Greetings guys. First of all, I'm not the kind of guy who post everyday about wanting personal advises, but in this case, I feel only the community can help and understand.

I'm gonna resume the story quick, but I got into flight sim back in 2019 after seeing the first trailer for FS2020. I wanted to play it so bad that I decided to give FSX a whirl, and, well, one thing led to another, I got addicted to flight simming, moved to P3D, Orbx and payware airplanes pretty quickly.

When MSFS released last year, I wasn't happy with the performance and issues (especially autopilot issues), and decided it needed a little more time in the oven and I stuck with P3D.

Now, my goal was to have a new PC by the time I was ready to try MSFS again, but unfortunately, for a couple reasons, this hasn't happened yet, and the GPU shortage certainly did not help. My goal was to keep my current desktop for my music studio, and have a new one for gaming.

Ok, so now we are almost a year past the initial release, and it seems a lot of stuff has been ironed out, but the big game changer seems to be the performance upgrade coming on the 27th. I am now stuck with a big dilemma, and I would like advise on it. 

Basically, I have three choices, but first things first, here are my current specs:

Intel i5 4690K @ 4.5GHZ

32 GB RAM

GTX 1070 OC

Gaming at 1080P with a target FPS of around 35 for P3D and MSFS

My choices are:

1- Stick to my current PC, try the MSFS once again once the update rolls out. See if I can maintain a mostly stutter free 35 FPS 95% of the time. I will be flying both GA aircraft as well as the FlyByWire 320 neo. I don't plan on buying complex aircrafts, as I like the ability to use the built in flight planner and be on my way quickly, and the default aircrafts seems to be miles better than the Project Airbus mod I use in P3D. Please no judgement here, I know about FSL and Aerosoft Airbuses, but for performance and ease of use reasons I stick the project airbus as it definitely fits my need and I can still use ATC.

2-Skip MSFS for another 6 months or a year until I finally get around to have a new PC. This machine will be really powerful with an RTX 3080 (or TI) and a 10th generation Intel or 5th generation Ryzen.

3-Upgrade my current setup, by putting a better Ryzen or Intel CPU with 6 cores. This will require me to change my motherboard, RAM, and CPU, and will most likely end up using at least a third of the money for my new PC. I will then have to store the old MOBO CPU RAM somewhere, and will take away my option to buy a pre-made PC (really useful because there is no GPU shortage when buying pre-made PC).

Right now, I'm leaning toward giving MSFS a try with my current setup on July 27th. Sure, it might dip a little (or a lot) under 35FPS in big airports like JFK with big airliners, but it's not like Prepar3d is performing well in this scenario either, and I'm still using it fine, simply avoiding these big airports most of the time. So I'm thinking I could probably get away with this solution and have a solution on par (performance wise) with what I have in P3D.

 

Sorry for the long post, but flight simming is now a big part of my life and I take it seriously!

Thank you

 

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by Violins77

My system is pretty similar to yours but my monitor is 1440p (but with g-sync) so it is pretty close. Stick with MSFS. Your performance will be fine. Upgrade when possible. 

I have nearly the same PC as you except Ive got a GTX 1080 Ti.

It's not possible to get 35 fps and smooth all the time...I only get that in rural areas.

However, there is a new large improvement pack coming....maybe we'll be able to get those kinda fps everywhere.

I would just wait till you've got the cash to upgrade everything.

your last paragraph says it quite well ... just see how performance is after July 27th and then re think it.

maybe an X box in the future? (when they come back to reasonable prices)

5 hours ago, Violins77 said:

Sorry for the long post, but flight simming is now a big part of my life and I take it seriously!

Wait for the July 27th update.  If need be after July 27th, turn down the settings a little. Wait until the cost of GPUs comes down, which may happen in the second half of this year, but you can play MSFS in the meantime.  Then you can upgrade when GPUs are cheaper.

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by n4gix
Removed excessive quote!

i7 770K
RX 480, 8GB
16GB Ram

Settings: High-Medium

30-4fps

Plus, there is a huge performance update incoming end of July.

Before I bought the 3090 I was still running my 1070 - so I know that is still a strong card at 1080p.

stick for now and see how your rig performs with the update, I suspect your 1070 is probably pegged at or near 100% so I doubt you will see more frames, but those stutters and frame time issues will hopefully be greatly reduced.

 

 

I fly with a 1070 as well, and have fps set to 30 inside the sim.

With a 1080 monitor, my GPU never goes to 100% and the sim experience is smooth pretty much anywhere.

Mind you I fly GA aircraft..

So, I agree with the previous posts... start with your current system, it may well be a pleasant surprise!

BTW, keep P3D installed for those days where you want the avionics to work correctly..  Asobo (WT) are working on it, but they still have a ways to go..                 

 

11 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

BTW, keep P3D installed for those days where you want the avionics to work correctly..  Asobo (WT) are working on it, but they still have a ways to go..    

Amen to that!

Thank you all for all the responses, that was fast!

So far, you all seem to be confirming what I thought, which is to try and see if I get similar performance to P3D on July 27th, and that is the way I'm gonna go. 

To be honest, I don't think my GPU will be the limiting factor here, at 1080P with a couple settings turned down, it should holp up at 35 FPS, but it's my CPU that was absolutely murdered last time I tried, and it seems the performance patch is targeting exactly that, with things like threading for glass cockpits. So there is a chance it might work. Again, it's not like P3D is performing extremely well in airliners around big cities, so I'm willing to accept some sacrifices here.

And no, Xbox is out of the question. I have nothing against consoles, but my PC is more than a gaming platform to me, it's essentially half of my life, and I'm a long time modder, tweaker, and etc. 

Buy a new XBox X or S when you can find one. It'll be much cheaper and perfectly tuned to run MSFS out of the box.

 

Here's what I would do.

1)Go to FS2020 options,  "General",  go to the bottom and enable Developer mode.

2)Top left of screen a new toolbar will appear. 

3)Select the option to display FPS.

This will place a performance overlay in the top right corner of your monitor.  The overlay will show whether you're limited by CPU, GPU, or Main Thread.     More detail about it can be found in the following thread,

 

 

Edited July 4, 20214 yr by Waldo Pepper

Your first option is the correct one.

You can re evaluate after the update and see the cost benefit of upgrading afterwards.

1 hour ago, Violins77 said:

1- Stick to my current PC, try the MSFS once again once the update rolls out. See if I can maintain a mostly stutter free 35 FPS 95% of the time. I will be flying both GA aircraft as well as the FlyByWire 320 neo. I don't plan on buying complex aircrafts, as I like the ability to use the built in flight planner and be on my way quickly, and the default aircrafts seems to be miles better than the Project Airbus mod I use in P3D. Please no judgement here, I know about FSL and Aerosoft Airbuses, but for performance and ease of use reasons I stick the project airbus as it definitely fits my need and I can still use ATC.

Stick with this option 1, you'll do just fine.

MSFS scales pretty well to your hardware, and it will probably even better after the upcoming sim update. If you still have some performance issues, you can just stick to GA planes and less intense scenery areas.

There's no rush, you can always upgrade your system once hardware prices are more affordable to you. MSFS will still be there, and in the meantime, you can have a lot of fun with it even on a lower-spec system.

53 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

BTW, keep P3D installed for those days where you want the avionics to work correctly..  Asobo (WT) are working on it, but they still have a ways to go..                 

 

This scares me a little, as I don't like not knowing if I'm doing something wrong or if it is the sim acting up. How bad is it? Is the autopilote following the flight plan most of the time? I guess I can handle VNAV manually, but I would at least expect the plane to follow LNAV.