Prepar3d 4.5 is running ok on my system, most settings are high or even max, and I get around 30fps at even busy airports. If I lower any details, frame rate goes up accordingly.

But still, I can't help wondering, why both my CPU and my GPU only use around 30% of their maximum.

I have an Asus Z87K motherboard, i7-4770K cpu, EVGA RTX2070 XC gpu, and 24GB 2133speed ram. 

Could it be that the ram is too slow or the cpu throttling back due to temperature - (it does often go into the 80s)?

I don't want to spend hours agonizing over it as it runs ok, but just wondered if anyone can suggest any other reason. 

 

It's because the program primarily loads a single core to its max and doesn't fully utilize the rest. Also the RTX 2070 is a monster GPU and for the most part P3D is not that demanding on the GPU except in rare circumstances. If you were to remove the CPU bottleneck that the program has, it would utilize more GPU power (rendering at a higher framerate). The best you can do to improve performance is to make sure single core frequency on the CPU is as high as possible.

Also I find that disabling hyperthreading or setting an affinity mask that only uses only logical cores results in better performance.

Edited May 25, 20197 yr by JasonPC

Look at what your first core is doing, not the overall load.

What you are seeing is entirely normal.

Nothing to worry about

That's fair enough, and understood, thanks for the replies, I shall stop worrying and get back to the flying.

Mind you, some good came of it - I decided to remove the cpu fan and reseat it with some new thermal paste and it does seem to have lowered it's temps by 5+ degrees.

Thanks again

Edited May 25, 20197 yr by antonmorse

I know people say it's normal and to be fair it is normal for P3D.

But what annoys me most is the sim is not maxing it's CPU threads (even the famous "Core 0" has plenty of headroom) and the GPU is also in a similar situation - yet the sim won't even manage 30 FPS...

I was just trialing this out yesterday on both FSX-SE and P3D v4.5.12.

FSX-SE absolutely needs an affinity mask, because it is going to max out the CPU to 100% on all cores and leave no headroom for any other programs.

Essentually you know it's working and you know it's working hard and it's going to be using all cores of the CPU at their max 100% (GPU about 36%)

And when I say FSX-SE I mean an FSX-SE that is loaded to the max, essentually with almost all P3D has including additonal shaders and I'm running DX10 via Steve's DX10 Fixer.

Yes each sim is different and is tuned specifically - mostly to achieve maximum performance with maximum eye candy but still, what gives.

And yes I typcially don't go back to FSX-SE because P3D doesn't have OOM, nore all the niggly problems that FSX-SE has plus P3D does actually look better and loads way quicker where as FSX-SE needs so many help hacks and fixing programs just to reliably get it up and running.

So P3D is the way forward with ESP simming, but still.. can't make 30 FPS  yet still has tons of available CPU and GPU headroom????