MSFS Required Specs

[Jlimes 0]

I am new to forums. I have been a simmer for 35 years. Started as a kid with the first Microsoft Flight Sim. I just built a pc a few months ago. I have an i7 8700k and a gtx 1660ti. Hoping this will provide a decent level of performance. I have been behind the curveball on almost all of the sims as far as hardware goes. How much of a lag in performance will I experience between what I have and the ideal specs posted?  I have plenty of bandwidth by the way. Thanks!

Edited April 23, 2020 by Jlimes
Misspelled word

[zachrussell 12]

1 hour ago, Jlimes said:

I am new to forums. I have been a simmer for 35 years. Started as a kid with the first Microsoft Flight Sim. I just built a pc a few months ago. I have an i7 8700k and a gtx 1660ti. Hoping this will provide a decent level of performance. I have been behind the curveball on almost all of the sims as far as hardware goes. How much of a lag in performance will I experience between what I have and the ideal specs posted?  I have plenty of bandwidth by the way. Thanks!

I think your GPU will be your bottleneck, your CPU is decent enough. If you could couple that with an upgraded GPU you'll be fine. 

[Doug47 574]

3 minutes ago, zachrussell said:

I think your GPU will be your bottleneck, your CPU is decent enough. If you could couple that with an upgraded GPU you'll be fine. 

That GPU is more then the medium requirement. 

[Amon1973 1,421]

25 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I still think misinterpreting that statement. Pretty sure they just meant they'd read the thread and pick out some requests to try and fulfill today.

I might be misinterpreting the statement, but I can hope I'm right. I agree that the statement by it's self means nothing but link it to a series of comments from Asobo and Insider's, plus P3D's possibly rushed release of V5 and the Beta might just be on the horizon.

Edited April 23, 2020 by eaim

[zachrussell 12]

1 hour ago, Doug47 said:

That GPU is more then the medium requirement. 

That's true, I'm sure it will be a pleasant experience then. Time will tell. 

[raspian300 25]

A quick question for you guys. If between the cpu and the graphics card I want to get one from the ideal list and the other from the recommended list, which combination is the optimized one? In another word, which of the cpu or graphics is more important to get higher fps in maximum settings?

[Superdelphinus 718]

5 minutes ago, raspian300 said:

A quick question for you guys. If between the cpu and the graphics card I want to get one from the ideal list and the other from the recommended list, which combination is the optimized one? In another word, which of the cpu or graphics is more important to get higher fps in maximum settings?

Most of us won’t know for sure. If I had to bet I’d put millions of pounds on the ‘Ideal’ gpu having a much bigger overall impact than the cpu. 

[ca_metal 2,015]

5 minutes ago, raspian300 said:

A quick question for you guys. If between the cpu and the graphics card I want to get one from the ideal list and the other from the recommended list, which combination is the optimized one? In another word, which of the cpu or graphics is more important to get higher fps in maximum settings?

GPU is more important, for sure. But it depends on what CPU you do have. If you have a really weak CPU with a fast GPU, it could bottleneck it in some scenarios on the sim (hard to say for sure, as we can't test it, just an alpha could answer that, but NDA...).

[soloraj 38]

What performance factors make the i7 9800X the top end choice for MSFS over other more mainstream and widely available CPUs like the i7 9700K?

[desbean 357]

On 4/22/2020 at 1:44 PM, michal said:

If "X" makes real difference here the best CPU would actually be now the I9-10980XE (or I9-10920X)

Very few PC custom builders offer the X299 chipset, only some who build high-end workstations. And if you proceed to configure your system around the X299 you get a warning this is not for gaming applications.

I very much wonder if someone on the team just scribbled the X with no substance behind it.

Actually Puget Systems top of the line gaming systems now are all on the X299 chipset with i9-10900x, 10920x, 10940x, etc. The 10900x has a base clock of 3.7GHz compared to 3.0 GHz for the 10980XE which is also a few $100 more, but with 18 cores compared to 10.

[raspian300 25]

So u say that if u were me, u would select the cpu from the recommended item and the gpu from the ideal one?

[michal 44]

32 minutes ago, desbean said:

Actually Puget Systems top of the line gaming systems now are all on the X299 chipset with i9-10900x, 10920x, 10940x, etc. The 10900x has a base clock of 3.7GHz compared to 3.0 GHz for the 10980XE which is also a few $100 more, but with 18 cores compared to 10.

They are no different than other "top" gaming systems providers like say Falcon Northwest or Origin - their default gaming system are built around the Z390 but they offer X399 as professional workstation.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

7 hours ago, soloraj said:

What performance factors make the i7 9800X the top end choice for MSFS over other more mainstream and widely available CPUs like the i7 9700K?

Quad-channel memory perhaps. But then I'm not sure why the PRO version of the 2700X (with dual-channel support only) is recommended as the AMD alternative, especially considering it's an OEM part. I think your i7-9700K will be fine if that's what you have, there is lots of evidence suggesting that the GPU is a lot more important to maximise performance.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

Would the huge amount of textures that the sim will carry (orthos, clouds, aircraft etc.) and the use of a cache of a size left at the user's discretion make a  M.2 drive plugged into the MB  more suitable  than a SSD linked with a cable   ?

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

43 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Would the huge amount of textures that the sim will carry (orthos, clouds, aircraft etc.) and the use of a cache of a size left at the user's discretion make a  M.2 drive plugged into the MB  more suitable  than a SSD linked with a cable   ?

I assume you are comparing a 2.5" SATA SSD with an M.2 NVME SSD (as some M.2 SSDs can be SATA too). Nowadays there seems to be a very small difference between the two in games, just a few seconds in loading screens or none even. However it is said that this is caused by a CPU bottleneck and inefficient APIs. If we end up seeing DirectStorage and hardware decompressors (like the Xbox Series X) on the PC, then the NVME SSD should have a clear advantage, but right now I think the difference would be minimal.