Dual Graphics cards advice please

[Espana Pete 357]

Hello, I know little about graphics cards and am looking for some advice please. My current RTX 2080 is coping with small prop aircraft at about 30fps but I have to turn all of the defaults down to get 30 fps on commercial jets at large airports before I even think about adding live weather, live traffic and rain. I seem to remember reading once that you can have TWO graphics cards installed. I have a brand new GTX 1050 TI which I have never taken out of the box. Is it feasible to install this as well to run this alongside my RTX 2080?

[Steku 158]

It will not work. Even identical GPUs with SLI don't bring any benefit in MFS 2020. 

[orchestra_nl 927]

Do you have stutters or problems with your current configuration, or are you just expecting more than 30fps?
For flightsims you don't really need much higher than 30fps, but you want that fps to be stable without dipping in the single figures.

Having said that, I'd expect a RTX 2080 to perform a little better at 1080p. Instead of adding another GPU it might be better to try and find out what the bottleneck is.
Besides, according to this that GTX 1050 is not compatible, but even if it was, it would not add much to the RTX 2080 you already have.

 

[W2DR 1,860]

The problem is the CPU, not the GPU. Changing the GPU won't help. 

[marsman2020 1,310]

If you turn on developer mode in the settings and then show the FPS counter from the dev mode menu in sim, it will show you if you are CPU or GPU limited.

[GearUp180 55]

For information (video from 2019):

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by GearUp180

[marsman2020 1,310]

Yes, SLI and Crossfire are pretty much dead.  DX12 has some generic multi GPU support (not using SLI or Crossfire) but the application developer has to enable it and FS2020 does not use DX12 anyway.

[Espana Pete 357]

51 minutes ago, orchestra_nl said:

Do you have stutters or problems with your current configuration, or are you just expecting more than 30fps?
For flightsims you don't really need much higher than 30fps, but you want that fps to be stable without dipping in the single figures.

Having said that, I'd expect a RTX 2080 to perform a little better at 1080p. Instead of adding another GPU it might be better to try and find out what the bottleneck is.
Besides, according to this that GTX 1050 is not compatible, but even if it was, it would not add much to the RTX 2080 you already have.

 

Thank you for your help in explaining why I cannot add this other GPU. I can only get 30 fps using very limited options. I for example I jump in an A320 Neo sat at a ramp at Heathrow at mid day with no live weather, live flights or gameplay, in High end settings I get 22fps without moving. Change the weather to rain and night settings and I get 16 to 18 fps. With the developer mode on I can see that it alternates between Limited by GPU and Limited by Main Thread. This is still without any Live traffic or flights. I know I can reduce settings down but with my set up I had hoped for more. When I built this PC at the beginning of the year I had hoped that I was building a games set up capable of most programmes, but MSFS seems to want more. I would just like to know which components I could change to improve it and I am not really tech savvy at 72 tender years of age.

[G-RFRY 1,710]

Nvidia no longer support`s SLI in the GPU drivers.

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

Double GPU config are a thing of the past that have no future in videogames imho, don't bother.

[loge 42]

3 hours ago, Espana Pete said:

I would just like to know which components I could change to improve it and I am not really tech savvy at 72 tender years of age.

So many different hardware and software factors affect performance, that it's difficult to provide advice.  However, given that your dev mode report shows that it's frequently limited by the main thread, upgrading your CPU may make the biggest difference.  Generally speaking, being limited by the GPU all the time gives a much smoother experience.  The most important measure of CPU performance for this sim is how fast a single thread can run, and according to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html you could theoretically get a 30% improvement by upgrading from a Ryzen 2700X to an Intel i9-10900K.  Whether you'd actually get a 30% fps improvement in MSFS is another question, as so many other factors affect performance.
Also, installing your sim on an SSD rather than a hard drive may help improve smoothness.

Edited September 21, 2020 by loge

[orchestra_nl 927]

11 minutes ago, loge said:

upgrading your CPU may make the biggest difference.  ... by upgrading from a Ryzen 2700X to an Intel i9-10900K.
Also, installing your sim on an SSD rather than a hard drive may help improve smoothness.

If upgrading the CPU would help, I'd sooner recommend an upgrade to a Ryzen 3900x since Espana Pete already has a compatible motherboard.

I do think that something is not right on his system. I still am using a GTX 1060 GPU, and with most settings on high I get smooth results on 3440x1440. I haven't flown the heavies yet, and haven't visited the big cities. That might account for the fact that I haven't had any issues yet. My framerates are probably not very high but as I haven't had hardly any noticable fps drops It's fine. I am using a Ryzen 3900x so that might

As a test I just started a flight with the A320, parked at a gate at Heathrow (engines running, all displays on, ~12.00 utc) with scattered clouds and live traffic. I got ~18 fps.
If the topicstarter only gets 20 fps there, with a much, much faster GPU, something is not right.

 

 

[marsman2020 1,310]

The sim is biased toward Intel CPUs right now, at least in the pre-Patch 2 benchmarks I have seen.  I think there were some changes in threading and work split between GPU and CPU in Patch 2 that might change that, so it might be good to wait for updated benchmarks.  Also I think this sim is likely very difficult to repeatably benchmark given the wide range of settings and use of streaming assets from "the cloud".

Personally I think I'd wait another month or two for more patches and see what the roadmap is before rushing to upgrade.  There will be new AMD CPUs announced in October that will have significant single core performance uplift.

 

 

[W2DR 1,860]

17 hours ago, Espana Pete said:

I am not really tech savvy at 72 tender years of age

Trust me, it gets worse 🙂. When you're my age (82) you'll look back at today as your genius years. Now, where's the Enter key? Or is it the Return key?....sigh.....

Edited September 22, 2020 by W2DR
cant spel

[Manny 1,293]

Yes, you can have two different model of nvidea cards. 

i have like 7 monitors using two cards non sli and they work fine.

I have 3 front monitors for external view. I have 19" ELO touchscreen, then I use a small monitor for Garmin RX GPS and another monitor for left window view etc.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Manny