Performance on DX11 vs 12

[Zimmerbz 153]

What has been the consensus lately in terms of DX11 vs DX12; particularly with stutters on final approach.  Recently before and after the latest update I have been using DX 11, and performance is awesome out of major complex airports, but some airports such as ORD, LAX, EWR, I get stuttering when landing.  I was wondering if there was anything in DX12 that would help that after the update.  

Also, why is it that I can fly out of major airports/cities and it is smooth, but when flying into one, performance drops?  Shouldn't it be the same, good or bad?  My specs are in my sig.  Thanks!

[tgsweat 144]

I still get bigger FPS drops on approach and on the ground when panning with DX12.  So i'm still on DX11 because its more stable for me.  

[Noel 4,486]

12 minutes ago, Zimmerbz said:

What has been the consensus lately in terms of DX11 vs DX12; particularly with stutters on final approach.

I'm getting a few stutters now here and there that I didn't have in SU11 so my sense is something happened w/ SU12 to contribute to this.  I know I'm not answering your question re DX11/12 as at the moment thebFBW A320NX does not play well w/ DX12 so stuck w/ DX11 and prior to that was always using DX12 and had exquisite performance.  TBH I have not emptied the Comm Folder to see if anything in it contributes to this so really don't know the source.  Fortunately it's pretty subtle overall and mostly good, just not the perfection I could dial in previously.  Also there is no question in my mind that there are elements of performance (not only frame rate, but presence of stutters and panning less than perfect as well) that have nothing to do w/ our installs--it's likely on the server side at some level.  Not necessarily server overload, but some elements in the sim that are remote to the local machine, some changes that Asobo can make to the sim w/o generating an "update" that we have to install, that are done in the background as it were.  I say this because sometimes I can depart at a really intense airport in a complex plane and have not a hint of a stutter, yet at the same airport get a few stutters next time out.

[altenae 171]

1 minute ago, Noel said:

I'm getting a few stutters now here and there that I didn't have in SU11 so my sense is something happened w/ SU12 to contribute to this.  I know I'm not answering your question re DX11/12 as at the moment thebFBW A320NX does not play well w/ DX12 so stuck w/ DX11 and prior to that was always using DX12 and had exquisite performance.  TBH I have not emptied the Comm Folder to see if anything in it contributes to this so really don't know the source.  Fortunately it's pretty subtle overall and mostly good, just not the perfection I could dial in previously.  Also there is no question in my mind that there are elements of performance (not only frame rate, but presence of stutters and panning less than perfect as well) that have nothing to do w/ our installs--it's likely on the server side at some level.  Not necessarily server overload, but some elements in the sim that are remote to the local machine, some changes that Asobo can make to the sim w/o generating an "update" that we have to install, that are done in the background as it were.  I say this because sometimes I can depart at a really intense airport in a complex plane and have not a hint of a stutter, yet at the same airport get a few stutters next time out.

Unfortunately no FG with DX11

[Zimmerbz 153]

For what it is worth if it makes any difference, I am using the Fenix 320 and fly primarily in the US.  

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

I'm getting a few stutters now here and there that I didn't have in SU11 so my sense is something happened w/ SU12 to contribute to this.  I know I'm not answering your question re DX11/12 as at the moment thebFBW A320NX does not play well w/ DX12 so stuck w/ DX11 and prior to that was always using DX12 and had exquisite performance.  TBH I have not emptied the Comm Folder to see if anything in it contributes to this so really don't know the source.  Fortunately it's pretty subtle overall and mostly good, just not the perfection I could dial in previously.  Also there is no question in my mind that there are elements of performance (not only frame rate, but presence of stutters and panning less than perfect as well) that have nothing to do w/ our installs--it's likely on the server side at some level.  Not necessarily server overload, but some elements in the sim that are remote to the local machine, some changes that Asobo can make to the sim w/o generating an "update" that we have to install, that are done in the background as it were.  I say this because sometimes I can depart at a really intense airport in a complex plane and have not a hint of a stutter, yet at the same airport get a few stutters next time out.

So are you saying that stutters can be caused (and why they happen sometimes and not others) are based on MS/Asobo's servers?  I guess i never thought of that but it makes sense. 

[Lange_666 167]

Switched to DX12 after SU12 update. Same settings and more load on the GPU so i switched back to DX11.

[cianpars 1,163]

My feelings on this are that you need dx12 for performance, though it still has a few bugs and dx11 for visuals as I find dx11 looks better but at 5he expense of a few FPS.

I've also found stutters in dx12 that occur in other places in dx11 so it's quite hard to compare the two really.

As I guess dx12 will become the norm going forward, I'm sticking with it for the time being.

It's the same with the dlss v taa argument.  TAA looks much better but dlss performs much better, so again, I'm sticking with dlss.

If I were making youtube movies, I would probably go with dx11 and taa.

[jrw4 623]

For what it may be worth, I cannot use DX12 on my system (specs below). When I try, the render latency jumps to over 100 mS, which causes an unacceptable delay between my control inputs and what is being displayed on the screen. Actually I'm kind of surprised that no one seems to have mentioned this on the forums before. 

Having said that, performance on DX11 with DLSS is simply outstanding in 4K and HDR. I do some render scaling and sharpening with GeForce Experience to deal with the blurred flat panel displays, and that improves fps so that I can fly most places with ultra settings. I do need to go to high-end in some of the troublesome airports noted above.

Hope that helps.

[Maxis 1,854]

On my system i probably get a few extra frames with DX 11 but the frame pacing is not as good as as DX 12. As a result i'm comfortable with taking the hit of losing a few frames for the smoothness of DX 12.

Even when the frame rate drops approaching complex scenery the frame time increase is more linear vs a bunch of spikes so while the framerate may fluctuate it is less noticeable in DX 12 at least for me.

My settings 

TAA, Ultra, Monitor Resolution 3440*1440p +Game Render scale of 115% TLOD 250. locked at 50 FPS via Radeon Chill  

Edited March 30, 2023 by Maxis

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

6 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

Also, why is it that I can fly out of major airports/cities and it is smooth, but when flying into one, performance drops?  Shouldn't it be the same, good or bad?

One possible explanation is that when flying out, you have already loaded all the airport detail, including traffic, whereas when flying in, at some point all this detail needs to be loaded..  And every sim since FS9 has suffered from loading pauses when airports or cities came into view.. 😉

[Noel 4,486]

4 hours ago, jrw4 said:

For what it may be worth, I cannot use DX12 on my system (specs below). When I try, the render latency jumps to over 100 mS, which causes an unacceptable delay between my control inputs and what is being displayed on the screen. Actually I'm kind of surprised that no one seems to have mentioned this on the forums bef

Have you tried using Disk Clean to delete the DirectX Cache?  Probably worth a try it's part of my ritual when I switch between versions of DX.

[AnkH 2,233]

DX12 would run better on my rig, but I suffer from the tile rendering bug in DX12, so sadly still DX11 and some stutters for me...

[RJC68 823]

Isn't it just wonderful how this sim runs so differently on different pc's that are not too far away in specs. For the last 2 days I have been giving DX12 a try and on my pc I have found it to be generally smoother than SU12 with DX11. I can tell you that for a few days after SU12 dropped performance was not as good as it was with SU11 and this seemed to settle down which I attributed to server related stress. One thing I have noticed is that the TLOD seems better in SU12, I never touched my settings and verified they were the same as I had before the update and with a TLOD of 150 I seem to be getting more detail in the cruise in either the PMDG or Fenix. Not sure if they tweaked that behind the scenes.

The other thing I noticed right away is that my VRAM usage on DX12 shot up to around 17GB, I have never seen it that high on DX11 but I do believe VRAM will be higher with DX12. Now the post update server stress has settled down I might switch back to DX11 tomorrow and see how it performs.

One thing I have started doing as house cleaning after each major update is deleting the DX cache and shaders and then open command prompt as an administrator and run the following:

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /checkhealth

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /scanhealth

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth

sfc /scannow

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore

Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

Edited March 30, 2023 by RJC68

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

DX12 with FG. DX11 is last decade. To the user above who posted they switched back to DX11 as DX12 has higher GPU usage, why?! That’s what you want! 

[spearmint_flyer 579]

 I wonder how many here have considered the effect of AI traffic. I noticed that whether I am DX11/12 makes no difference when I use AI traffic. There’s always a pause stutter right around 4 miles final. This is because of the number of sim objects instantly loaded that need to be rendered into the scenery. 

 For those questioning the VRAM usage in DX11 vs. DX12. By design, you will have a higher usage in DX12, and this is what’s supposed to happen. The rendering is switched from the processor to the graphics card, leaving the processor more room to do other tasks. Higher VRAM on a graphics card is normal. 

Edited March 31, 2023 by spearmint_flyer
Horrible grammer, initially.