About 9 months ago, I purchased Orbx FTX Germany North and South. I already had all the US FTX regions, plus Scotland, the UK, Ireland and Norway. After installing Germany I tried to fly in that scenery, and my P3D 3.4 was like a slide show. Normally I get around 30 FPS, and it's smooth. Germany was so bad, that I finally just uninstalled both Germany North and South, and chalked it ujp to experience. By the way, the only aircraft I was flying then was the PMDG 737 and the Majestic. Q400.

Just recently, I decided that I missed flying all my A2A GA aircraft at altitudes where I could see the scenery, I decided yesterday to try to reinstall Germany South, to see how it would work with my A2A Comanche. Wow, 30 FPS and smooth as silk. And the scenery looks fantastic at 7,000 feet. 😀

 

Edited August 17, 20196 yr by Bobsk8

P3D 4.5 would likely make an even bigger/better difference.🙂

Lol, I had thought that his difference was because he might naturally have upgraded P3D along the way, but now I see the difference probably is the A2A planes as opposed to the PMDG. At any rate, glad Bobsk8 got some frames!

Edited August 17, 20196 yr by jimcarrel

5 hours ago, pracines said:

P3D 4.5 would likely make an even bigger/better difference.🙂

$2,000 upgrade for me,( new PC, new add on's etc.)  and with the planes I am flying and what I get now from P3D. V3.4, really not worth the expense or effort by any stretch of the imagination. 

4 hours ago, jimcarrel said:

Lol, I had thought that his difference was because he might naturally have upgraded P3D along the way, but now I see the difference probably is the A2A planes as opposed to the PMDG. At any rate, glad Bobsk8 got some frames!

Guess my post wasn't clear enough. I had good frames until Orbx Germany North and South. 

Glad you're enjoying your sim Bob, your right it very hard to justify, afford $2000 to move to 4.5.

P3dv4.5 runs smooth, even with the PMDG 777 and FSLabs A319/20 + ORBX FTX Global. It's still the same i5 2500 @ 3,3GHz and GTX 960 4 GB GPU with 16GB RAM ( still old DDR3 ) on Win10 Pro.

I have a few graphics compromises of course, but still a rewarding experience, with FSLabs 3d cockpit rendering, even in weather, above 20 fps, and in 2d 30-40+ ! PMDG 777 even better.

Bob, you can always give it a try using the 1 month non-recurrent dev license for $10- That' what I always use because P3D and XP never last longer than a week on my PC 🙂

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by jcomm

Where do you get the idea that you need a computer upgrade to run 4.5?

It is not more taxing on the system than it's predecessors if one chooses settings that correlate to the autogen drawing distance that was possible in v3.4.

 

14 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Just recently, I decided that I missed flying all my A2A GA aircraft at altitudes where I could see the scenery, I decided yesterday to try to reinstall Germany South, to see how it would work with my A2A Comanche. Wow, 30 FPS and smooth as silk. And the scenery looks fantastic at 7,000 feet. 😀

 

Well, i don't have any physical proof but just compare multitude of systems airliner is using while GA only uses basic functionality (sorry for my poor English). With my outdated computer i'm still getting 30fps with almost every world option to the max but i'm only using GA planes. Had i used the big airliners i'd have the slideshow too. The heaviest plane i'm using is AeroCommander 500s or sometimes F50. 

BTW, scenery looks even better from 3000 feet. 

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

Where do you get the idea that you need a computer upgrade to run 4.5?

It is not more taxing on the system than it's predecessors if one chooses settings that correlate to the autogen drawing distance that was possible in v3.4.

I guess that is why Lockheed martin on their recommended specs page states P3D V3 needs 4 GB Ram and V4 needs 16 GB Ram.  Also CPU on V4 , recomends V7/9 and 3.5Gz  while Version 3 , an I5 at 3.0 ( which is what I have) is recommended.   

18 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I guess that is why Lockheed martin on their recommended specs page states P3D V3 needs 4 GB Ram and V4 needs 16 GB Ram.  Also CPU on V4 , recomends V7/9 and 3.5Gz  while Version 3 , an I5 at 3.0 ( which is what I have) is recommended.   

Yes. Recommended being the operative word here. Not minimum specifcations, recommended.

I have an overclocked i5 3.4 at 4.4. It's not stellar in performance but it gets the job done. And the performance definately has not decreased after the leap to V4.

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by Farlis

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

Yes. Recommended being the operative word here. Not minimum specifcations, recommended.

I have an overclocked i5 3.4 at 4.4. It's not stellar in performance but it gets the job done. And the performance definately has not decreased after the leap to V4.

I don't think anyone would try and run P3D with minimum specs. 

 

The Q400 is the best performance aircraft in the sim and the PMDG 737 is the lightest on frames of every other PMDG airplane

"I don't think anyone would try and run P3D with minimum specs." 

You would be surprised.  I had several emails from users of my simwestFOTOREAL sceries with the minimum specs.  Ever harder were those using FSX at just the bare minimum.  😉

Common sense facts like slower flight or less complex aircraft add-ons results in better FPS can be left unsaid. When a person posts here there is either news, boasting, helping a fellow simmer, or asking for help. With the facts given in the OP I thought a simple suggestion was needed, because its true.  

In a V3 vs V4 war, V3 canont win in any category (except at being scared or lazy, in my view). If one cannot upgrade to V4 because of budgets or other, then that is another matter, but they should not be posting about poor performance - just keep it to themselves. 

If you can run V3, you can run V4 on the same PC with better results in V4.

V4.5 with the hotfix is even better than V4.0, one cannot reasonably argue with this.

Yes a new, fast PC would be the best course as always - can be left unsaid anymore.

The point of my response was to make it clear that a move to V4 would prove to increase FPS as well (setting for setting vs V3); this way the original plan/intent (9 months ago) with Orbx Germany could be an enjoyable experience. Plus it would not harm the GA experience either.

My post was not an "order from Heaven that you MUST upgrade", just a suggestion so that a fellow flight simmer could enjoy simming. I understand everyone has their own budget. 

A new PC and/or 4.5 is worth the difference, if (since!!!) frames and a smooth experience is wanted, but if FPS is not worth much then why post about it. 🤷‍♂️