Hyperthreading with i9 CPU and MSFS 2020?

[neil0311 366]

I have a 2 year old i9-9900K (8 core) CPU, overclocked to 5 GHz.  Going back, it was always a best practice with FSX or P3D v3/4 to disable hyperthreading. Performance was usually better without the virtual cores and associated overhead. I'm seeing some posts on the MSFS 2020 official forum alluding to benefit from hyperthreading, but only up to 6 cores.  The advice there seems to be to disable it for 8 (or more) cores.

Anyone have any concrete (or even anecdotal) benchmarks or testing that shows whether or not enabling hyperthreading is a net benefit with an 8 core i9 and MSFS 2020?

[pgde 571]

Why not just try it on your system? You can't hurt anything. It seems that performance varies by each person's system and what may work for one, won't work well for others.

[neil0311 366]

7 hours ago, pgde said:

Why not just try it on your system? You can't hurt anything. It seems that performance varies by each person's system and what may work for one, won't work well for others.

I'm planning to do that, but it's hard to measure.

[LRBS 944]

All I can guess is that this software is very poorly optimized in every aspect.

On  i9-9900K and I9-10900K when I turned off HT I have better performance and CPU and GPU was even out and almost no stutters.

From my findings on two different computers with the same GPUs TITAN RTX 24 GB mem and 64 GB mem @ 5.2 GHZ I found out that P3D and MSFS2020 suffer from the same issue, not properly optimized.

Now P3D is somehow better but still not there. I guess both developers have the same issues of being incapable of properly optimizing the software or just can't do it right.

I'm looking at the XP11 and CPU, GPU are properly optimized and excellent performance with HT ON or OFF without any stutters etc.

I attached this picture where you can see clearly CPU and GPU quite balanced with ULTRA settings and no stutters.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lYlr0NHaSxblehVaTfSKGi792ekfzoFh/view?usp=sharing

From my point of view people should start getting together and ask Asobo/MSFS2020 programmers to get their act together.  

 

[Vlooi 68]

Yes, DirectX 11 is not the best API to spread workload across cores and threads, which MSFS uses at the moment. The better API's for utilization of more cores and threads is DirectX 12 and Vulkan. So, the situation with MSFS will only really change when it is move onto DirectX 12. That is why XP11 also runs bit smoother, as it is running on Vulkan. No fiddling on earth is going to make a major difference with MSFS at present unfortunately. I believe the biggest jump in performance for MSFS will come when they move it to DirectX 12, hopefully sooner than later.

[penta_a 428]

2 hours ago, Vlooi said:

Yes, DirectX 11 is not the best API to spread workload across cores and threads, which MSFS uses at the moment. The better API's for utilization of more cores and threads is DirectX 12 and Vulkan. So, the situation with MSFS will only really change when it is move onto DirectX 12. That is why XP11 also runs bit smoother, as it is running on Vulkan. No fiddling on earth is going to make a major difference with MSFS at present unfortunately. I believe the biggest jump in performance for MSFS will come when they move it to DirectX 12, hopefully sooner than later.

As per ASOBO/MS in their latest Vlog, there will be minimum to none performance gains by moving from DX11 to DX12, but there will be cool features that can be added to benefit from DX12.

[Vlooi 68]

2 hours ago, penta_a said:

As per ASOBO/MS in their latest Vlog, there will be minimum to none performance gains by moving from DX11 to DX12, but there will be cool features that can be added to benefit from DX12.

Yes, correct. I mean performance improvement in terms of load spreading over more cores, which should lead to a smoother experience. I should've been clearer.

[LRBS 944]

8 hours ago, penta_a said:

As per ASOBO/MS in their latest Vlog, there will be minimum to none performance gains by moving from DX11 to DX12, but there will be cool features that can be added to benefit from DX12.

I find that very intriguing, can you provide a link to the latest Vlog indicating that info? I can't find it.

We can notice substantial performance gain on P3D and other software when they moved to DX11 or 12.

To be clear, I'm not arguing with you, I'm just surprised about their statement (if is the case) when the whole gaming industry had performance gains when they switched.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

1 hour ago, killthespam said:

I find that very intriguing, can you provide a link to the latest Vlog indicating that info? I can't find it.

We can notice substantial performance gain on P3D and other software when they moved to DX11 or 12.

To be clear, I'm not arguing with you, I'm just surprised about their statement (if is the case) when the whole gaming industry had performance gains when they switched.

Asobo did indeed say this at their last developer Q&A...

Their point was that MSFS is not really CPU limited at present and that DX12 might not offer much in terms of performance..  Right or wrong... 😉

[LRBS 944]

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Lockheed Martin said the same thing to me about 3 years ago when I suggested they move to from DX11 to DX12 ... and now that P3D is DX12, performance has increased significantly with more consistent frame time.

So Asobo suggesting this is simply false and most likely to do with having to manage VRAM and doing more work to make WASM libraries work with DX12.

Cheers, Rob.

I was afraid of that. At this point is up to the sim community, from what I see ASOBO (again) manage to disinform people taking advantage that very few know the real situation. The same with the misleading showcase before release or people jumping on others when they spotted that the aircraft flight characteristics are wrong and many other items.

It doesn't pay anymore to bring up discrepancies when there is such a rejection for improvement and denial of what is wrong. 

There is lot's of potential for this software but I'm afraid that ignorance and desire of arguing from some of us will hurt the evolution of the sim.

And if we try to remember (as you said Robert) when some of us complain about the optimization for the P3D and XP11 many where screaming bloody murder  that the sims are OK and it has nothing to do with it.

I'm afraid that the same people not knowing what is all about strike again today.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

13 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

But DX12 is a graphics API?  And MSFS is heavily GPU limited ... hence GPU hitting 100% utilization frequently.  Even more of a reason since it’s not CPU limited.

With Win10 new GPU scheduling support, it’s very clear DX12 will be a huge benefit.

I’d like to see how Asobo are coming up with such a claim, when the rest of the graphics development community has demonstrated clear advantages with DX12.

Cheers, Rob

Hi Rob,

Asobo has said that they will be moving to DX12... so we will all see the effects 🙂

[Ixoye 1,813]

Hyperthreading disabled make a 5fps performance drop for me with my I9 10900k.

[LRBS 944]

1 hour ago, Ixoye said:

Hyperthreading disabled make a 5fps performance drop for me with my I9 10900k.

Try if you could Turbo mode on  CMOS. Each system is different. 

[Ixoye 1,813]

7 hours ago, killthespam said:

Try if you could Turbo mode on  CMOS. Each system is different. 

I have try every different option available in my Bios, but Hyperthreading on with Intel Turbo + MSI Enhanced Turbo Mode gives me best performance, and that is the standard settings on my motherboard except XMP profile speed for Ram.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Ixoye

[TheFamilyMan 279]

On 10/11/2020 at 9:53 AM, Bert Pieke said:

Asobo did indeed say this at their last developer Q&A...

Their point was that MSFS is not really CPU limited at present and that DX12 might not offer much in terms of performance..  Right or wrong... 😉

If Asobo claims "MSFS is not really CPU limited at present", this is not the completely true.  All one needs to do if fly over a dense area, such as London, Paris, Los Angeles (downtown) using fully Ultra and the sim stutters hard even with a 2080 ti driving only 1080x1920 resolution.  If these areas are ignored, given an adequate computer the sim run fantastically for what it delivers, though IMO it is sort of FSX all over again in these few situations mentioned.  Also, pretty much every hardware site that now uses MSFS 2020 in their review suite calls out that at less than 2k res, MSFS 2020 is cpu bottlenecked.