The holy grail...

[Noel 4,504]

10 hours ago, St Mawgan said:

Funny coincidence, mine is silky smooth too! 

Mine too--all I care about is being able to run realtime online traffic, the PMDG 738 with a TLOD of 400 at any arrival airport with essentially zero hitches/stutters/pauses.  I don't have that now but I certainly have silky smooth.  I would upgrade for that, and that is the only reason I would upgrade from my current hardware. 

[Greazer 1,325]

So does the Holy Grail System include SU11 plus latest Beta patch?  How much does the latest Beta Patch improve perf ?

[RaptyrOne 1,425]

10 hours ago, Noel said:

and right now they only happen if they do just before or during landing.

I don’t think this will go away completely any time soon, regardless of hardware. The odd stutters during the approach to land phase at more complex airports are induced when the sim loads in all the airport details based on both your LOD settings and those set by the scenery dev. Once that loads, the smoothness returns. If too many objects are being called to draw simultaneously on the approach, like ground vehicles, general airport clutter, AI aircraft, terminal interiors etc, there is a momentary spike demand on the system. Stutter is the result.

[St Mawgan 1,384]

This thread will look quite amusing in 2023 😊

[steve310002 1,198]

@Ianrivaldosmith When you ordered your Corsair HX PSU as part of your order from PC Specialist, did it come with a direct cable for the 4090 by default, or did you need to order that seperately?

Also, how well packaged and protected was the PC during shipping, especially given weight of the 4090?

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

12 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

@Ianrivaldosmith When you ordered your Corsair HX PSU as part of your order from PC Specialist, did it come with a direct cable for the 4090 by default, or did you need to order that seperately?

Also, how well packaged and protected was the PC during shipping, especially given weight of the 4090?

I needed to order the cable separately. I also sourced my own 4090, however even if they had of sourced one, it came immaculately packaged and arrived on a pallet! 

[bobcat999 8,484]

1 hour ago, St Mawgan said:

This thread will look quite amusing in 2023 😊

I am finding it quite amusing now, with some of the snipey comments (some smack of a tinge of jealousy it seems ) and malformed expectations.

It is easy to obtain 4k 60fps now in the sim with the newer hardware available, and the current (very good I think) state of the sim with DLSS etc. - all good.

But there are two types of stutters / pauses that people need to recognise: -

The first is when your hardware tops out; either the CPU or GPU are at 100% and can't go any further - this is easy to combat now with the latest hardware - if you have the money you can be rid of this, like Ian.

The second is due to poorly optimised scenery, and when loading (even from a fast NVMe drive).  If I take an outside view and pan through 360 degrees with a large and complex airport or city in the background, I can get a temporary pause For a split second.  It may only be a quarter of a second, but it tends to disrupt the immersion.  However, I fear we will have to live with these things until the software developers can get on top of it.  It is not hardware related.

My setup holds 60fps at 4k for 99.9% of the time, but DD Chicago scenery, when I am close, drops me down to about 15fps!   It is obvious there is a problem with that scenery, lots of people have this problem, but Drzewiecki Design, on their forums, say they can't replicate the issue at their end!   Meanwhile, Orbx London, even with the London City airport add-on, is totally fine. 

There will always be places like this, poorly optimsed, if we don't force the developers to optimise their work properly.  It totally trashes any money we spend on hardware (sometimes thousands as we know), and is a bit disrespectful or uncaring really. 
But that's fine - if I get my fingers burnt, I vote with my wallet after that! 

[Rocky_53 1,581]

Nice one Ian. Having said that, I would have been really miffed if I had not seen anything other than your experience with that setup!  What speed does it run out of the box? Do you have it OCd?

 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by Rockliffe

[St Mawgan 1,384]

33 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

@Ianrivaldosmith

Also, how well packaged and protected was the PC during shipping, especially given weight of the 4090?

PCSpecialist pack extremely well. Never had an issue with them or with DPD delivering it. I think this was my 5th system with them. 

[abrams_tank 7,426]

20 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

There will always be places like this, poorly optimsed, if we don't force the developers to optimise their work properly.  It totally trashes any money we spend on hardware (sometimes thousands as we know), and is a bit disrespectful or uncaring really.

Regarding the optimization of code, sometimes, it's not easy with architecture that has been written for decade(s).  The best way to describe this is a building with a very poor foundation.  Suddenly, the owner wants to add a new floor to the top of the building. This can be done if the building has a solid foundation. But what if the building has a very poor foundation? Then it becomes very difficult to add a new floor. But if the owner insists a new floor be added anyways, the only realistic solution is probably to bulldoze the building, and start from scratch with a solid foundation and architecture.  In software development, we say that "technical debt" accrues over time for a software project and the only way to eliminate that technical debt is to do a rewrite of the code and architecture.  But entire rewrites are very expensive, especially costing a lot of time, so most business executives often shy away from whole software rewrites, because they are under pressure to generate more revenue and profit, and rewriting the software may not yield a boost in revenue/profit in the short term.

Back to the topic of performance, I once debated with a cult member of another sim here, that their particular sim was probably using older architecture and that he shouldn't expect a huge boost in FPS when the new version of that sim was released.  Lo and behold, the new version of that sim was released not too long ago, and not surprisingly, the FPS was pretty much mediocre, when you turn all the settings to max, and play in 4K resolution.  The reason was, as I said, because that particular sim had accrued a lot of "technical debt" over the years. The only way that sim can perform as good as MSFS is if goes through a whole rewrite.

With MSFS, we are lucky that the architecture is somewhat newer, because MSFS has only been released for a little over 2 years. But I can guarantee you, if MSFS is a 10 year project, MSFS will also accrue a lot of technical debt by the 10th year.  If MSFS ever lasts to 10 years and Microsoft wants to make an MSFS 2, I think it's in Microsoft's best interest to do a rewrite of the code as well, if they plan to make an MSFS 2 down the road.

Edited November 20, 2022 by abrams_tank

[steve310002 1,198]

7 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

PCSpecialist pack extremely well. Never had an issue with them or with DPD delivering it. I think this was my 5th system with them. 

Thanks for the feedback (as well to @Ianrivaldosmith ).

I have previously received 2 PCs both delivered with broken GPUs that bent during delivery (from other suppliers) so I'm being extra cautious as I'm shipping to Switzerland. I'm just waiting until their 4090s are back in stock which is taking quite a long time. I don't like being in a queue with no idea when they'll have them back in stock. I must say I am tempted to order the 4090 seperately. 

[bobcat999 8,484]

9 hours ago, Ridvan Celik said:

I just put in the i9-13900K running with the 3080 and couldn't be happier. Runs hot though so do need to put a order for a bigger AIO. Keen on the 4xxx sometime next year.

This is really strange, and I have never done it before, but I noticed that MSFS tends to use just two cores / threads really heavily, even in DX12.  The other threads tend to just tick along.

So from the bios, I have disabled hyperthreading, and also deactivated all but 4 of the E-cores (just to run a few background processes).

I have found my performance in the sim is unchanged, still silky smooth, but my temperatures are a lot lower, so should stop any thermal throttling!

Your experience may vary of course, but one other benefit of this, is that I have heard the cache memory from disabled cores get share out amongst the active cores.  As we know by the AMD X3D chip results, MSFS responds massively to extra CPU cache.

Judging by what the task manager performance tab is telling me, other than the two main threads, the others don't do a lot and they are bumbling along at about 25-30%. 
So the next time I go into my bios (I don't like messing about a lot as it takes time), I am going for just 4 P-cores, and only 2 E-cores, to see what effect that has.  If the rumours are true, that should double the P-core cache.
Seems like MSFS is still very much single thread (main core) limited as we know.  If anything goes backwards, no problem, a simple reboot and back into the bios will put it back, so nothing to lose.

[andy1252 3,896]

I've also just upgraded/replaced my system, in my case I went for the R9 7900 rather than the 7950 simply because I'd been using an R9 3950 and inevitably saw most of the threads go to waste. So I'm running the 7900 with 64gb DDR5 (about 5400 I think from memory (no pun intended)) but I'm using a 3090ti as I only bought it earlier in the year and can't justify a 4090 or similar yet. Usual collection of M2 SSDs etc.

I'm getting a fairly consistent 60 FPS now if I'm out in the less complex areas. It's actually capped at that as I'm having to use HDMI on my monitor at the moment, not DisplayPort, so that "restricts" me to 60 hz anyway. I've only had a few test flights so far, but so far so (mostly) smooth. I also tried the 737 at the payware EGLL with just built in AI and was still getting between 30 and 40 frames on the runway and on take off, rising to 40-45 as I moved away from the airport and over (Orbx's) London. This is at 4k, TLOD at 300 and everything at Ultra. GPU mostly flat out, but main thread limited in spite of CPU running something under 20% overall (and at 5.3/5.4 Ghz), and no individual engine anywhere near 100% byh the look of the graph.

Which leads me to believe that the 3090ti is to all intents and purposes pretty much the equal of the 4090, apart from the frame doubling effect of DLSS3 (or whatever it is that provides that). Now it may be that a consistent 120fps really does feel that much smoother than 60 - I'm sure @Ianrivaldosmith would say so, and I'm not in a position to say one way or another, but the 60 I'm hitting now feels pretty fluid to me, so I'm very happy with that (for now <grin>). When I had the DisplayPort access working I was getting up to 70-75 in some quieter places in the sim, so I know the system is not flat out at 60.

I do still have some stuttering though, and like others here have said I'm sure it's a combination of badly setup addons and the p*ss-poor server performance that we get fairly regularly. I do only have moderate broadband connectivity at the moment (70 mbit) but once BT figures out how to plant a new telegraph pole in the ground down the road (it's taken them almost a year so far and they still can't manage it) I should get Gbit service so that may help smooth things out a bit as well.

Maybe by next summer I might consider a GPU upgrade, but I wanted to see how the AMD cards panned out plus let the 4090 settle down a bit anyway.

But I definitely agree with Ian, this latest generation of hardware is making this all feel pretty special. Makes me smile to remember how excited I got back in the day when I got my first 256 colour addin VGA card (which I seem to remember cost probably the equivalent of a 3090 today).

(Only downside for me with the new machine is Windows 11. Had it as an upgrade on the previous machine and it was fine. With a fresh install it's driving me nuts. Without me setting it to do so, it's stopping me doing all sorts of things. Tells me I can't save files in certains folders because I don't have permission! Just who's 'kin machine is it? Oh I remember - Microsoft's, apparently)

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

Nice one Ian. Having said that, I would have been really miffed if I had not seen anything other than your experience with that setup!  What speed does it run out of the box? Do you have it OCd?

 

 

I have an AMD XMD (I think it’s called that!) set in the bios to II, so it just does it all for me. Goes to about 5.7ghz under load and around 4.5 when idling. 

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

43 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Thanks for the feedback (as well to @Ianrivaldosmith ).

I have previously received 2 PCs both delivered with broken GPUs that bent during delivery (from other suppliers) so I'm being extra cautious as I'm shipping to Switzerland. I'm just waiting until their 4090s are back in stock which is taking quite a long time. I don't like being in a queue with no idea when they'll have them back in stock. I must say I am tempted to order the 4090 seperately. 

They will have them in stock mid December. If you go on the live chat, they can give you updates.