I just spent the last few hours trying to understand what was causing the sim stutters, and I have gotten my sim to be 100% smooth now. Let me explain the process...

FYI, I chose a test flight from KDEN to KLAX. I let the AI control everything and I always took off from the same runway. 

Step 1:

I turned everything down to low/off in FS and turned off data, AI traffic, etc. Basically the minimum settings.  I still had stutters.

Step 2:

I changed every setting in nvidia control panel and reran the test flight. I still had stutters.

Step 3:

I looked at this guide and did all the recommended things. I still had stutters.

https://windowsreport.com/fix-pc-stuttering-windows-10/

Step 4: 

I looked at the power management settings in Windows 10 and noticed that I had "balanced" settings, which results in the CPU powering down to 25%. I set the power to high performance. I still had stutters, but they seemed less.

Step 5. 

I turned hyperthreading off in my BIOS. Stutters were gone.

Observations:

When I would get stutters I noticed that the CPU graph in dev mode would have frequent red spikes, even though they would be spread out a bit. As soon as I turned hyperthreading off those red spikes disappeared.  At this point I had 30 fps with high/ultra settings, so I decided to push even further on the settings. No matter how much I crank up the settings in FS i can not get the stutters to come back. I went to 15 FPS with everything almost maxed out and the GPU is solid purple, but the CPU is yellow with no red spike. Thus, no stutters.

My advice? Turn off hyperthreading and make sure power plan is max performance. See is this solves it. If not, check the other items on the list. 

 

 

 

Edited September 21, 20205 yr by RobJC

Which processor do you have, how many real cores?

Just now, StoneDoor said:

Which processor do you have, how many real cores?

In my sig. I have 4 cores.  

3 minutes ago, RobJC said:

In my sig. I have 4 cores.  

ok, I didn't see that.

What I've read is that turning on hyperthreading increases performance, especially if the processor has less than 6 physical cores.

I didn't test it myself, though.

I can imagine that, if MSFS uses no more than 6 threads, turning off hyperthreading on a 6+ core processor, gives each core a little more headroom if it has to process only 1 thread.

 

This doesn't make sense for everyone.  As StoneDoor says, Some people have turned hyperthreading ON in the bios and the stutters have gone. 

It is a bit of a mystery and might be processor dependent, but most people seem to settle for hyper threading on.

It is like 'Threaded Optimization' in Nvidia inspector.  Some people swear it must be on or they get a stuttering mess, and other swear it must be off.

At the end of the day, I suppose you just have to do what works for you and your PC.

Personally, I have hyperthreading ON and it is smooth as butter. (Intel 8086 - 6 cores, 12 threads, 5Ghz).

Edited September 21, 20205 yr by bobcat999

As usual, it's on a per system basis. I have a 7700 and I have to have HT on for best results. 

 

Vic

I guess the point of this post was to try to follow a process. If you have stutters after turning all settings in game to off/low, then you can look for other causes. It could be other processes running. It could be power settings. It could be nvidia settings. And it could be something like HT. But you have to start somewhere and if you have all of these variables floating around you are going to have a very hard time tracking down the cause. Knowing that it was not FS itself that was causing the stutters helped me focus on other areas. 

24 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

As usual, it's on a per system basis. I have a 7700 and I have to have HT on for best results. 

 

Vic

^ This.  Just verified.  My i7 7700 Kaby Lake gets awful CPU locked if I don't have HT turned on.  I upgraded from 7th gen i5 to 7th gen i7 just for hyperthreading.  On my system it isn't even close.  Non Hyperthreaded is full of microstutters.  Hyperthreaded, smooth as silk except for some periodic data loads.  Most likely data I/O.