Performance - somewhat puzzling to me?

[Hippo 34]

I've been running on my 4k TV, i7-8700k, 1080 Ti, 16GB, Samsung 970 EVO.  I should add that up until very recently all my gaming has been on VR (for years) - I say this as acceptable frame rates / graphical quality is a different ball game in VR.  Going back to a screen w/o head tracking is taking me back.

When I first installed my first impressions were:  wow! this thing looks good.  I was also very impressed to see all my cores (12) being utilised - having been used to seeing just 1 on DCS (plus a 2nd doing very little), and the issues that brings.  Most busy CPU core around 80%, average CPU around 40%, GPU constant at 98 - 100%

I initially settled on HIGH settings, with 80% rendering, and I was seeing a generally very steady 35-40 fps (DA40 flying in the Seattle area).  Very nice. Then I started playing around with settings, and am very surprised to find how little difference adjusting settings makes (putting scaling to one side) to fps.  Going up to ultra loses me at most 10 fps.  I can up the four or five settings I care about the most to ultra (inc scenery from 100 - 200) for the price of around 5 fps.  Great!  Certainly not complaining, but it wasn't what I was expecting to see.

Even if I go to LOW and 1080p, I appear to max out at around 50 fps.  GPU util goes down, with the CPU limiting.  I would've expected a much higher frame rate.  Cf.  DCS where I can easily go from 20 fps to ~ 200.

Also, does v-sync even do anything?  It appears to do nothing - or at least nothing useful.

My main simming over the last few years has been on DCS and P3D, where settings changes can make huge differences to frame rates.   Has FS2020 been programmed in a different way?  Is this the new normal?  Is there something wrong with my system?  I'd very interested to hear what people think.

Having said all that, I'm very happy with the FS2020 experience, but a little concerned as to whether that's going to be the case on my incoming Reverb G2.

(Everything above is from memory, and very limited testing, so my numbers will be imprecise, but I hope am I giving a good idea of the sort of things I'm seeing).

Edited August 28, 2020 by Hippo
clarity, spelling, etc

[ZKOKQ 984]

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Edited August 28, 2020 by ZKOKQ

[Hippo 34]

9 minutes ago, ZKOKQ said:

My specs in my sig, but I am using a Samsung 43" TV using HDR10 with Auto Motion in the TV enabled. See first post in this thread https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/580439-stutter-fix-and-getting-stunning-120fps-smooth-display-at-4k/

I also use these settings https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/how-to-graphics-settings-and-performance-guide-8-18-2020/132407

Having an absolute smooth experience.

Thanks, but you appear to have misunderstood the main question I was asking*, which was, in summary:

Does anyone else find it strange that changing graphics settings makes such a small difference to fps?

*Apologies if the point got lost in my ramblings, or if I did not explain myself clearly enough.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Hippo

[TheGrunt 44]

I’ve pretty much noticed the same and for my setup (R9 3900x, 32GB DDR3400, 1080ti OC, 3440x1440@100Hz G-sync) performance difference between for example medium and ultra presets is very small. Then again, I am generally very satisfied with the performance even with ultra. Although I haven’t yet used the sim extensively, but all the planes, weather and daytime settings I’ve tested perform at least adequately and don’t give bad performance hit. I’m mostly getting at least high 30s even around NY. Experience is really smooth in general, but of course not perfect.

It all depends where the bottleneck is. Oddly enough my GPU pretty much maxes out at 99-100%, but CPU doesn’t pretty much hit 100% in any of the cores except perhaps briefly. Because none of the cores get really maxed out, boost clocks remain low around 4150-4200MHz. This to me hints GPU bound setup, so graphics settings should have pretty high impact in general, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I think that many people tend to forget that under the hood this sim and it’s engine work quite differently from the previous titles. Streaming introduces another layer all the other sims pretty much lack and how that data is processed can have a huge impact. For example, I haven’t so far seen any in depth analysis regarding how the storage performance affects to the overall performance. My gut feeling is that this title is very bandwidth sensitive, and I don’t mean the network here, but the system bus, memory and storage capability. I have the sim now sitting on my regular 2TB mid range SSD, but I will at some point try it on my nvme, which should theoretically provide several times better performance, just to see how it affects or doesn’t affect the performance.

Edited August 28, 2020 by TheGrunt

[Hippo 34]

1 hour ago, TheGrunt said:

I’ve pretty much noticed the same

Agreed, our experiences (and setups) are very similar.  I didn't mention it in my previous post, but I also tried turning off everything internet-related*, as well as all traffic, etc.  I don't think I ever got over 60 fps.  I find it remarkable that at bare minimum on everything, I'm still seeing such a "low" fps reading - pretty sure it was still all being limited by one CPU core; certainly the GPU wasn't doing very much (~40% iirc)..

*iirc correctly I did this is at the same time as running low + 1080p as I described, and not at 4k.  I might double-check later.

P.S. Thanks for replying and making many interesting observations.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Hippo