Why am I getting such low FPS, and how to improve that?

[Masterius 15]

Depending on the airport/location, my FPS ranges anywhere from 5-10 to low 50s, and either smoothly displays or lags and stutters like crazy. I'm at a loss as to why, since benchmarking my system (see image below) indicates it should perform much better than what I'm seeing. 

My system and software specs are: Windows 10 Pro, Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045; Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7820X CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3600 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s); Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080; P3Dv5.3.17.28160; LINDA 3.3.5.1363; FSUIPC6, Version 6.1.9; Orbx (BASE pack, openLC North America, Buildings HD, TerraFlora v2, Airport Pack); Chaseplane v1.2.58.0; ASP3D v1.0.8080.26231. The main (middle) display is a 32" ELCHS321 manufactured in Oct 2006. 

 

[blaunarwal 432]

Hi

That's a 6 years old system meanwhile. My system is from 2018 and I updated it with an RTX3090 but I think about replacing it again after this time. I would still keep the gpu for some time to come. 

I think your GTX1080 does support DX12, since your system does not crash to desktop. It used to be a very good card, but I wouldn't recommend it for for v5. And you use it for two or three screens, that makes it harder too.

The cpu was certainly ahead of its time in 2017 but now?

You didn't mention your drive? Do you use Hard Disks or SSDs? I guess, your board doesn't have the M.2 interface. Fast file reading is needed for Prepar3D. When I last used HDs, I also used defragmentation and it had a recognizable effect.

You have a large amount of memory. Did you buy this as one set? How many DRAMS do you have? If not one set, do they have the same timings?

Thermal throttling: Check if there's some dust in your system. Also check airflow. Are entries and exits dust free? Is the cpu cooler clogged?

I'd try to disable hyperthreading in the bios and then rename your prepar3d.cfg to let P3D create a new one on the next sim start. This doesn't harm your addons. From there you can set your P3D settings again. Hyperthreading is an issue, some may plead for it. I think it depends on the cpu type if its a gain or a disadvantage especially for flightsims. I have the i9700 not having this option cause I think it is still not an advantage in P3D5. 

Next thing is overclocking the cpu and also give the memory a XMP mode, if available in your BIOS. Maybe also a BIOS update is available for your board, if you never updated it. This could give you more options and stability.

Dan

[Rogen 1,087]

And I know it's been talked to death but vsyncing @ 30 Hz  greatly reduces overall load and allows spear proccessing room to keep those FPS up an on the vsync, whihc in turn gives a nice smooth flight.

Cheers

[Afterburner 374]

You have provided insufficient information for someone to be able to diagnose your FPS problems. What simulator version?  What are the specific add-ons that give you low FPS?  And very importantly, what are your settings?

[Masterius 15]

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

I think your GTX1080 does support DX12, since your system does not crash to desktop. It used to be a very good card, but I wouldn't recommend it for for v5. And you use it for two or three screens, that makes it harder too.

It does support--and use--DX12.

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

You didn't mention your drive? Do you use Hard Disks or SSDs? I guess, your board doesn't have the M.2 interface.

It does have the M2 interface for all three drives. C is a 500GB SSD, and D and E are 500GB HDD. I seem to have suffered a major brain fart in that I instinctively avoid when possible installing large programs on the main drive (and quadruply so in the Program directories) and had thought I'd installed the main program on its own subdirectory on C while installing the other information on D. However, it seems that when I updated P3D from v4 to v5 I did a clean install and now everything is on D.

 

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

You have a large amount of memory. Did you buy this as one set? How many DRAMS do you have?

One set of eight.

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

Thermal throttling: Check if there's some dust in your system. Also check airflow. Are entries and exits dust free? Is the cpu cooler clogged?

I'm rather anal about keeping in innards and gizzards clean so I'm positive that's not an issue. Plus I run accessory programs that monitor system information, and the usual CPU/GPU temps stay below 50C.

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

I'd try to disable hyperthreading in the bios

This has been driving me nuts. Hyperthreading is active, but the Gigabyte BIOS interface accessed during bootup doesn't seem to have any options for enabling/disabling that.

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

Next thing is overclocking the cpu and also give the memory a XMP mode, if available in your BIOS.

Haven't tried overclocking yet, but I have set a profile for XMP mode in BIOS.

18 hours ago, blaunarwal said:

Maybe also a BIOS update is available for your board, if you never updated it.

Updates are another thing I'm rather anal about. Nevertheless, I did an update check and BIOS is current.

 

[airservices 133]

You can turn hyperthreading on or off in the Bios I have done it on all my Gigabyte boards go into the main screen in your bios scroll down to "advanced cpu settings" enter there and disable hyperthreading

Edited February 18, 2023 by airservices

[blaunarwal 432]

@Masterius @airservices

So I'm curios if you find this setting and if it lets your sim become faster. 

About the XMP modes, there are usually two available. If you get crashes, try the other. If both fail, well then it you have to go back to normal.

I was copletely fixed at hardware and forget about software. Did you exclude your prepar3d folder from Windows defender?

What else is running in the background? What says the taskmanager (Ctrl-Shft-Esc)? Sort programs by CPU use and check? Here is how it looks on my system.

Don't matter the 0.n%.

I wonder how much your Prepar3D.exe shows and how many other programs are using CPU or RAM.

Could you tell us your board- and bios name? Maybe someone can tell where to find the hyperthreading.

Your drives are rather small. How many % are they filled? If SSDs get over 70%, they may slow down. 

Do you have a pagefile? If not try with pagefile. I know, you have enough memory but Windows is weird.

If you already have a pagefile(s), where do you have them and how much in % are these drives filled?

You could use only one pagefile on C, if you have enough memory there.

Dan

[Masterius 15]

Sorry for the delay in replying. These are all good ideas and suggestions I will be trying, but at the moment, and after a few days of research, I think the first thing to try is transferring everything P3D and Orbx to an independent SSD. To that end I've bought a 1TB SSD and  a NVMe M.2 to PCIe adapter that should be arriving tomorrow.

Transferring Orbx should be a breeze. I've no idea how difficult uninstalling P3D from one drive and installing it to the new one will be. So wish me luck! 🙂

[blaunarwal 432]

16 hours ago, Masterius said:

Transferring Orbx should be a breeze. I've no idea how difficult uninstalling P3D from one drive and installing it to the new one will be. So wish me luck! 🙂

Don't know if registrations for P3D can be changed, when changing drives. I'd uninstall at least the client and reinstall it on the new drive and make sure to unregister it when uninstalling. All other stuff can be copied over certainly, also ORBX, to not to have to download again. Hope the new drive fixes it.

[Bob Scott 7,721]

On 2/20/2023 at 11:30 AM, Masterius said:

Sorry for the delay in replying. These are all good ideas and suggestions I will be trying, but at the moment, and after a few days of research, I think the first thing to try is transferring everything P3D and Orbx to an independent SSD. To that end I've bought a 1TB SSD and  a NVMe M.2 to PCIe adapter that should be arriving tomorrow.

Transferring Orbx should be a breeze. I've no idea how difficult uninstalling P3D from one drive and installing it to the new one will be. So wish me luck! 🙂

The easiest way to do this would be to move the P3D folders to the SSD and create symlinks to point to the SSD folders.  No reinstallation of anything required.

https://www.howtogeek.com/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

[Masterius 15]

OK, so I've installed a Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2, using a Sabrent NVMe M.2 SSD to PCIe X16/X8/X4 card with aluminum heat sink to the PCIe X16-2 slot. Once identified and formatted as a drive I then moved the entire Orbx library there, except for Chaseplane. After that I did a "clean install" of P3Dv5 which went smoothly but just took time. The reconfiguration and/or reinstallation of the addons--including my A2A aircraft--went.....ummm....not so smoothly.

Once I had everything (reasonably) back to normal I started testing things. With LINDA, ActiveSky, and Chaseplane running in conjunction with P3D and Orbx scenery, and with a target framerate set at 62, I began with fairly low-end graphics settings. Much to my surprise, I was able to crank most graphics settings insanely high (see below) before framerates started dropping, and they only really dropped in "dense" airports like KBWI. More rural ones, like Banff, stayed up in the high 50s-60s. And even when they dropped down to 10-15, there was absolutely no stuttering or lagging. 

CPU usage for P3D was between 6%-15%, averaging 10%.

I have to say, it seems that the one thing that influenced things the most was ensuring that P3D was installed on a high-speed SSD.

[Masterius 15]

13 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

The easiest way to do this would be to move the P3D folders to the SSD and create symlinks to point to the SSD folders.  No reinstallation of anything required.

https://www.howtogeek.com/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

Dang. Just missed this, and wound up doing it the hard way. 😕

[Afterburner 374]

I recommend to reduce the autogen draw distance by two notches (it is quite CPU heavy) and to set the target frame rate to unlimited. I am sure that you will see much less fps drops at big airports after that.

[blaunarwal 432]

54 minutes ago, Masterius said:

I have to say, it seems that the one thing that influenced things the most was ensuring that P3D was installed on a high-speed SSD.

Great to hear, you could fix it. The drive may be faster but I bet, it was also fill level related.

Dan

[Ray Proudfoot 8,961]

Don’t set a target frame rate in P3D. Set it to unlimited and it will lock to the refresh rate of your monitor. Probably 60. I have a 30Hz display so it’s locked to 30 for me and bar really busy airports with lots of Ai it achieves it.