mind, it's possible your rig will handle P3Dv4 fine, as long as you are conservative with your sliders. OOM will be a thing of the past even with your current rig - this is the difference between a 32bit and 64bit sim! However, if you want to make use of P3Dv4's features, a lot of which revolves around shadows and lighting, you really should consider upgrading your CPU and GPU. And as others have said, this may require a MOBO upgrade as well.

So in the end, it depends on how much money you want to spend. Set your target, and tailor your options to that.

[Charlatan 68]

21 hours ago, twister1853 said:

I now see I would need a RAM update to 16 MB at about £140.  The RTX2060 is pricey at around £350 . So it looks like I'm priced out of this one at ther present.

Overclockers doing an RTX2060 for £299

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-geforce-rtx-2060-phoenix-6144mb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-42v-as.html

[ckyliu 1,749]

19 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

I'm using an OC'ed i5-8600k. I'm hoping that an i7 will boost my performance somewhat, and then I'll take the 9700k since it's the newest one. Because if I'm upgrading anyway, and the price difference between the 8700k and 9700k is not that big, I might as well go with the newer generation. I will say I have no idea how a i5 at 4.8GhZ is different from an i7 at 4.9GhZ (the 9700k's turbo boost), but I guess it makes a difference...

Most of the benefit going from i5 to i7 is because of more cores/threads; as P3D is still quite single core clockspeed dependent (it will only max two of my four cores) you're not going to see much benefit in P3D. The 8600K is still a young and fast processor, single core benchmarks suggest around 5% improvement replacing with a 9600k or 9700k. I'd recommend keeping the 8600K unless you're doing other stuff that would utilise the 40% improvement in multicore an i7 9700k seems to get (so video editing, CAD, heavy science stuff, crazy multitasking).

If you are moving from something older like i5 4690k then I think the i5 9600K is the sweetspot. You're getting a single core improvement of 20%+ and the price is near-as-makes-no-difference to the previous generation 8600K. As discussed above, i7 for P3D isn't worth it. And as regards OOMs, you need P3Dv4+.

Edited March 28, 2019 by ckyliu

[twister1853 7]

Thanks to everyone for the tips.  I'll give it a try with my rig and then go step by step afterwards.

How do I get photo scenery like Horizon UK, MegaScenery or Switzerland across from FSX to P3D and my also aircraft?  If I can, I suppose photo scenery may be to much for P3D on my rig.

[ckyliu 1,749]

Horizon to photo scenery is actually less demanding because it has no 3D objects. Leave it installed and use Lorby's free addon tool to allow p3d to find it

Edited March 29, 2019 by ckyliu