RTX 2060 Upgrade Disappointment

[BobKinSTL 5]

I have a PC pretty much dedicated to flying a PMDG 737 with P3D v4.5. Also running ASN and Pilot2ATC. Intel core i5-7500 3.40GHz, 16GB DDR4-2133 RAM, 1TB HDD + 250GB SSD.  Windows 10 64-bit.  3 monitors, primary is 1440p connected with DP, 2nd is 1080 with HDMI and 3rd is 1080 DVI.  I upgraded from a GTX 1060 6GB to an RTX 2060 6GB and really expected to be able to increase air and ground traffic, scenery density, etc.  When I changed everything to either high or ultra my fps was in the teens.  So now I'm back to basically medium to high settings across the board and I'm sitting still on a runway in STL with fps in the 30's.  It's almost like I'm missing something??  G-Sync is enabled.  

[George8295 2]

I would think that you might be bottlenecking with that cpu since p3d is pretty cpu reliant. 

Also what were your frames before upgrading? Did the performance decrease after the upgrade?

Edited June 21, 2019 by George8295

[F737MAX 5,585]

Sadly a lot of people think that FSX and P3D can be massively improved by a GPU upgrade. It is a platform still heavily limited by CPU performance.

3 screens and high / ultra settings? You are demanding an awful lot from a middling CPU.

The best thing you can do is to overclock to as close to 3.8Ghz as possible. Move all of your other running and background applications (where possible) off your core 0 and core 1.

Be realistic about what settings you can turn up and which ones you cannot by trial and error.

There are lots of threads on here that discuss how to get the best out of Intel systems. Have a read of them. They will help you realise what is and isn't possible.

One other thing. Are all of your screens displaying at the same resolution? I'm running a triple monitor setup with P3D stretched across the 3 all the same native size, resolution and refresh rate. Previously I had mis-matched monitor sizes and P3D hated it.

Edited June 21, 2019 by F737NG

[BobKinSTL 5]

6 minutes ago, George8295 said:

I would think that you might be bottlenecking with that cpu since p3d is pretty cpu reliant. 

Also what were your frames before upgrading? Did the performance decrease after the upgrade?

The frames are pretty much the same as before the upgrade.  I can still get in the 30's - 40's on the ground with decent ground scenery, and much higher rates at cruise altitude.

[BobKinSTL 5]

5 minutes ago, F737NG said:

Sadly a lot of people think that FSX and P3D can be massively improved by a GPU upgrade. It is a platform still heavily limited by CPU performance.

3 screens and high / ultra settings? You are demanding an awful lot from a middling CPU.

The best thing you can do is to overclock to as close to 3.8Ghz as possible. Move all of your other running and background applications (where possible) off your core 0 and core 1.

Be realistic about what settings you can turn up and which ones you cannot by trial and error.

There are lots of threads on here that discuss how to get the best out of Intel systems. Have a read of them. They will help you realise what is and isn't possible.

Thanks for your reply.  I'm a better pilot than computer guy so it will take some research for me to know how to overclock and move things off core 0 and core 1.  

[George8295 2]

Yeah that would point to most likely the CPU being your limiting factor. 

As F737NG said, you are asking a lot of that CPU by running those 3 monitors and on high/ultra settings. 

[Bob Scott 7,720]

45 minutes ago, BobKinSTL said:

I have a PC pretty much dedicated to flying a PMDG 737 with P3D v4.5. Also running ASN and Pilot2ATC. Intel core i5-7500 3.40GHz, 16GB DDR4-2133 RAM, 1TB HDD + 250GB SSD.  Windows 10 64-bit.  3 monitors, primary is 1440p connected with DP, 2nd is 1080 with HDMI and 3rd is 1080 DVI.  I upgraded from a GTX 1060 6GB to an RTX 2060 6GB and really expected to be able to increase air and ground traffic, scenery density, etc.  When I changed everything to either high or ultra my fps was in the teens.  So now I'm back to basically medium to high settings across the board and I'm sitting still on a runway in STL with fps in the 30's.  It's almost like I'm missing something??  G-Sync is enabled.  

The two things you specifically mention, AI traffic and scenery density, are both driven primarily by CPU throughput, which is pretty limited with a non-K i5-7500 at mid-3GHz stock speeds.  And three monitors on a 1060 or 2060 is asking a lot of either GPU as well.  If you're seeing 30+ fps with that hardware, you're already doing quite well managing your configuration...I don't see much opportunity to improve beyond that.

Regards

[JasonPC 173]

You need to get a modern CPU that can do at least 4 Ghz, preferably boost to 4.5 or higher.

You're not likely to see any major difference between a 1060 and 2060 in P3D. They both are probably fairly adequate even at that resolution. You might see a little improvement once you remove the CPU bottleneck.

[BobKinSTL 5]

31 minutes ago, w6kd said:

The two things you specifically mention, AI traffic and scenery density, are both driven primarily by CPU throughput, which is pretty limited with a non-K i5-7500 at mid-3GHz stock speeds.  And three monitors on a 1060 or 2060 is asking a lot of either GPU as well.  If you're seeing 30+ fps with that hardware, you're already doing quite well managing your configuration...I don't see much opportunity to improve beyond that.

Regards

Thank you for your comments, I will play around this weekend and might even go back to two monitors, I don't use surround video, I use the other monitors for charts and weather overlay, but I don't need three if it proves to be a big hit on my performance.  If you don't mind me asking, in your opinion would an i7-8700K 3.7GHz be a nice upgrade or do I need to get up into the i9's?  Thanks again.  

 

[Bob Scott 7,720]

5 minutes ago, BobKinSTL said:

Thank you for your comments, I will play around this weekend and might even go back to two monitors, I don't use surround video, I use the other monitors for charts and weather overlay, but I don't need three if it proves to be a big hit on my performance.  If you don't mind me asking, in your opinion would an i7-8700K 3.7GHz be a nice upgrade or do I need to get up into the i9's?  Thanks again.  

 

I'm using an i7-8086K, which is a top-binned 8700K.  Great CPU for P3D...but you want to overclock it to at least the high 4GHz range to really make it sing.

 

[W2DR 1,860]

You really need to get the CPU up to 4.5GHz or higher. A change to 3.7 will only get you 3-4 FPS at the best..........Doug

[George8295 2]

I’d also say get into the i9 series if you can

[Bob Scott 7,720]

26 minutes ago, George8295 said:

I’d also say get into the i9 series if you can

I think the i9-9900K is a great CPU, but to properly overclock and cool that 8-core CPU at/above the 5GHz mark requires a top-shelf CPU cooler and some luck in the silicon lottery, where a hexacore i5-9600K or the i7-8700K should get to 5GHz and above with a less aggressive overclock and cooling setup.  Single-core throughput is still king with P3D, and I'm not sure that a 4.9 or 5.0 GHz 9900K would do a better job than my 5.3 GHz hex-core 8086K does.  Mostly, I'm not convinced that a couple extra cores to handle texture/terrain loading offsets losing 6-8% clock speed on that all-important primary core.

Really though, either one, overclocked to near or above the 5GHz mark is a great P3D solution.

Regards

[JasonPC 173]

As long as you can OC the 8700k to 4.5 ghz across all cores, which should be possible, you should be in good shape. 3.7 is the base frequency and it should do 4.3 with out of the box turbo with adequate cooling. With a good chip and good cooling 4.7 ghz is possibly in reach. Anything with more cores probably won’t oc as well.

Then again I need to give the disclaimer that in light of the recent Intel processor vulnerabilities I’m very interested in how AMDs new processors perform. 

Edited June 22, 2019 by JasonPC

[Bob Scott 7,720]

4 minutes ago, JasonPC said:

As long as you can OC the 8700k to 4.5 ghz across all cores, which should be possible, you should be in good shape. 3.7 is the base frequency and it should do 4.3 with out of the box turbo with adequate cooling. With a good chip and good cooling 4.7 ghz is possibly in reach. Anything with more cores probably won’t oc as well.

 

Nearly all of the 8700K CPUs will manage at least 4.9 GHz on all cores with nothing more sophisticated than a good quality off-the-shelf AIO 240mm cooler like the NZXT Kraken x52 or the Corsair H100i.  I'd guess you could do all cores at 4.5 without even touching the voltage.