So uh, with some of the negativity around here lately and especially in the official flight simulator forums, I thought I'd post something a bit more positive and potentially helpful to others who also have an older rig and are on the fence about this sim's performance. My rig is probably ancient by today's standards and will probably shock and horrify some of you 😂. First-gen i7 950, GTX960 2GB, 12GB RAM, and HDD instead of SSD. Pretty potato compared to what many of you are using. I have been following MSFS since it was announced last year and prior to it being released, I was worried about how well it will run as my rig runs vanilla FSX at around 15-40FPS depending on the plane and location (most settings set to high though). I was expecting it to run between 5-15FPS on low settings (granted, more complex aircrafts coupled with high density cities and complex weather patterns does still do this). Come release day, I just thought why not and went ahead and bought the premium deluxe edition (which is $180AUD here in Australia). With the ambition that Asobo and Microsoft are going for, I thought I'd want to own everything available to go on the ride (pun not intended). And I gotta say, I don't regret this decision at all. I bought this edition mainly for the 787 as I used to fly tubeliners in previous flight sims (PMDG and the like) and not much GA flying, but I ended up staying for all the GA planes it offers. They're just so much fun to (hand)fly with the stunning scenery down below! I think it has really brought out another side to flying that, in the past, I didn't think I would enjoy that much.

Anyway onto the performance, and note that I am running it in 1080P with 100% scaling. I was pleasantly surprised that with everything set to low, I actually got around 35-38FPS in not too cloudy weather in the daytime in moderately dense suburban cities. I slowly increased the settings until I settled with a low-medium-ish combination which while not looking as nice as nice-ultra, still looks quite good and even quite realistic and immersive while still generally running between 25-33FPS. And even with those FPS, it still felt smooth enough and perfectly flyable to me. As I said above, flying the more complex planes like the airliners and ones with glass cockpits into dense cities and complex airports with lots of cloud can still reduce the FPS down to single digits and a stuttery slideshow, but as long as I stay with the lighter GAs and fly in not so complex weather and in less dense locations, the performance generally stayed between 25-30FPS. And when I'm up there flying, it felt so real and enjoyable to the point that I almost forget that I'm flying with low-medium settings! I've never had such a realistic and immersive experience out of the box before. As another member said, in this sim it feels like I'm actually there flying in the real world.

Having said all this, I know the sim is currently still incomplete and there are still quite a number of bugs and issues present. And like most you, I also want the bugs to be fixed and the sim improved. I guess being more of a glass half full kind of person, I try not to let the bugs get in the way of my experience and I am happy to give Asobo and Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and the time to fix the bugs. After all, MSFS has already been a very enjoyable and even special experience to me, bugs and all. If the autopilot flies you into the ground, then you just hand-fly the planes right? 🤣

Anyway, enough with my experience. To those of you who also have a weaker rig and are still unsure about the performance you might get, just give it a try especially if you can get it on the $1 game pass. You might just be pleasantly surprised too. 🙂

I will leave you guys with some screenshots from some of my flights as reference (I capped my FPS at 30 for a more consistent feel). Happy flying!

Thank you for posting this! Its encouraging to read - because my system is 12 yrs old. First gen i7 Nehalem architecture CPU! Specs in my sig.

So its great to see someone else with an old system able to run this sim decently. Do have any videos uploaded on YT? Thats just amazing to me that you can run it with just 2GB VRAM!

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by ThrottleUp

This shows how Hyperthreading helps 4 core CPUs immensely... even with DDR4, a higher IPC and frequencies, a Kaby Lake i5 (2017) is already unusable with MSFS.

I'd say you are rather GPU limited with the 960, if you manage to find a used 6 GB GTX 1060 you can still rock that i7 for a while. And when you upgrade it don't sell it, put it on a frame on the wall just behind your new PC 🙂  

I'm running it on i7 930 12gb ram & gtx970 - works absolutely fine on medium settings, just taken the 152 on sightseeing trips over Barcelona & LA, slight slowdown over LA, but nothing major.

 

Certainly works on a potato!...

 

G

16 minutes ago, Gazzareth said:

Certainly works on a potato!..

yup my potato ticking right along 🙂   and it looks pretty good 

I'll bet that Cirrus sunset series of shots took your breath away huh?

I cant believe how good this looks without playing the "Shader Shuffle" game like we had to in the past.  (I was gonna lose it if I had to read anymore "Tomato this, Envshade, that".

Out of the box, the sim is simply gorgeous.  No muss, no fuss...just install it, open it, set a time slider to dawn/dusk, go fly, be amazed.  Check out all the pics I've been posting lately of this sim.  It simply blows me away sometimes. (maybe I'm too easy to impress, hehe).

5 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

No muss, no fuss...just install it, open it, set a time slider to dawn/dusk, go fly, be amazed.

This was my exact same experience!

5 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

, a Kaby Lake i5 (2017) is already unusable with MSFS.

🙂

I don't agree.  I have a Kaby Lake i5 and am definitively CPU limited.  I have an i5 7400 with an AMD RX580 and am satisfied with almost everything at ultra.  I have to keep my terrain and object level of detail to around between 25 and 40.  And I do have to wait until I can POV around the cockpit without stutters before I fly.   But once there, I am satisfied for the most part.  I limit my frames to 30 using my adrenaline drivers. 

And for the most part I get consistent 30fps. A far cry from the 12 to 15 fps I used to get with FSX.  

Yes I do have to take a bit of care and get some stutters when new areas load, but i wouldn't call it unusable

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by wthomas33065
spelling

My system is weaker than yours and our experiences are similar, inconsistent performance and lots of I/O stutters in larger cities, but in less demanding areas a very pleasant experience and the visuals are surprisingly good even at the lowest settings. I would certainly recommend the simulator to anyone no matter how old their system is, it is most likely that one would get similar performance to the older simulators but with way better visuals.

I'm wondering how long your loading times are. Mine can be extremely long (10 minutes to get into the menu, 15 minutes to get into a flight), but utilising the manual cache feature on an SSD (that isn't big enough to fit the simulator though) helps a great deal. I would recommend giving it a try as well, though if your connection is fast enough and you do not have an SSD to put the cache on, the benefits would probably be much smaller.

8 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

 

I'm wondering how long your loading times are. Mine can be extremely long (10 minutes to get into the menu, 15 minutes to get into a flight), but utilising the manual cache feature on an SSD (that isn't big enough to fit the simulator though) helps a great deal. I would recommend giving it a try as well, though if your connection is fast enough and you do not have an SSD to put the cache on, the benefits would probably be much smaller.

 

Loading time wise I'd say it's not far off what I wait for in p3d, guessing 10 start, 10 for flight. Bit of a pain, but used to it!

G

 

Because us simmers can never stop attempting to squeeze every last bit of power out of our rigs:

 

I find it even runs even better on multiple Potatoes!

 

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by Kilo60

52 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

My system is weaker than yours

What are your system specs out of curiosity 🙂

Its just nice that there are other users with ancient systems which makes me feel less alone!

36 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

What are your system specs out of curiosity 🙂

Its just nice that there are other users with ancient systems which makes me feel less alone!

A Phenom II X6 CPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM and a GTX 750. I was expecting that the CPU would be the limiting factor (or not even able to start up the simulator due to many modern games requiring newer instruction sets), but it turns out the GPU is getting hammered after all while the CPU is doing fine with even usage across all cores. Perhaps the 6 cores/threads help compared to competing quad-core Intel CPUs from that era (without HyperThreading).

I do feel the minimum requirements of 2GB VRAM, 8GB RAM and an HDD are somewhat misleading though as I have this exact combo and the I/O stutters can be unbearable in larger cities. My conclusion is that you can play the simulator just fine even with a system slower than the minimum requirements, as long as you have either more VRAM, more RAM or an SSD.

1 hour ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

My system is weaker than yours

Wow, how rare is that? We've got a p*****g contest about who has the worst PC set-up!🤣

 

It's very encouraging that even rigs underpowered according to the requirements can still provide good results.👍

Woah looks like quite a few of you also have rather old and "under powered" rigs like me and are still enjoying the sim nonetheless! This is very encouraging to see indeed, and hopefully with the performance being worked on by Asobo in the coming months, it will perform even better in the future.

 

11 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

Thank you for posting this! Its encouraging to read - because my system is 12 yrs old. First gen i7 Nehalem architecture CPU! Specs in my sig.

So its great to see someone else with an old system able to run this sim decently. Do have any videos uploaded on YT? Thats just amazing to me that you can run it with just 2GB VRAM!

Yeah my 2GB VRAM is definitely the biggest bottleneck in my system with newer games where loads of textures are being used, leading to stutters that are sometimes unbearable. I actually have my texture setting set to medium though, as I find the low setting to be a bit blurry for my liking and without that big of an improvement with the stutters in the heavier areas. But the fact that my GPU can run above 30FPS when it's not stuttering suggest that it's the VRAM that's the bottleneck. Your i7 920 should do fine as my CPU generally sits around 40% usage while my GPU is pegged at 97-100% usage. And that GTX 1060 with the 6GB VRAM should be able to run the sim with a lot less stutter and at a higher setting and/or performance than my system! I haven't made any videos but I could try to make one or two if it's helpful, but judging by the experience by the other potato peeps, you have nothing to worry about. 🙂

 

9 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

This shows how Hyperthreading helps 4 core CPUs immensely... even with DDR4, a higher IPC and frequencies, a Kaby Lake i5 (2017) is already unusable with MSFS.

I'd say you are rather GPU limited with the 960, if you manage to find a used 6 GB GTX 1060 you can still rock that i7 for a while. And when you upgrade it don't sell it, put it on a frame on the wall just behind your new PC 🙂  

Yeah exactly, my GPU and specifically the 2GB VRAM is the limiting factor indeed. With the developer mode monitor turned on, the sim is almost always limited by the GPU with the GPU being used at 100% while CPU sits around 40%. I'm thinking of just getting a new rig sometimes next year, but I'll see how it goes I guess. If it's too expensive then maybe I get a cheap 1060 or something. Ha, the battle-scared i7 that should be given its recognition huh 🤣

 

9 hours ago, Gazzareth said:

I'm running it on i7 930 12gb ram & gtx970 - works absolutely fine on medium settings, just taken the 152 on sightseeing trips over Barcelona & LA, slight slowdown over LA, but nothing major.

 

Certainly works on a potato!...

 

G

Yep, sounds about right with the more powerful GTX 970 and its higher VRAM. Should still be quite a pleasant experience for you too. Go potato!

 

8 hours ago, SirDan said:

yup my potato ticking right along 🙂   and it looks pretty good 

Ha good on you with your still kicking potato! 😆

 

8 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

I'll bet that Cirrus sunset series of shots took your breath away huh?

I cant believe how good this looks without playing the "Shader Shuffle" game like we had to in the past.  (I was gonna lose it if I had to read anymore "Tomato this, Envshade, that".

Out of the box, the sim is simply gorgeous.  No muss, no fuss...just install it, open it, set a time slider to dawn/dusk, go fly, be amazed.  Check out all the pics I've been posting lately of this sim.  It simply blows me away sometimes. (maybe I'm too easy to impress, hehe).

Indeed, the sunset shots looked so stunning and even magical to me (even with the lower settings)! And the fact that it all works and looks great right out of the box is just impressive indeed. I saw your pics of the TBM icing up and those looks simply amazing and so realistic! Could've fool me that they are the real thing if you didn't say they're from the sim! ( I guess I'm easy to impress too 😂)

 

8 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

I don't agree.  I have a Kaby Lake i5 and am definitively CPU limited.  I have an i5 7400 with an AMD RX580 and am satisfied with almost everything at ultra.  I have to keep my terrain and object level of detail to around between 25 and 40.  And I do have to wait until I can POV around the cockpit without stutters before I fly.   But once there, I am satisfied for the most part.  I limit my frames to 30 using my adrenaline drivers. 

And for the most part I get consistent 30fps. A far cry from the 12 to 15 fps I used to get with FSX.  

Yes I do have to take a bit of care and get some stutters when new areas load, but i wouldn't call it unusable

That's pretty good performance with your rig! I set my terrain and object sliders to 100 though, and it looks and performs quite alright. I guess those two sliders have more impact on the CPU than the GPU. Same that I have to wait a couple of moments in the cockpit for the scenery loading to settle down before I go flying, but it's generally quite usable and quite enjoyable and definitely much better looking than FSX!

 

7 hours ago, Kilo60 said:

Because us simmers can never stop attempting to squeeze every last bit of power out of our rigs:

 

I find it even runs even better on multiple Potatoes!

You might end up with an accelerated ripening process a bunch of overripe potatoes though! 😂

 

6 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

A Phenom II X6 CPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM and a GTX 750. I was expecting that the CPU would be the limiting factor (or not even able to start up the simulator due to many modern games requiring newer instruction sets), but it turns out the GPU is getting hammered after all while the CPU is doing fine with even usage across all cores. Perhaps the 6 cores/threads help compared to competing quad-core Intel CPUs from that era (without HyperThreading).

I do feel the minimum requirements of 2GB VRAM, 8GB RAM and an HDD are somewhat misleading though as I have this exact combo and the I/O stutters can be unbearable in larger cities. My conclusion is that you can play the simulator just fine even with a system slower than the minimum requirements, as long as you have either more VRAM, more RAM or an SSD.

Wow and you could still run the sim on your even older rig! And that GTX 750 only have 1GB of VRAM? That's impressive. Yeah that might be the case that the more cores/threads you have, the better it is for this sim. I guess the 2GB VRAM, 8GB RAM and HDD requirements are just enough to do GA flights in the less dense areas hence still flyable given some concession. But yeah, complex situations like the 747 JFK landing challenge is pretty much unplayable for me as it would stutter and freeze so much that it becomes unflyable and unbearable. The A320 Sydney landing one is still okay though once the scenery loading calms down.

Regarding the loading time, I also get about 7-8 minutes just to get to the main menu, and another 3-5 to get into a flight depending on the location and plane. My Internet connection is around 40Mbps which is good enough for the streaming I guess, though I also use the rolling cache on my HDD. Using an SSD should help a lot in that regard but unfortunately I don't have an SSD so have to make do with HDD. But echoing what you said, it really does perform similar to the older flight sims but it does so while looking heaps better.

 

5 hours ago, 109Sqn said:

Wow, how rare is that? We've got a p*****g contest about who has the worst PC set-up!🤣

 

It's very encouraging that even rigs underpowered according to the requirements can still provide good results.👍

Haha that might just be the next thing, everyone competing to see who has the weakest rig and can still run the sim! 🤣

Edited August 31, 20205 yr by Honnli