Worth it to upgrade to a RTX 4090 for MSFS?

[turbomax 3,285]

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Overall better performance, 27% better average fps on that flight

was that pure rasterization? no DLSS 3 ? no FSLTL? I guess your 4090 is looking forward to a beefy CPU upgrade in Q1 2023.

[Cpt_Piett 4,641]

3 hours ago, turbomax said:

was that pure rasterization? no DLSS 3 ? no FSLTL? I guess your 4090 is looking forward to a beefy CPU upgrade in Q1 2023.

Thats right, no DLSS3.

I wasn’t able recreate the exact same conditions though. Live weather in both, first flight heavy low cloud coverage vs fair weather in 2nd flight. Should have used a weather preset in both. First flight RealTraffic vs real-time online in 2nd (couldn’t get RT working for some reason). 

CPU upgrade? Nah, I went up 2 CPU generations this summer. 

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

4 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Thats right, no DLSS3.

I wasn’t able recreate the exact same conditions though. Live weather in both, first flight heavy low cloud coverage vs fair weather in 2nd flight. Should have used a weather preset in both. First flight RealTraffic vs real-time online in 2nd (couldn’t get RT working for some reason). 

CPU upgrade? Nah, I went up 2 CPU generations this summer. 

So, in your opinion, was the 4090 worth it? 
 

still waiting on my new build. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,641]

27 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

So, in your opinion, was the 4090 worth it?. 

Too early to tell. Performance improvement just from rasterization is not mind-blowing. Need to do more tests in DLSS3. 

You got a 13900K? Or did you go team red?

Edited October 18, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

20 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Too early to tell. Performance improvement just from rasterization is not mind-blowing. Need to do more tests in DLSS3. 

You got a 13900K? Or did you go team red?

Team red 7950X for the higher L3 cache. Hoping the bet pays off for 2 reasons 

1.) X3D release 

2.) higher L3 cache in 7950 brings better smoothness over 13900K

[steve310002 1,198]

2 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Team red 7950X for the higher L3 cache. Hoping the bet pays off for 2 reasons 

1.) X3D release 

2.) higher L3 cache in 7950 brings better smoothness over 13900K

What do you make of yesterday's story doing the rounds that Windows scheduler is preventing Ryzen 7000s chips from delivering their full performance potential? I hope Microsoft and AMD get their act together and come up with a quick fix. We may not have even seen yet how powerful the Ryzen 7000 series is because of this or so it seems.

https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-11-amd-performance-ccd/

Edited October 18, 2022 by steve310002

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

30 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

What do you make of yesterday's story doing the rounds that Windows scheduler is preventing Ryzen 7000s chips from delivering their full performance potential? I hope Microsoft and AMD get their act together and come up with a quick fix. We may not have even seen yet how powerful the Ryzen 7000 series is because of this or so it seems.

https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-11-amd-performance-ccd/

Never even knew of this so thanks for the link and I’ll check it out! 

[Cpt_Piett 4,641]

I've done some more testing, now with DLSS3. Completed the same flight as in earlier posts (KAVX-KLAX in the analog King Air).

Overall impression DLSS3: Fps are roughly doubled, performance is generally smooth. It won't do any magic in severely mainthread-limited situations though, as can be seen in the video below. As for the visual artifacts - they're definitely there. How distracting they are is probably a very personal thing - they're not game-breaking for me. 

Some stats comparing the same flight 3090 DLSS2 vs 4090 DLSS3:

3090:

4090:

3090:

4090:

Video showing an ILS approach into KLAX 24L in the King Air. Sorry the video is so dark - it's because of HDR. 

I also started the Fenix at iniBuild's Heathrow. Getting quite amazing fps and smoothness with DLSS3. 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[turbomax 3,285]

28 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Video showing the final stages of an ILS approach into 24L in the King Air.

thanks very much for your exhaustive wind tunnel tests. the proverbial CapFramX pictures worth a 1.000 words.

but how come only 20 fps with 4090 at KLAX on the ground? doesn't that suggest you need more CPU power rather than GPU? if anything it is a clear indication for the MSFS architecture to offload as much 3rd party code as possible outside the main game loop. traffic needs to either be handled by Asobo and outsourced onto the GPU -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_computing_on_graphics_processing_units or run on a CPU core separate from the main program loop core.

otherwise we keep throwing $ 2.000 at the sim with only sub-optimal performance improvements. and as travelrunner has shown before, MSFS will not benefit much from a 4090 in these CPU heavy situations that are not graphic intense: complex aircraft and traffic, something DLSS3 won't help with and something JenSen deliberately did not use during that Nvidia press conference. similar to a chess simulator - we need still more multi threading and raw CPU power before anything else. unfortunately I am not that much into Cyberpunk 2077 etc. that's where DLSS 3 really shines. 😊

[Cpt_Piett 4,641]

1 hour ago, turbomax said:

but how come only 20 fps with 4090 at KLAX on the ground? doesn't that suggest you need more CPU power rather than GPU?

Absolutely. As you can see I'm severely main thread limited (or rather my rig is). Fenix has a clever way of doing it with giving the choice of rendering the displays on the GPU. 

1 hour ago, turbomax said:

as travelrunner has shown before, MSFS will not benefit much from a 4090 in these CPU heavy situations that are not graphic intense: complex aircraft and traffic

Yes, I think my tests are pretty consistent with his. It's not all bad though, if you can stand the artifacts, you'll definitely see a performance increase even in these most demanding situations due to DLSS3. I don't care if the frames are fake or real - I'll take the extra fps at Heathrow with live traffic and FSLTL and AIG models in the Fenix. In other situations I might prefer "regular" DLSS - or TAA for sharpness. There's a lot of choices with this GPU, which is a good thing. 

Oh - and the MSI 4090 has an adapter with only 3x8-pins. So I just use my 3-4 year old Corsair 850W, which only has 3xPCIe connections. 

And if you ask me if I'm happy with the 4090 purchase: actually, yes, I am  🙂

That's how the build turned out. Not as slick as the previous one with the watercooled 3090. But at least now my CPU gets 2x360 rads all by itself. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[turbomax 3,285]

9 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

And if you ask me if I'm happy with the 4090 purchase: actually, yes, I am

Excellent! according to Paul's hardware:

https://www.youtube.com/c/paulshardware

[turbomax 3,285]

16 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

As you can see I'm severely main thread limited

thanks to your unbiased and honest CapFramX wind tunnel tests: here my conclusions:

use minimal Traffic tools, mostly GA flying. enjoy Nvidia driver version 522.25, look  forward to 40th anniversary edition, that will keep us all busy until Ryzen 7950x3D or Intel Metro Lake impact next spring.

[Cpt_Piett 4,641]

Just now, turbomax said:

thanks to your unbiased and honest CapFramX wind tunnel tests: here my conclusions:

use minimal Traffic tools, mostly GA flying. enjoy Nvidia driver version 522.25, look  forward to 40th anniversary edition, that will keep us all busy until Ryzen 7950x3D or Intel Metro Lake impact next spring.

Excellent advice sire, I agree. Too much time is spent tweaking and adjusting stuff (although I enjoy that too), and worrying about low fps 'cause of a gadzillion addons. Now I'm off to just do a relaxing sightseeing flight in NZ. I think I'll take the Vertigo this time. Yeah, the need for speed 😎

 

[pgde 571]

4 minutes ago, turbomax said:

thanks to your unbiased and honest CapFramX wind tunnel tests: here my conclusions:

use minimal Traffic tools, mostly GA flying. enjoy Nvidia driver version 522.25, look  forward to 40th anniversary edition, that will keep us all busy until Ryzen 7950x3D or Intel Metro Lake impact next spring.

That is Meteor Lake. See https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-meteor-lake-news-rumors-specs-release-date/

[turbomax 3,285]

43 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

That's how the build turned out

one can literally feel the heat glow adjacent to the middle fan 😊. do you realize the GPU  burns more than 200 amps? compared to your typical 16 amps house fuse 😊

yes we know, only at 1.2 volts or thereabout. 😊