Prepar3D v5.3 released

[kevinfirth]

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

An update to my v5.3 experience. This morning before doing any updates I checked my fps using the 737NGXu at  Heathrow. The fps were quite a bit lower (high 50s versus low 60s). Baffling. But I then wondered if the length of the test was a factor. The FSUIPC log shows the length of the test but unfortunately I didn't note that on the 5.2 tests yesterday.

So I started the 360 degree rotation only when the PMDG countdown counter hit zero and then terminated P3D as soon as two rotations had been completed. Did the test three times and the fps ranged from 58.3 to 59.1.

That's below yesterday's but still a 10% improvement which seems more believable.

I then enabled Hyperthreading and kept my overclocking speeds the same (5.2 on 3; 4.9 on the other 3).

No difference on the Heathrow test so I decided on a flight from Vancouver to SFO. Filthy weather departing Vancouver and fps dropped below 20 briefly.

But less than 10 miles south of the airport the computer froze with the buzzing I've had before. But this time it didn't stop and around 20 secs later a BIOS / Asus Suite message appeared saying a problem had occurred.

It must have been the HT being on with the same overclocked speeds. I disabled HT and restarted the flight. All's well so far so HT is not an option for me as it seems Asus SUITE cannot overclock on virtual cores, only actual ones.

It also confirms that on the rare occasion when I get the freezing / buzzing on my earlier flights it was probably an oveclocking issue. If it becomes more frequent I'll dial back 5.2 to 5.1 manually.

With your 6 cores my choice would be to use HT on and back off the overclock a little. You're unlikely to notice too much impact from a couple hundred MHz less.

My 10850k is set to run at 5.2Ghz minus 100mhz (5.1) on all cores when P3D is active.  It crashes at 5.2 but is stable at 5.1. I dont know what core voltage you're using but mines at 1.405v quite happily with temps in the 70s at load, maybe you could eke out a little more stability at high clocks with a bit more juice?

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 minute ago, kevinfirth said:

With your 6 cores my choice would be to use HT on and back off the overclock a little. You're unlikely to notice too much impact from a couple hundred MHz less.

But the fps in my Heathrow test was unchanged with it on. Convince me it will improve things.

[kevinfirth]

3 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But the fps in my Heathrow test was unchanged with it on. Convince me it will improve things.

It's not just FPS you need to concern yourself with, it's the impact on frame times whilst flying and the smoothness and speed of scenery loading.  HT on may give you a better overall experience with fewer or no stutters, but your present test won't reveal that. At the end of the day it's all easily revertible if you dont like how a configuration works out, so nothing to lose by giving something different a try.  On the counter side, if you don't try, you'll never know.

[kevinfirth]

6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But the fps in my Heathrow test was unchanged with it on. Convince me it will improve things.

@SteveW has shown in the past how monitoring loading times for the exact same scenario under different configurations using Ideal Flight can show performance differences and help identify quantitively what the most efficient settings for your situation can be.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Kevin, I've had HT off for a few months and P3D has been fine albeit with the exception of the occasional buzzing / freezing which I now know is due to excessive overclocking.

I'm happy with how things are with HT Off. If LM come back with definitve news that HT ON will definitely give better results I may be tempted.

But to be honest with you this debate about on or off is becoming tiring. When I had it enabled people would say it increases heat so off might be better.

Yes, I'll never know if I'll get slightly better load times with it on but quite honestly I'm beyond caring. I just want to fly.

[Johnny19]

Fellas I need some input here, despite nice fps and overall smoothness i get periodical sim freezes, what are the most common culprits here? FSUIPC doesn't autosave, simlink is off, AIG traffic controller is not an issue.

What else can cause micro pauses? 

[kevinfirth]

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I'm happy with how things are with HT Off. If LM come back with definitve news that HT ON will definitely give better results I may be tempted.

But to be honest with you this debate about on or off is becoming tiring. When I had it enabled people would say it increases heat so off might be better.

Yes, I'll never know if I'll get slightly better load times with it on but quite honestly I'm beyond caring. I just want to fly.

Ok but LM will never say that, because it depends on a combination of factors including your hardware, use case and expectations, which they have no control over.

HT can increase heat, but this is just an indication of the amount of work your CPU is doing.  More heat = more work, resulting either as higher FPS or better scenery loading (less blurries etc).  It only becomes an issue if the temp levels are TOO high, affecting the o/c.  Most ppl who opine on AM and HT haven't a clue I'm afraid, so I would recommend you discount all the opinions you read unless they are from a professional who understands the subject thoroughly. @SteveW😉

Load times aren't an end in themselves, just an indication that your system will perform better when flying, but when all's said and done, if you're happy without going all out to get a better result, that's entirely your decision 

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

This taken from a post by Beau Hollis over at LM...

”We don't really have enough data yet to say XYZ setting will work better. Part of adding these options is to enable the community to experiment with them and report back to us with your findings. If the community discovers a combination of settings that is better across a broad range of hardware, we'll be happy to receive that feedback and tweak the defaults.”

So they are relying on experts to suggest what would be best. That’s not for me since I’m no expert. I’ll stick with what works for me.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Johnny19 said:

Fellas I need some input here, despite nice fps and overall smoothness i get periodical sim freezes, what are the most common culprits here? FSUIPC doesn't autosave, simlink is off, AIG traffic controller is not an issue.

What else can cause micro pauses? 

Set monitor to 30Hz if it’s capable and enable VSync. That makes it as smooth as possible but there’ll still be a few.

[Johnny19]

8 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Set monitor to 30Hz if it’s capable and enable VSync. That makes it as smooth as possible but there’ll still be a few.

Thanks Ray, my Asus can go only to 50Hz the lowest. 

[Ray Proudfoot]

5 minutes ago, Johnny19 said:

Thanks Ray, my Asus can go only to 50Hz the lowest. 

Therein lies the problem. You can manipulate the refresh rate to 30Hz with Nvidia control panel. I’m sure someone can assist with that.

[SteveW]

Let's say you're capping or vsyncing a limit of 30fps and you're getting 50fps in an uncapped test and you can squeeze an extra 2-3fps by turning off HT and increasing the CPU clocking - it's not helping - especially if there are CTDs creeping in. Instead, looking for the smoothest consistent time between frames and not dropping below 30fps in complex areas in the sim is a better choice.

If the time to load the sim is shorter then it stands to reason that loading new data is more efficient as we fly across the lands. However if we allocate the entire system bandwidth to loading new data this can upset the fluidity of the main tasks , so a balance is required. That's a balance that doesn't require the absolute maximum unfettered fps to be available.

The new affinity settings allow us to place the most important time critical tasks on cores that are free of other processes and as usual we can allocate a remaining number of cores to loading new data for the most efficient balance. Loading performance might include utilising HT cores to double up loading tasks for increased loading performance without using more physical cores (and that can help reduce unwanted heat). 

[TurboKen]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Kevin, I've had HT off for a few months and P3D has been fine albeit with the exception of the occasional buzzing / freezing which I now know is due to excessive overclocking.

I'm happy with how things are with HT Off. If LM come back with definitve news that HT ON will definitely give better results I may be tempted.

But to be honest with you this debate about on or off is becoming tiring. When I had it enabled people would say it increases heat so off might be better.

Yes, I'll never know if I'll get slightly better load times with it on but quite honestly I'm beyond caring. I just want to fly.

If you are still having occasional freezing with HT off I would consider lowering your clocks from 5.2 down to 5.1. Its a very easy change in the bios. Even for an 8086 chip you are really pushing it to its max. FPS wise I doubt you would even notice a difference.

[SteveW]

The question was asked about AffinityMask vs P3DCoreAffinityMask; a "wider" or "expanded" AffinityMask  than the P3DCoreAffinityMask, allows the simulator to run other processes on more cores than the P3DCoreAffinityMask set up which allocates LPs (or cores) for the main tasks and limits the split out of loading tasks. When allocating the three main tasks, Main, Render and FrameWorker, it might not be possible to reorder them in some configurations, check carefully how things look in the Task Manager graphs.

[Johnny19]

12 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Therein lies the problem. You can manipulate the refresh rate to 30Hz with Nvidia control panel. I’m sure someone can assist with that.

Thanks Ray, I'll check it out. I will also try deleting shaders and p3d.cfg, because yesterday I didn't have these pauses. Something is definitely amiss