VRAM the new bottle neck

[vgbaron 3,486]

1 minute ago, captain420 said:

I hope the hardware side catches up to the software. It would be nice to finally run P3D at max settings with our add-ons. I've been waiting for that day to come.

I'll bet that by the time the hardware catches up there will be a new version that needs better hardware. In the years since FSX was released we have come close with better vid cards, faster cpus and better overall systems but then the graphics software has grown. Always something to look forward to.

[captain420 3,099]

Yup, it's like a cat and mouse game when it comes to these 2.

[Skywolf 992]

P3D will start pumping large data to the cards as v5 matures.  I was reading about their partnership with Varjo VR Headsets.  They are absolutely gonna use it for their Military clients - that means graphics will get pumped to the next level.  

Gonna be great as the platform matures.  My friend already has Varjo he uses for this racing simulator (he is a racing instructor too) - he tells me its' unreal.  And the tech will get better.

Video cards are gonna get super fast soon - gonna be good year for Nvidia and AMD.  Nvidia camp yay!!

LM is eyeing for the future - and guess what my next build will have Varjo Pro 2 - just need the next batch of videocards.  The 2xxx gen are not gonna cut it for Vargo (their current headset requires it) but I have a feeling that P3D will struggle on high settings in that headset.  We all need more powa!!!  It already struggles with Rift S (which is what I have)

Edited May 11, 2020 by Skywolf

[Christopher Low 5,331]

Like my comments on another AVSIM thread (that were misunderstood), if I am not able to use the same settings in P3Dv5 that I use in P3Dv4 (and by settings, I do not mean the actual sliders.....I mean the complexity/draw distance/texture resolution etc) with my 6GB GTX 980Ti, then it is useless to me. For my sake, I just hope that this is only a "4K" problem.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Christopher Low

[G-RFRY 1,705]

My settings have been posted on another thread MAX 4096 TEX.

First basic test PMDG taxi nothing special NV recorder 100% TG AI .

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/154944674@N05/49877239231/in/dateposted-public/

Panning test at LEBL.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154944674@N05/49877369891/in/dateposted-public/

 

[Reader 2,009]

It's useless to you.

[Quasimodo 505]

OK I am starting to get somewhere now. I had a very nice flight in the ASA 172 from KFHR to CYVR at dusk with real weather provided by ASP3D. I only had to turn down LOD radius from Max to ultra. The atmosphere and landscape was astonishing. Never seen it better. I won't be bothering with shadder addons! Checking the VRAM log on ASUS GPU tweak I was at 9356MB of VRAM at one point. That includes the 2000mb reserved for windows but I did notice that I get a CTD or a DXGi usually at around 10,000mb so I have to wonder where is the other 1gb going?

Edited May 12, 2020 by Quasimodo

[fluffyflops 1,845]

On 5/11/2020 at 3:57 AM, Quasimodo said:

I'd Love 24GB 😁

 

On 5/11/2020 at 3:18 AM, SolRayz said:

I would love a 11GB.

Id love to push back and start the engines with out a ctd

[Quasimodo 505]

I'd like to have some heavy metal to push back!😁

[CFIJose 5,485]

I'd love to get a good price on a Titan X Pascal. 😀

[PurdueKev 159]

On 5/10/2020 at 8:01 PM, Chock said:

If 11 Gb was not sufficient to run V5, I'd be in big trouble since my GPU only has 8Gb. As it turns out, my VRAM indicator typically shows between around 3.5GB and 5Gb most of the time, so 11Gb quite clearly is sufficient, because I haven't even go that much VRAM and my PC is doing okay.

Frankly, this sort of complaint is one we see time and time again whenever a new version of a sim comes out. People start saying 'it doesn't work' or 'it keeps crashing on my super-duper high end system with its new Sex Bombz 9000 GPU, so there's obviously a bug with it because it couldn't possibly be anything I'm doing.' And so on.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and surmise that what they really mean is they have done something along the lines of this: 'Ooh a new sim - I know, let's install absolutely every add-on I have and push every slider there is in the options pages so far over to the right that they are nearly falling off the monitor, and then let's also run it at the highest resolution I can possibly select and let's also use all that beta stuff I have as well.'

When people are surprised that this leads to crashes, I sometimes wonder if they are similarly surprised when they go outside and spot that the sky is blue.

Every sim out there which has ever come out has required a bit of restraint whenever you start throwing add-ons at it, and P3D V5 is not going to be any different in that respect, and - newsflash - the same will be true for the new MS sim as well, because if it has room to shove the kitchen sink in there, you can guarantee some third party developer will do so with their shiny new product.

While I have no doubt there are people out there doing what you describe, I think you are being overly general and dismissive in your assumption. My experience is similar to several other users in that I have been very selective in which add-ons to add, and have stuck to only those which have new installers and are claimed by the developer to be compatible. I have also introduced add-ons gradually and I have nowhere close to max sliders - mid-range on most, to be honest.  Yet we are still seeing crashes or driver hangs in different situations.  I can link some of them to specific addons or combinations of settings, but others aren't obvious and occur even under benign scenarios.

The issues that are being reported have been verified in many cases to be real and repeatable, and aren't always (or even usually) simply "user error" or issues under our control.  Some of the problems are due to specific slider settings, to be sure, but others have already been linked to architecture and code-specific programming in Windows, drivers, P3D, add-ons, or all of the above that require fixes to properly address.  And frankly, any software environment should be robust enough to handle any of the developer-supplied configuration sliders without crashing a program; there ought to be built-in provisions to prevent that extreme result.  I'm not talking about messing with the config file; you start adding things to that, and all bets are off.  But at least the in-sim sliders shouldn't lead to a crash. Bringing the sim to a crawl? Sure - but not a crash.

Just because you haven't experienced the issues personally, doesn't prove that there aren't real problems to be patched.

----

I should also add on the VRAM topic - I think L-M and developers need to stop constantly designing for the "next" anticipated hardware evolution and design for what is available now.  That is how Microsoft got into trouble in the first place - the code was designed anticipating that raw single-core clock speed would continue to increase, and lo and behold Intel went in a completely different direction and we never got hardware that could ever run it properly.  That is why it has taken so much effort to finally get to where P3D is actually taking advantage of multi-core processors - if we needed a 6ghz processor to run something.. well, good luck because Intel and AMD aren't building those just because flight simmers want them. Same goes for VRAM - demanding ever more memory is a "brute force" approach, but Nvidia or AMD might not be inclined to build cards with massive banks of it if the rest of the computer industry is going in a different commercial direction.

I think L-M has gone in a good direction by leveraging DX12 to get out of that CPU-bound "rut" that we were in. I just hope they aren't going to count on super-high VRAM capacity video cards as the ultimate answer for v5.

Edited May 13, 2020 by PurdueKev

[JoeFackel 760]

3 hours ago, PurdueKev said:

I think L-M and developers need to stop constantly designing for the "next" anticipated hardware evolution and design for what is available now. 

Uhm ... nope. Thats how the console guys are handling it, don't let us go three steps backwards just because some guys refuse to dial their sim settings fitting to their actual hardware capabilities.

[virtualstuff 750]

My experience after a few days and setting up P3Dv5 and also solved several issues from add-on developers...

No vram issues or CTD, far better performance as 4.5HF3...

Tested full flight with PMDG748 v3 TENL/Global/HD trees /Terra flora / HD buildings / FT EKCH V2 - FT EHAM short hop / GSX2 / SODE 1.70/ AIG 100% / AI lights reborn pro / ASP3D (beta 2) / EZCA3.1 / AIFLOW / AIGROUND.

Was an evening flight FPS between 45 FPS and 80 FPS higher setting as P3Dv4.5 HF3 where I had around 30 - 35 FPS in the same conditions.

Also with EA enabled and running 2k (2560 * 1440) I-9900KF all cores 5.0 ghz (HT off) RTX 2080 (4xSSA) (8 gb vram in sim 6.6 gb) several m2 drives...

Highest Vram was observed during panning outside 5.7 gb constantly releasing vram in the air around 3.7 gb 😎

Smooth as butter not one stutter amazing to say the least and finally running ORBX TE without performance issues...

Have already done several flights successfully, now EA more mature and I'm happy.. 4.5HF3 is to the virtual bin...

Now airports with sloped runways 😜 and my FSLABS Airbus fleet 😍

Edited May 13, 2020 by awf

[ywg256 75]

Im interest to know how the heck to get that high vram in sim. I have pretty much all cranked settings after slowly moving most sliders to the right this week 4k res, texture exp=10 extended terrain, addons galore, orbx autogen maxed out, aig ai maxed out, truesky, asp3d, envtex all at highest resultion across the board with the highest i have seen at 6.3. I'm around 5.3 most of the time.  The one slider I dont have cranked is scenery complexity which once I am done my current flight will max out too. Maybe this one is why I am low still?

[chapstick 2,757]

14 minutes ago, ywg256 said:

Im interest to know how the heck to get that high vram in sim. I have pretty much all cranked settings after slowly moving most sliders to the right this week 4k res, texture exp=10 extended terrain, addons galore, orbx autogen maxed out, aig ai maxed out, truesky, asp3d, envtex all at highest resultion across the board with the highest i have seen at 6.3. I'm around 5.3 most of the time.  The one slider I dont have cranked is scenery complexity which once I am done my current flight will max out too. Maybe this one is why I am low still?

You'd probably CTD at a full PBR airport