RTX 4080 - Frame Generation with G-Sync - some advice

[Republic3D 1,232]

6 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

Thanks, and you have answered a question I asked in another thread some time ago, which was...

As all 4000 series cards have frame generation, do I really need to buy a 4090 (at 4090 prices), or will a 4080 be sufficient (at around 60-70% of the price of a 4090).  Seems like it is, easily.

For my use, the 4080 is definitely more than enough. 

In pure rasterization, the 4080 seems to be about 35-45% faster than the 3090. And around 25-35% faster than the 3090TI.
It draws way less power than the 3090TI, and if you're looking at Watt per FPS it's a home run for the 4080 as well.

The Frame Generation is definitively the magic sauce in the recipe this generation. You get the added rasterization performance, and then you double that. That's unheard of. And yes, it definitively feels super smooth.
Even if FG some day becomes available on the 3000 series, I do not believe it will be as effective or smooth because the 4000 series has additional hardware to pull this magic trick off. 

Imagine having the issue that your GPU spits out more frames than your monitor can handle. That's where we're at right now. And we're talking about Microsoft Flight Simulator which is one of the more demanding sims / games there are.

What I'm curious about is how the 4070 and the 4070 Ti (the renamed 4080 12 GB they cancelled) will handle frame generation. It might have the same hardware for FG, and if the rasterization is on par with a 3090 or 3090 ti, it should be a good candidate as well.

[Noel 4,502]

14 minutes ago, Republic3D said:

And yes, it definitively feels super smooth.
Even if FG some day becomes available on the 3000 series, I do not believe it will be as effective or smooth because the 4000 series has additional hardware to pull this magic trick off. 

My sense is that MOST have not experienced "perfect" smoothness and when they then install FG capability, they finally do.  I'm here to tell everyone not willing to cough out $1500+ that if you have 3080 or equivalent, at 3440x1440, perfect smoothness is already highly doable:  it all comes down to getting perfect frametime variance with a 'sufficient' frame rate.  Having experienced near zero FTV at 70FPS I can attest it's largely identical, the 'smoothness' feel piece, when you have near zero FTV even at 35FPS.  I would love to have a double-blinded test of this versus FG at 80FPS or whatever.  There comes a point at which higher frame rate stops adding more smoothness and it's well below 80.  Why do I say that?  Because I've experienced it at 70FPS w/ near zero FTV thru my approach and it also is perfectly smooth--just as the 40FPS is upon approach into LBSF in the screenshot below.  There is an inverse relationship between FR and FTV such that the higher FR gets the less critical FTV becomes which makes high FR the place to go if you can afford or wish to shell out $1500 to do it--but you don't need to.  This post is only for those not (yet) willing to move to 4080/4090.  I'm certainly not interested I'm already mainthread limited and already have perfect smoothness.  I do see a 7900x3D in my future next year sometime.

Can you believe the detail in this default night-lit Sofia, Bulgaria?  When did this start happening?  I don't do tons of night flights but this one blew me away:

[BillStewart 3]

Hi, I'm getting ready to upgrade my pc to a 13700 and 4080.  I have an older dell 34 ultrawide 60hz monitor.  Do you all think I should upgrade to a g-sync ultra monitor?  Or will the old Dell at 60hz work fine?

 

Thanks

Bill

[Noel 4,502]

Just now, BillStewart said:

Hi, I'm getting ready to upgrade my pc to a 13700 and 4080.  I have an older dell 34 ultrawide 60hz monitor.  Do you all think I should upgrade to a g-sync ultra monitor?  Or will the old Dell at 60hz work fine?

 

Thanks

Bill

Yes on Gsync, no on Ultra--that piece costs nearly double straight Gsync (not Gsync Compatible) and offers only HDR600 which quite frankly does not belong in MSFS near as I can tell at least I haven't found it useful.

[Republic3D 1,232]

34 minutes ago, BillStewart said:

Hi, I'm getting ready to upgrade my pc to a 13700 and 4080.  I have an older dell 34 ultrawide 60hz monitor.  Do you all think I should upgrade to a g-sync ultra monitor?  Or will the old Dell at 60hz work fine?

 

Thanks

Bill

If I were you, I would upgrade the computer as planned, and see if you're happy with your old monitor. It might be amazing as it is. 
But there is definitely a big leap with a G-Sync monitor. Just remember there are three G-Sync versions: The G-Sync Compatible (which enables G-Sync when the framerate is above 40 or 60), the "old" G-Sync (which enables G-Sync from 1 frame and up), and then G-Sync Ultimate which also works from 1 FPS and up, but has HDR, ultra low latency and all of those things in addition to it. 
For my use, I'm super happy with my old G-Sync 34" 3440x1440 100 Hz monitor. G-Sync does make a difference.

[BillStewart 3]

thanks for the input/recommendations!

[Cpt_Piett 4,652]

I've had the 4090 for more than a month now. Initially there was a lot of talk about the image distortions that FG introduces. It's not a huge deal for me - most of the time I don't notice it. Even though fps are effectively doubled, I still try to reduce the load on the main thread, to reduce FTV and stutters as much as possible. To do this I'm reducing the amount of AI traffic with FSLTL, running a TLOD of 150, glass cockpit refresh rate of medium etc etc. 

[Republic3D 1,232]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

My sense is that MOST have not experienced "perfect" smoothness and when they then install FG capability, they finally do.  I'm here to tell everyone not willing to cough out $1500+ that if you have 3080 or equivalent, at 3440x1440, perfect smoothness is already highly doable:  it all comes down to getting perfect frametime variance with a 'sufficient' frame rate.  Having experienced near zero FTV at 70FPS I can attest it's largely identical, the 'smoothness' feel piece, when you have near zero FTV even at 35FPS.  I would love to have a double-blinded test of this versus FG at 80FPS or whatever.  There comes a point at which higher frame rate stops adding more smoothness and it's well below 80.  Why do I say that?  Because I've experienced it at 70FPS w/ near zero FTV thru my approach and it also is perfectly smooth--just as the 40FPS is upon approach into LBSF in the screenshot below.  There is an inverse relationship between FR and FTV such that the higher FR gets the less critical FTV becomes which makes high FR the place to go if you can afford or wish to shell out $1500 to do it--but you don't need to.  This post is only for those not (yet) willing to move to 4080/4090.  I'm certainly not interested I'm already mainthread limited and already have perfect smoothness.  I do see a 7900x3D in my future next year sometime.

 

I appreciate the "other" side of the argument, I agree with most of what you're saying. 
I had an RTX 3090, and I had a very fluid and smooth experience with G-Sync and V-Sync enabled. 45 FPS feels smooth. 
Frame time definitely matters, but frame time is also tighter with the 4080 than with the 3090. 
On my setup right now, 70 FPS feels smoother than 85 FPS. Less tearing both vertically and horizontally. But I believe that's my old monitor being a bit difficult. 

Where Frame Generation really shines is when your system can't deliver enough frames to bring a fluid experience. Many of us are CPU / Main Thread limited, especially in complex scenery an with complex airliners. What Frame Generation does at that point is inserting frames so that your 35 FPS at Heathrow feels like 70 FPS. That makes a difference.
FG kind of is a shortcut around the CPU limit, without having to upgrade the entire system (CPU, Motherboard, RAM) to the latest generation, at least with regards to Microsoft Flight Simulator. 

In my case, I sold my RTX 3090 and bought the lowest priced RTX 4080 I could find. I had to pay about 50% more for about 40% more rasterization performance. About €500 investment. But with FG, the performance difference is staggering.
Another point; my old RTX 3090 in Performance mode used up to 450 W and was going at full speed, creating a lot of noise and heat. 85C GPU temp is common.
The 4080 I bought has the 4090 cooler, a gigantic heatpipe and fin system. It's refusing to get above 65C GPU temp, and is usually around 55-60C in the sim. The fans are spinning at around 32% and it's completely silent.
 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Republic3D

[Donka 645]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

My sense is that MOST have not experienced "perfect" smoothness and when they then install FG capability, they finally do.  I'm here to tell everyone not willing to cough out $1500+ that if you have 3080 or equivalent, at 3440x1440, perfect smoothness is already highly doable:  it all comes down to getting perfect frametime variance with a 'sufficient' frame rate.  Having experienced near zero FTV at 70FPS I can attest it's largely identical, the 'smoothness' feel piece, when you have near zero FTV even at 35FPS.  I would love to have a double-blinded test of this versus FG at 80FPS or whatever.  There comes a point at which higher frame rate stops adding more smoothness and it's well below 80.  Why do I say that?  Because I've experienced it at 70FPS w/ near zero FTV thru my approach and it also is perfectly smooth--just as the 40FPS is upon approach into LBSF in the screenshot below.  There is an inverse relationship between FR and FTV such that the higher FR gets the less critical FTV becomes which makes high FR the place to go if you can afford or wish to shell out $1500 to do it--but you don't need to.  This post is only for those not (yet) willing to move to 4080/4090.  I'm certainly not interested I'm already mainthread limited and already have perfect smoothness.  I do see a 7900x3D in my future next year sometime.

Can you believe the detail in this default night-lit Sofia, Bulgaria?  When did this start happening?  I don't do tons of night flights but this one blew me away:

While I agree with what you are saying, for me personally, as soon as I add in head tracking, I need the extra frames to maintain that smoothness when flying. It's one thing to be sitting static in an aircraft as it flies along but when you are panning your view around, extra frames make all the difference. I'm more than happy with my current performance ~75fps @ 3440x1440 but keeping one eye on the new GPUs for the future as I consider a move to VR.

[Gilandred 690]

1 hour ago, BillStewart said:

Hi, I'm getting ready to upgrade my pc to a 13700 and 4080.  I have an older dell 34 ultrawide 60hz monitor.  Do you all think I should upgrade to a g-sync ultra monitor?  Or will the old Dell at 60hz work fine?

 

Thanks

Bill

By far one of the best investments I’ve made is my LG C1 48” OLED monitor.  Your new system will be more than capable of handling the 4K resolution with most settings maxed out.  The biggest difference is night time flying - no more backlight bleed with an LED monitor.  Dark is truly dark!

[Noel 4,502]

1 minute ago, Republic3D said:

I appreciate the "other" side of the argument, I agree with most of what you're saying. 
I had an RTX 3090, and I had a very fluid and smooth experience with G-Sync and V-Sync enabled. 45 FPS feels smooth. 
Frame time definitely matters, but frame time is also tighter with the 4080 than with the 3090. 
On my setup right now, 70 FPS feels smoother than 85 FPS. Less tearing both vertically and horizontally. But I believe that's my old monitor being a bit difficult. 

Where Frame Generation really shines is when your system can't deliver enough frames to bring a fluid experience. Many of us are CPU / Main Thread limited, especially in complex scenery an with complex airliners. What Frame Generation does at that point is inserting frames so that your 35 FPS at Heathrow feels like 70 FPS. That makes a difference.
FG kind of is a shortcut around the CPU limit, without having to upgrade the entire system (CPU, Motherboard, RAM) to the latest generation, which might not even then get you the same results. 

In my case, I sold my RTX 3090 and bought the lowest priced RTX 4080 I could find. I had to pay about 50% more for about 40% more rasterization performance. But with FG, the performance difference is staggering.
Another point; my old RTX 3090 in Performance mode used up to 450 W and was going at full speed, creating a lot of noise and heat. 85C GPU temp is common.
The 4080 I bought has the 4090 cooler, a gigantic heatpipe and fin system. It's refusing to get above 65C GPU temp, and is usually around 55-60C in the sim. The fans are spinning at around 32% and it's completely silent.
 

It's highly doable to have perfectly smooth animation w/o FG was my point for those who don't want to move to FG capability.  

In fact if I could subject users to a double-blinded test I'd bet it would barely beat random chance.   I don't need a frame rate display to know when perfect smoothness is there I can see and 'feel' it, which is nonsense it's not 'feel' it's all visual but I understand why 'feel' is used.  If you used straight in-sim Vsync or NVCP's Vsync, then you did not experience what I have.  I scrutinized all of these options and only one delivers.  If you now believe 70FPS feels a lot smoother than 85FPS, this tells me on no uncertain terms you were not experiencing near zero FTV.  Very very fortunately Gsync eliminates the tear line that comes w/ the near zero FTV method using RTSS w/ sync, front or back edge.  If you can afford it or want to go there FG will be the simplest pathway to Nirvana and as you mention it helps grapple with mainthread overload.  I've not had a single stutter flying into any airport now since getting on to this--obviously I've learned to live w/in my main thread means which requires a little more active management than FG will.

 

 

[Noel 4,502]

14 minutes ago, Donka said:

While I agree with what you are saying, for me personally, as soon as I add in head tracking, I need the extra frames to maintain that smoothness when flying. It's one thing to be sitting static in an aircraft as it flies along but when you are panning your view around, extra frames make all the difference. I'm more than happy with my current performance ~75fps @ 3440x1440 but keeping one eye on the new GPUs for the future as I consider a move to VR.

Yes, my comments apply only to flat screen w/o tracking as I don't have experience with that or VR which I understand is a very different environment.

[Republic3D 1,232]

30 minutes ago, Noel said:

It's highly doable to have perfectly smooth animation w/o FG was my point for those who don't want to move to FG capability.  

In fact if I could subject users to a double-blinded test I'd bet it would barely beat random chance.   I don't need a frame rate display to know when perfect smoothness is there I can see and 'feel' it, which is nonsense it's not 'feel' it's all visual but I understand why 'feel' is used.  If you used straight in-sim Vsync or NVCP's Vsync, then you did not experience what I have.  I scrutinized all of these options and only one delivers.  If you now believe 70FPS feels a lot smoother than 85FPS, this tells me on no uncertain terms you were not experiencing near zero FTV.  Very very fortunately Gsync eliminates the tear line that comes w/ the near zero FTV method using RTSS w/ sync, front or back edge.  If you can afford it or want to go there FG will be the simplest pathway to Nirvana and as you mention it helps grapple with mainthread overload.  I've not had a single stutter flying into any airport now since getting on to this--obviously I've learned to live w/in my main thread means which requires a little more active management than FG will.

 

 

I'm glad you know better what I've experienced than me. That's a weird statement.
I'm not sure what your point is. 

My experience so far:

RTX 3090 / TAA / G-Sync on / V-Sync on / No FG / 3440x1440 / +125% upscaling = Smooth experience in medium complex scenery and aircraft / 45 FPS
RTX 4080 / TAA / G-Sync on / V-Sync on / FG Off / 3440x1440 / +125% upscaling = Smooth experience in medium complex scenery and aircraft / 60 FPS
RTX 4080 / TAA / G-Sync on / V-Sync on / FG On / 3440x1440 / +125% upscaling = Smooth experience in medium complex scenery and aircraft / 120 FPS
RTX 4080 / TAA / G-Sync on / V-Sync on / FG On / 3440x1440 / +125% upscaling = Smooth experience in medium complex scenery and aircraft / 70 FPS manually capped in Nvidia Control Panel due to my old G-Sync monitor / Dev Mode Counter reports 35 FPS, Nvidia Counter reports 70 FPS

And by smooth I mean fluid when looking around with TrackIR with no tearing or stuttering. It's relatively subjective what feels smooth and not. The above findings all feels smooth for two reasons: The medium complexity environment but also a G-Sync monitor that syncs down to 1 FPS.

I might do some more research and see the difference in smoothness in highly complex scenery and aircraft.

I also tried DLAA (Not DLSS) instead of TAA as anti alias, and DLAA is slightly sharper. No performance difference for me. 

By all means, keep your GPU. If you're happy with your sim there's no need to do anything. And I certainly don't fly around looking at the FPS counter. But I did now that I got a new GPU so I can report my findings. 

My point is that 4080 with Frame Generation skips around the CPU limit to a certain degree. It also runs cooler, quieter, draws less power, and is amazing for anyone who has a capable high HZ monitor. 
 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Republic3D

[Noel 4,502]

55 minutes ago, Republic3D said:

I'm glad you know better what I've experienced than me. That's a weird statement.  I'm not sure what your point is.

My point is that 4080 with Frame Generation skips around the CPU limit to a certain degree. It also runs cooler, quieter, draws less power, and is amazing for anyone who has a capable high HZ monitor.

Understood, but it's not needed to create perfect smoothness, which was always my point for those less inclined to move to FG.  

What I do know is that until I personally experienced this, I had no idea what perfect smoothness was, and I used the other methods for Vsync for years and believed at had very smooth animation which it was, but not perfect.   I'll say it again:  if 70FPS is "smoother" than 85FPS this tells me the 85FPS was not with this kind of FTV which was at a lousy 30FPS yet still delivers perfectly smooth animation.  I didn't say YOU didn't experience 70FPS as smoother I'm sure you did else you wouldn't have said it--my comment was about WHY.

And to be clear:  I understand the limitation of lower frame rates which comes into play when objects are moving fast near the airplane, or when panning ultra-fast, but even that issue is modest at best.  And most importantly:  the lower frame rates will not obscure poorer FTV.  All of this is very good news for those who can't afford the jump to 4000 series cards.  IF NV adds FG to the 3000 series cards all the better.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Noel

[Republic3D 1,232]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Understood, but it's not needed to create perfect smoothness, which was always my point for those less inclined to move to FG.  

What I do know is that until I personally experienced this, I had no idea what perfect smoothness was, and I used the other methods for Vsync for years and believed at had very smooth animation which it was, but not perfect.   I'll say it again:  if 70FPS is "smoother" than 85FPS this tells me the 85FPS was not with this kind of FTV which was at a lousy 30FPS yet still delivers perfectly smooth animation.  I didn't say YOU didn't experience 70FPS as smoother I'm sure you did else you wouldn't have said it--my comment was about WHY.

And to be clear:  I understand the limitation of lower frame rates which comes into play when objects are moving fast near the airplane, or when panning ultra-fast, but even that issue is modest at best.  And most importantly:  the lower frame rates will not obscure poorer FTV.  All of this is very good news for those who can't afford the jump to 4000 series cards.  IF NV adds FG to the 3000 series cards all the better.

Okay, I think I understand what you mean. And I agree, like I showed in my post; 45 FPS can feel as smooth as 70 FPS if it's got low frame time and no stutter or tearing. 
The reason I said 70 FPS felt smoother than 85 FPS is this: 

At first FG felt stuttery and not fluid, then I realized it was because my card was sending 120 FPS to my old G-Sync monitor that can only handle 90 Hz. 
So I capped first at 80 frames. The fluidity was back, it was completely smooth. That was yesterday.
Today I capped it at 85, but there was a little bit of screen tearing both horizontally and vertically.
So I lowered it to 70, and the screen tearing was gone. The Dev Mode FPS counter shows 35 FPS, and the Nvidia FPS counter shows 70.
But all of that is related to G-Sync.

I'm just experimenting at this point, and sharing my results so that people can make up their own decision.