Fenix and performance

[Bobsk8 12,722]

6 hours ago, dolbinau said:

Perhaps not what we mean by 'performance' but does anyone have any tips for landing the Fenix A320 at EGLC/London City? I'm guessing because it's not an A318 with the 'steep approach'/spoilers button it's quite hard to follow the glide slope at a stable speed...

In the real world, the A 320 couldn't legally  fly into EGLC, so I haven't even tried itt. 

[F737MAX 5,604]

1 minute ago, dolbinau said:

Hopefully they do an A318 one day

I hope so too! Such a lot of fun to fly into EGLC.

"Standby... Standby... Flare"

[molleh 451]

6 hours ago, JYW said:

I tried exactly this yesterday.   And I know exactly what you mean about the current performance making you less likely to choose it.   I am in exactly the same position.  I love the Fenix; it's amazing - we all know that.  But when I want to fly ATPL I rarely choose it over the PMDG737 because I know that although the fidelity is higher, the low FPS and stutters that I get will detract from (and often take away) the enjoyment.

I fly at 1440p and have always kept the render scale at 100 (other than some tests where I increased it or tried 1080p with a higher render scale etc).    So in a desperate bid to make the Fenix more usable for me (I know people hate that word; usable!), I tried a render scale of 70.   I noticed a disctinct increase in FPS / reduction in stutters, but with RS at 70 and resolution at 1440, the Fenix displays became really very blurry.  So alas it wasn't a 'goer' for me but worth a try. 🙂   I have to run the Fenix app on GPU (GTX1080Ti) as my CPU is my bottleneck (4790k 3.8Ghz) and my iGPU performance is the worst of all 3 options.

I'm interested in all this 'managing of the cores' stuff that people are doing, but I'm no expert in that field and it seems like a lot of tweaking to do to get the required performance.  I do use Process Lasso but haven't tweaked cores before - I really just use it for the generic Bitsum performance mode, and to set disallowed processes; so that daft things like Adobe Updater, Dropbox updater. etc. etc close as soon as I run it.

It would be fantastic if someone created an app / mod that automatically set optimum cores usage for the Fenix!  But I'm probably asking a bit much there.

honestly i just don't fly the Fenix into or out of the densest/heaviest scenery areas (KJFK/KLGA/KEWR/KBOS/KLAX etc) or the low frames really impact the enjoyment too much 😕 Hopefully the upcoming gen of Intel CPUs will live up to the hype and allow one to sort of "brute force" their way into acceptable performance w/ the Fenix.

Edited June 8, 2022 by molleh

[molleh 451]

*accidental double post, mod please delete if you see this 😉

Edited June 8, 2022 by molleh

[F737MAX 5,604]

8 minutes ago, molleh said:

honestly i just don't fly the Fenix into or out of the densest/heaviest scenery areas (KJFK/KLGA/KEWR/KBOS/KLAX etc) or the low frames really impact the enjoyment too much 😕 Hopefully the upcoming gen of Intel CPUs will live up to the hype and allow one to sort of "brute force" their way into acceptable performance w/ the Fenix.

With my 5800X3D CPU and 3080Ti GPU, in every scenario except for KORD during evening rush hour (extremely dense moving and parked traffic using PSXT and RealTraffic) and, weirdly, the freeware Hungary VFR airports and landmarks packs (with no traffic), the Fenix A320 has been butter smooth at 30 FPS, externally locked using NCP.

I have chosen to use the 4K livery textures, 'Balanced' display quality, higher resolution cockpit textures unchecked and render displays on the 3080Ti, running on a WQHD (3440 x 1440) monitor.
Only clouds and shadows are not set to ultra in the sim settings.

Perhaps it is my CPU blunt forcing its way through. I would give the high-end AMD CPUs a chance if a new-build PC is in your future later this year.

[molleh 451]

5 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

With my 5800X3D CPU and 3080Ti GPU, in every scenario except for KORD during evening rush hour (extremely dense moving and parked traffic using PSXT and RealTraffic) and, weirdly, the freeware Hungary VFR airports and landmarks packs (with no traffic), the Fenix A320 has been butter smooth at 30 FPS, externally locked using NCP.

I have chosen to use the 4K livery textures, 'Balanced' display quality, higher resolution cockpit textures unchecked and render displays on the 3080Ti, running on a WQHD (3440 x 1440) monitor.
Only clouds and shadows are not set to ultra in the sim settings.

Perhaps it is my CPU blunt forcing its way through. I would give the high-end AMD CPUs a chance if a new-build PC is in your future later this year.

your CPU is most definitely giving you a 'brute force' capability there, lol. yeah, i'm open to AMD processors as well, i've just been using Intel since like the late 90s and my K6-2 350 😛

[Michael Moe 495]

Thanks  , i am still in for a late 2022 build yet so will see about those AMD power allthough my FSX days still troubles my mind.

I am almost holding 70%/4K with my acceptable 25HZ with traffic not higher than 10% in the menu so its relative  big check to do for the extra 5 fps. 

Michael Moe 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Michael Moe

[Fiorentoni 4,224]

34 minutes ago, Michael Moe said:

Thanks  , i am still in for a late 2022 build yet so will see about those AMD power allthough my FSX days still troubles my mind.

I am almost holding 70%/4K with my acceptable 25HZ with traffic not higher than 10% in the menu so its relative  big check to do for the extra 5 fps. 

Michael Moe 

Absolutely go for an AMD CPU, they have much better single core performance and therfore are much better suited for flight sims.

[Bobsk8 12,722]

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

Absolutely go for an AMD CPU, they have much better single core performance and therfore are much better suited for flight sims.

I have an AMD CPU and it loafs along at around 30%, while running the Fenix A 320 in places like KATL.  

[Cpt_Piett 4,644]

11 hours ago, mac44 said:

thanks for the great guide!

already have lasso installed so I will try and use it....

1)firstly found the cpu avg volume - but what is that actually telling me - on my view it seems to make no reference core - just giving me a a number 2.46 or 0.35 related to a running .exe?(note most of my processes have all 8 cores ticked in affinisty by default)

Average CPU is pretty much average CPU use for various programs. It can help identify which programs use the CPU to a significant extent. What’s more interesting is average core use. AFAIK Lasso doesn’t display that. I use HWiNFO for that. 

11 hours ago, mac44 said:

2)also in lasso when I click on a process its gives me 4 different options CPU priority, CPU affinity, I/O priority and app power profile each with a current or always drop down - assume the one I need to focus on is CPU affinity which assume manages the cores? (can see also disable hyper threading (assume i keep this unchecked) running an i7 with 8 cores i think....

That’s right. CPU affinity then the “always” option for core assignment, then select the cores. I also have CPU high priority ticked for MSFS. Probably no point in disabling HT in Lasso. I have it disabled in the BIOS, but that’s just my preference.

[mac44 15]

23 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Average CPU is pretty much average CPU use for various programs. It can help identify which programs use the CPU to a significant extent. What’s more interesting is average core use. AFAIK Lasso doesn’t display that. I use HWiNFO for that. 

That’s right. CPU affinity then the “always” option for core assignment, then select the cores. I also have CPU high priority ticked for MSFS. Probably no point in disabling HT in Lasso. I have it disabled in the BIOS, but that’s just my preference.

actually already have HWinfo installed and gave it a try - but interestingly the MSFS.exe usage was very even split between all 8 cores! - any suggestions?

[Cpt_Piett 4,644]

9 hours ago, mac44 said:

actually already have HWinfo installed and gave it a try - but interestingly the MSFS.exe usage was very even split between all 8 cores! - any suggestions?

In that case it’s probably not worthwhile to set any affinities.

[mac44 15]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:16 AM, Cpt_Piett said:

In that case it’s probably not worthwhile to set any affinities.

assume you mean keep CPU affinity for MSFS and fenix unchanged (currently both are spread across the 8 cores?)

guessing it might be worth moving cpu and I/O priority to high for both apps also? (and keep HT unchanged - believe its currently on - but have no real need to disable in the bios)

[bigifooti 154]

On 6/8/2022 at 5:06 PM, Bobsk8 said:

In the real world, the A 320 couldn't legally  fly into EGLC, so I haven't even tried itt. 

Try LSZB Bern Belp. It's slightly steeper than normal (4 degrees) and not a lot of room to flare. And occasionally there is a IRL charter a320 into there as well. 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by bigifooti

[Cpt_Piett 4,644]

On 6/8/2022 at 5:44 PM, molleh said:

your CPU is most definitely giving you a 'brute force' capability there, lol. yeah, i'm open to AMD processors as well, i've just been using Intel since like the late 90s and my K6-2 350 😛

Intel here as well for at least the last decade. I’m quite happy with my rig at the moment, bu5 when the time comes for the next upgrade I’d be sure to look into AMD. 

Apparently the 13th gen of Intel, Raptor Lake, will launch in in Q3/Q4 this year.

https://www.techadvisor.com/article/743373/intel-raptor-lake-13th-gen-everything-we-know-so-far.html

“On the desktop side, it looks like the top-spec Core i9-13900K will turn things up a notch. According to Wccftech, it’ll consist of 24 cores and 32 threads, the most we’ve seen from an Intel CPU. It’ll also supposedly be able to reach an impressive maximum clock speed of 5.8GHz.”

Edited June 11, 2022 by Cpt_Piett