Hi everyone. 

I would like to know of P3Dv5 will function my late 2018 Macbook pro in bootcamp. it seems to meet all minimum specs for V5 but im not sure it'll be able to sustain 3ghz because of thermals. I have read a lot about FPS improvements in V5 and would like to know if i'd be able to take advantage of that with my specs, or if I should just stick to V4.5.

specs: Intel i7-8850H, 16GB DDR4 , Radeon Pro Vega 20 4GB GPU

7 minutes ago, trees said:

Hi everyone. 

I would like to know of P3Dv5 will function my late 2018 Macbook pro in bootcamp. it seems to meet all minimum specs for V5 but im not sure it'll be able to sustain 3ghz because of thermals. I have read a lot about FPS improvements in V5 and would like to know if i'd be able to take advantage of that with my specs, or if I should just stick to V4.5.

specs: Intel i7-8850H, 16GB DDR4 , Radeon Pro Vega 20 4GB GPU

It's a no go, if the video card is 4GB, the V5 is hungry of video ram.

You need at list 8 Gb and just for medium demand, the optimal is 12gb to enjoy great add-on.

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by simbio

It should work fine.  I have an Intel Core i5 4440 @ 3.10 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 @ 665 MHz, GeForce GTX 1650 with 4 GB memory, running Windows 10 Professional 64-bit and have been very happy with V5-HF2.    Overall performance is much better than V4.  For example flying over ORBX SOCAL near downtown LA yields choppy 20ish FPS performance in P3DV4 but with similar settings in V5 I get 30+FPS (target frame rate 36fps).  I'm also 1080p on a flat screen, not 4K or VR.

Settings are everything In V5 since it relies more heavily on VRAM and doesn't seem to be able to use normal RAM for overflow, so the further you push sliders to the right, the more VRAM you will need once you go over the limit, V5 gives you a message to reduce settings or quit the sim

My World settings are LOD radius: high, terrain mesh: 10m, tessellation: low, autogen draw distance: medium, scenery complexity: dense, autogen buildings: normal, autogen vegetation: dense, texture resolution: 30cm, use high resolution scenery textures: unchecked (don't see a difference on or off),  screen resolution: 1920x1080.  My graphics settings are: FXAA: off, AA: 4xMSAA, Texture filtering: Anisotropic 4X, texture resolution: 1024x1024, dynamic texture streaming: on, VSync: off, Target Frame rate: 36.  (re target frame rate, I have noticed that V5 does a much better job of maintaining the target than V4 did).

I only run EZ DOC with Track IR and Reality XP GNS and GTN gauges as addons.  

The things that will take up VRAM are: 1) Scenery, 2) Plane and 3) Enhanced atmospherics (EA).  I prefer to fly general aviation planes (e.g., Carenado) which typically don't take up as much VRAM as (I assume) larger more complex models (think PMDG 747).  

 When flying over the default scenery to include areas like NYC I use about 1.7-2.5 GB of VRAM (of 3.3 available) with EA off.  With EA on, it seems to add around .2 - .7 GB of VRAM usage (not sure what drives the variance since that's with the same weather just different areas and different planes).  I have cloud resolution at low for EA.  

So far, I have found that I can fly most of my planes around a scenery area like ORBX PNW, NORCAL, & SOCAL with EA on with no problems.  A couple of more detailed aircraft in a high density area (like downtown LA) will push me over the VRAM limit but turning EA off and using the default clouds/atmospherics allows me to continue flying.

Bottom line, for me V5 has better performance with similar settings vs v4.  Depending on your settings and the AC you fly, you will probably be able to enjoy the EA (which looks fantastic but still needs some work) in most scenery areas.  

I have noticed when looking at posts from others with 8GB or more of VRAM, that P3DV5 seems to use as much of that as it can.  My guess is that V5 may be tailoring itself to the hardware that you have to some extent (e.g., loading/unloading smaller bits of scenery).  Settings are going to be the other part of that.  Having a minimum spec system,  I can't test that theory out.

I've also had very few issues with V5.  Seems to be very stable with my settings and hardware.  My advice, before you add anything, take the out of the box sim for a thorough test ride.  Fly different AC, locations, play with settings to see how it works and performs.  It is different from previous versions of P3D.  If you don't take time to figure out how the vanilla sim acts, you will never be able to figure out if a problem you see is in the sim or is the result of some combination of AC, scenery, settings, and addon.  As you add those things in, do them one at a time and test them out before adding anything else. This will make it much easier to spot the troublemakers and find fixes.    

Hope this helps.  I would be curious to hear stories from other "minimum spec systems" folks.