24 minutes ago, eaim said:

He was adamant that he was right and that I was wrong, we just agreed to disagree. Surely I'm right, what's your opinion?

Correct, the only advantages of GDDR6X are higher potential speeds and better efficiency than GDDR6 at the same speed. 512GB/s on RDNA 2 is pretty much on par with 760GB/s on Ampere thanks to the Infinity Cache, with only a very slight deficit at 4K resolution which could be solved with more Infinity Cache. It is the effective memory bandwidth that matters and not just the number, which can only be compared between GPUs of the same architecture (and in the case of RDNA 2, with the same amount of Infinity Cache).

A few older examples are Maxwell 1.0 and Pascal offering higher effective memory bandwidth than previous generations thanks to an L2 cache redesign and delta colour compression improvements respectively, and RDNA made several improvements over GCN 5.0 in that regard. The Vega 64 has 483,8GB/s bandwidth while the RX 5600 XT only 336GB/s, and yet they perform very similarly with Vega 64 being mostly bandwidth-limited.

Right now AMD's memory subsystem is a lot more smart and efficient, and Ampere is further held back by the power-hungry GDDR6X modules. This is one of the reasons the RTX 3090 is not allowed to truly flex, it keeps running into the power limit due to the 24GB VRAM. Once 16Gb GDDR6X modules are in production however, this situation should improve quite a lot, and it might be enough of a reason for NVIDIA to refresh the GeForce 30 series, along with the new GA102 bin and GA103.

Thanks for the clarification ChaoticBeauty.

6 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Unless you desperately need a new graphics card now, I would recommend waiting until the DirectX 12 update and relevant benchmarks are out, and hopefully the situation with the supply will be fixed by then. Otherwise, the RTX 3080 will give you superior performance now, but this could change once the DirectX 11 overhead is removed.

Sadly, I am in  "desperate need." My last PC build was 2011, after which I switched to iMacs. I therefore had to do a new build in August 2020 for MSFS. Unable to procure a cutting-edge GPU (which would very soon no longer be cutting-edge) for less than $1,400, I opted for a placeholder $135 RX 570 so that I could install the OS and the sim. I knew it wouldn't run FS on this otherwise-capable computer, but I hoped it would let me set up the controllers and familiarize myself with the interface. To my utter surprise, it runs the sim pretty well on "Medium" graphics. Also to my surprise, it was impossible to procure the new  GPUs of either flavor at their launch, so I've been tinkering with MSFS at 17 FPS for 4 long months now. (Yes, MSFS is playable at 17 FPS.)

Suddenly, my pre-order of an RTX 3080 came through. That card's in hand, but I haven't opened the box because I was just informed than a different pre-order of an AIB RX 6800 XT will ship in about 3 weeks. I cannot wait 7 months until DX 12 is implemented and benchmarks are available, but I guess I can wait 3 more weeks.

I very much appreciate all the discussion about my original question, but I'm still unsure about whether to open that shrink-wrapped 3080 box or to wait until January 7 for the 6800 XT.

What do you think??

7 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

 

 

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by milleron
duplicate reply

31 minutes ago, milleron said:

I very much appreciate all the discussion about my original question, but I'm still unsure about whether to open that shrink-wrapped 3080 box or to wait until January 7 for the 6800 XT.

I'd say just open that RTX 3080. Right now it performs better than the RX 6800 XT in the simulator, and my guess is that this happens because it's heavy on the main thread and NVIDIA's aggressive DirectX 11 overhead optimisation can make a difference in CPU-limited titles.

Of course this might change once the simulator is updated to DirectX 12, and historically AMD GPUs have been performing better than NVIDIA in DirectX 12 titles, and that holds true to an extent today as well. Which means the AMD GPU could be the better choice in the long run, but it's not guaranteed. However by opening that RTX 3080, you are guaranteed 7 months of better performance.

I will say though, if you're getting 17 FPS with an RX 570 on medium settings, something is wrong. I am running low-medium settings on a GTX 750, which is a much, much worse GPU than that, and I'm holding ~20 FPS most of the time. I cannot comment on performance around larger cities because of the I/O stutters though. Unless you are playing at 4K resolution or something, then that GPU is not suitable indeed.

23 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I'd say just open that RTX 3080. Right now it performs better than the RX 6800 XT in the simulator, and my guess is that this happens because it's heavy on the main thread and NVIDIA's aggressive DirectX 11 overhead optimisation can make a difference in CPU-limited titles.

Of course this might change once the simulator is updated to DirectX 12, and historically AMD GPUs have been performing better than NVIDIA in DirectX 12 titles, and that holds true to an extent today as well. Which means the AMD GPU could be the better choice in the long run, but it's not guaranteed. However by opening that RTX 3080, you are guaranteed 7 months of better performance.

I will say though, if you're getting 17 FPS with an RX 570 on medium settings, something is wrong. I am running low-medium settings on a GTX 750, which is a much, much worse GPU than that, and I'm holding ~20 FPS most of the time. I cannot comment on performance around larger cities because of the I/O stutters though. Unless you are playing at 4K resolution or something, then that GPU is not suitable indeed.

Thanks very much. I will do that. Even if the 6800 XT outperforms in DX 12, the  3080 may well be more than adequate for my needs. If not, sell it and get an AMD card; that upgrade would not break my bank.

I do not game at all and haven't touched FS in the "modern" era until now, so I'm naïve in these matters. I'm very surprised that 17 fps is considered to be subpar performance because I was surprised that such a card with only 4GB of VRAM could run MSFS at all. I am running it at 1440 but on an Ultrawide monitor with extra pixels to push. However, when I did the bench build, before installing the hardware into its case, it was connected to an old 21" 1080 monitor, and, IIRC, it was getting just 17 fps on that, too. I'm perplexed; I have been presuming that 17 fps is somewhat miraculous. (Perhaps of some interest is that when I changed one setting, "Buildings," to "ultra," the fps (as reported by FRAPS) remained at 17.)

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by milleron

3 minutes ago, milleron said:

Thanks very much. I will do that. Even if the 6800 XT outperforms in DX 12, the  3080 may well be more than adequate for my needs. If not, sell it and get an AMD card; that upgrade would not break my bank.

The RTX 3080 is pretty much top-end nowadays, only bested very slightly by the RTX 3090 and the RX 6900 XT at 4K resolution only, so it is very likely it will be more than adequate. If you find it is not, then waiting for at least the next generation would be the best approach, and we're in for a treat as both vendors will shrink their GPUs to a 5nm process and with AMD planning yet another 50% performance-per-Watt improvement with RDNA 3.

I do have my reservations about ray-tracing though, and seeing how Cyberpunk 2077 performs with today's GPUs, I feel that neither Ampere or RDNA 2 are suitable for ray-tracing at higher resolutions in next-generation games. That is a whole new can of worms though, and we will know a lot more in the summer.

7 minutes ago, milleron said:

However, when I did the bench build, before installing the hardware into its case, it was connected to an old 21" 1080 monitor, and, IIRC, it was getting just 17 fps on that, too. I'm perplexed. I have been presuming that 17 fps is somewhat miraculous. (Interestingly, when I changed one setting, "Buildings," to "ultra," the fps (as reported by FRAPS) remained at 17.)

Something was wrong. While the simulator can use more than 4GB VRAM at medium settings and 1080p, it just shouldn't be dropping that many frames. For instance my GTX 750 only has 2GB VRAM, which is consistently exceeded even at the lowest settings, and I'm only getting stutters when limited by I/O or my connection. Otherwise, a quite stable 20 FPS.

Put "Microsoft Flight Simulator RX 570" on YouTube and you'll see how the card is supposed to perform. Of the top three results, two are using the 8GB version and one the 4GB version. Performance at 1080p and medium settings seems very satisfactory.

The Terrain/Objects Level of Detail and Buildings settings are mostly CPU-bound, and since you already have a capable CPU, I would turn them up. Weird situation about the GPU though. Do you have any other game you could test? Are you on the latest drivers?

On 12/19/2020 at 5:53 AM, omarsmak30 said:

Definitely I don't think the implementation of DX12 in MSFS will be similar to P3D, MSFS is an AAA title and Asobo have the experience to optimize it, don't forget they need this optimizations for XBox serious X/S. Also I wouldnt be surprised if in the sim you can choose which DX version you want to run, I have seen that common in few games.

Well, the new Xbox has 16GB of VRAM so if it's optimized for that those with less will be screwed until they upgrade to at least 16. 

 

This, of course, doesn't account for high end Add-on AP's that require additional VRAM with all those PBR textues!

wait and see if the console versions will have everything like the pc version,

a good example is the new game Cyberfun 2077 a Direct X 12 game.

It runs great on my PC but read on the net whats happening right now on the consoles...

Edited December 20, 20205 yr by Nedo68
typo

On 12/19/2020 at 12:33 PM, ChaoticBeauty said:

The Terrain/Objects Level of Detail and Buildings settings are mostly CPU-bound, and since you already have a capable CPU, I would turn them up. Weird situation about the GPU though. Do you have any other game you could test? Are you on the latest drivers?

Like I  said, I don't game at all, so no other program to test with, but I do have the very latest Radeon software and driver.

I did review the YouTube videos you mentioned. I think my game rate is explained by the fact that, as a beginner, I'm spending all my time at very low altitudes practicing landings. When the YouTubers do that with 4GB cards, they get only 24 FPS at 1080 on standard-aspect monitors. I think that's pretty comparable to my performance at 1440 on an ultrawide. At high altitude, the demands on the card are much reduced, I think. Before I run DDU and install the 3080, I'll test it at 5,000 ft. and, perhaps, at 1080 and report the FPS.

Edited December 22, 20205 yr by milleron

If it is any consolation,  MSFS is not the only game suffering performance issue at 4K on the latest hardware:

 

6 hours ago, milleron said:

I did review the YouTube videos you mentioned. I think my game rate is explained by the fact that, as a beginner, I'm spending all my time at very low altitudes practicing landings. When the YouTubers do that with 4GB cards, they get only 24 FPS at 1080 on standard-aspect monitors. I think that's pretty comparable to my performance at 1440 on an ultrawide.

At 1440p a 4GB GPU would be very constrained indeed, but if you were also getting 17 FPS at 1080p then there was a problem. In that video with the 4GB variant the frame rate did not go below 23 when flying dangerously close to the ground, and was 30+ in the airport with medium settings. It will be interesting to hear your results with the RTX 3080.

9 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

If it is any consolation,  MSFS is not the only game suffering performance issue at 4K on the latest hardware:

 

This performance chart was taken with Ray Tracing on Ultra. Ray Tracing on Ultra + 4k is performance killer. This is why Nvidia has implemented the DLSS.

So, it’s not so fair to compare CP 2077, with Ray Tracing at Ultra, with MSFS.

13 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

This performance chart was taken with Ray Tracing on Ultra. Ray Tracing on Ultra + 4k is performance killer. This is why Nvidia has implemented the DLSS.

So, it’s not so fair to compare CP 2077, with Ray Tracing at Ultra, with MSFS.

I Run Cyberpunk all max'ed out setting and DLSS set to quality, FPS never drop below 60 1440p. FPS locked at 60.

Looks stunning and its a fantastic game 68 hours logged. Use NVCP to set grain to 1 and it gets rid of all the grain. Runs and plays like a dream.

Edited December 22, 20205 yr by Nyxx

2 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

I Run Cyberpunk all max'ed out setting and DLSS set to quality, FPS never drop below 60 1440p. FPS locked at 60.

Looks fantastic and its a fantastic game 65 hours logged. Use NVCP to set grain to 1 and it get rid of all the grain.

Sure, it’s possible to run it fine. Which I meant is with Ray Tracing off it would run way above 60 FPS @4k and ultra settings.