Several very bright people opened my eyes this morning as to why my computer was running MSFS2020 so horribly. If your mid-to-high-end system is nonetheless stuttering and has wildly fluctuating FPS in the new sim, please read the solution that worked for me. It has nothing to do with tweaking the settings within the sim itself. I had already tried everything there was to try, and nothing worked. I could not fly any of the airliners at any of the custom airports without my FPS going down to essentially zero (0). Now I'm buzzing all the JFK buildings at low altitude and still getting a solid 30FPS. So what changed this morning?

A few years ago, I purchased my computer from JetLine Systems, which makes custom-built rigs for flight simmers. (Froogle's videos are sponsored by JetLine Systems.) At the time of my purchase, my contact man at JetLine asked what software I wanted installed. I told him P3D. When my computer arrived about ten days later, it ran fabulously. I never got such great performance in my life on P3D! But one of the ways that JetLine (and others in the know) got P3D to perform at its best was to disable CPU hyperthreading in the bios. I did not know this until this morning. It seems that expert tweakers had found that P3D favored a single CPU core and that focusing the entire CPU on that single core brought out the best performance in P3D. I really admire people smart enough to discover these things. And, for that sim, at that time, disabling hyperthreading was the smart thing to do.

With the release of MSFS2020, however, I was stunned to discover that my otherwise hefty-performing computer was brought to its knees by the new sim. This made absolutely no sense to me. Regardless of how I lowered the resolution of the sim and killed all the settings to Low, the stutters remained and my FPS ran crazy from 35 to 2 in a constant herky-jerky way. Someone suggested to me this morning that I might need to enable hyperthreading. I asked whether hyperthreading is usually on by default and he said "yes." So I really didn't think his advice was relevant to me. I'd never messed with the bios at all. He said for me to look at my cores and see how many logical cores were present. On my particular i7, there should be eight logical cores if hyperthreading is turned on. I looked and there were only four logical cores and hyperthreading in the bios was clearly turned OFF. This was done to boost performance of P3D when the rig was built for me.

So I simply turned hyperthreading ON in the bios and suddenly MSFS2020 performed in the way I always dreamed about. My rig is still several years old, but I can run MSFS2020 at 4K on all High settings (with clouds set to ULTRA) and get a really stable 30FPS. But more importantly, I no longer have the stutters. The stutters were what really destroyed the sim for me. I could live with reduced FPS but the stutters, which sometimes lasted two or three seconds, made the sim unplayable. Now, I'm getting both good, stable FPS and no stutters even at JFK with the A320, which is probably the worst-case scenario.

So what had happened was that MSFS2020 was trying to use as many physical and logical cores as possible. But my system was designed to limit those logical cores to fit the needs of a legacy sim. In other words, I was only allowing MSFS2020 to use a fraction of my CPU "horsepower." This explains why I -- and many others -- were having their CPUs spike to 100 percent and pretty much stay there, causing frequent, long stutters. Enabling hyperthreading totally fixed this problem for me. My CPU now averages 70-80 percent use instead of overloading at a constant 100.

To summarize: If you have a decent computer but you're still struggling with stutters and low FPS in the new sim, check in your bios to see whether hyperthreading is enabled. If hyperthreading is turned off, turn it ON. This will degrade the performance of P3D but tremendously improve the performance of MSFS2020.

 

I posted yesterday the very same thing.

How do you do this? I don't know where to look

Thanks

Just a word of caution. If your computer is overclocked do be sure to keep an eye on your temps as many computers will run much hotter with hyper threading on.

Edited August 21, 20205 yr by shivers9

8 minutes ago, Stratocruiser1 said:

How do you do this? I don't know where to look

Thanks

In the BIIOS of your motherboard.

19 minutes ago, David Mills said:

So what had happened was that MSFS2020 was trying to use as many physical and logical cores as possible.

It appears that FS2020 is actually only using 4 physical cores to any large extent (due to DX11 limitations was what I understood from the video I watched about it), so HT is definitely important now, though folks with the larger 6+ cores do benefit from the fact that those newer CPUs move much more data per instruction execution. Still, my 4790k running at 4.5Ghz with HT is holding up pretty darn well thank goodness...

Edited August 21, 20205 yr by flapsdown

10 minutes ago, Lange_666 said:

In the BIIOS of your motherboard.

OK, but can you give me a keystroke path there?

Thanks

Thanks for the info.   I also found turning off vSync in the game makes a massive difference.   Not sure why.

HT is working good in P3D , the easy way was to disable HT. 

If you have a 8core cpu and enable HT you get 16 treads it not give you the double performance 

it give approx 25% boost 

1 hour ago, David Mills said:

o summarize: If you have a decent computer but you're still struggling with stutters and low FPS in the new sim, check in your bios to see whether hyperthreading is enabled. If hyperthreading is turned off, turn it ON. This will degrade the performance of P3D but tremendously improve the performance of MSFS2020.

It worked! Great news!

HQ

44 minutes ago, Stratocruiser1 said:

OK, but can you give me a keystroke path there?

Thanks

When you restart your computer, you can enter bios by pressing F2 or end or whatever it tells you to press. From there, enable Hyper threading.

59 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

Just a word of caution. If your computer is overclocked do be sure to keep an eye on your temps as many computers will run much hotter with hyper threading on.

Not only hotter but voltage and other requirements are different too. You can't just enable HT and keep your settings if you have overclock applied.

For those with 4 cores, this will help..my 8 core 9900k, I prefer HT off as my CPU will run cooler. I run long flights, don't need the CPU being that hot for hours on end.

1 hour ago, Stratocruiser1 said:

How do you do this? I don't know where to look

Thanks

I would check first because the default is HT on, and unless you or someone else has changed this you do not need to change anything, and to check start Task Manager then click performance and at the bottom Open Resource Monitor, at the top select CPU this will show all cores that are running.

9 minutes ago, B777ER said:

For those with 4 cores, this will help..my 8 core 9900k, I prefer HT off as my CPU will run cooler. I run long flights, don't need the CPU being that hot for hours on end.

Or you could run 8 cores with HT on (giving you 16 threads) and a massive cooler / water block 🙃 What was that thing about absolute power...?