OK This seems odd (PC Performance)

[chevelle505 11]

So ive got a I9 10900K and have , long story short, noticed that it is "Limited by main thread". So ive taken to the internet going down a rabbit hole searching for whats going on, to no avail. I makes no sense because i have locked and unlocked my frame rate, changed LOD terrrain and objects up and down, and am currently at 100. Im getting roughtly 31-32fps pretty rock steady no matter what...i noticed, same aircraft and same area yesterday cruising at 14,000 ft my fps was exactly the same...32. the only way i could see it change is when it dipped down to 25-27fps when LOD Finally hit 200. So this morning i figured id play a little more with the LOD and bottomed it to Zero and my fps didnt change AT ALL from the 31-32? youd thing id gain a couple fps with LOD Bottomed out.  so im thinking, your telling me an I9 10900K in a da42 sitting in nashville (not very heavy scenery) is only capable of 31fps even with everything turned to the lowest settings??? I have gone in bios and disabled virtualization and that made absolutely no difference. Something seems to be going on here thats not letting my cpu run at its potential. in P3DV4 with HEAVY 3rd party scenery like LA and in the PMDG 747 id see consistant 65-70fps at the worst and up to 160fps at altitude. I know its sort of apples and oranges and you can tell me msfs is cpu intensive but i dont understand why dropping LOD to nothing didnt even give 1 fps more? its like its locked. My CPU BTW was only running a 9%...why wont msfs let me actually use my CPU??? GPU Is an RTX3060 and 16GB of DDR4 running windows 10. Mobo is a ASROCK Z590-C.

HERES A SCREENSHOT 

Edited February 20 by chevelle505

[Ixoye 1,826]

You haven't not locked your fps in any program such as Nvidia panel or RTSS or using V-Sync in the game?

[cianpars 1,171]

I assume you are keping an eye on your CPU and GPU temperatures.

Maxing out your CPU at lowest settings is certainly an odd one.  What is your CPU usage without msfs running?  I'm wondering if you may have a virus or malware running in the background. Have you closed down anything else that may be running?

What resolution are you running.  I noticed CPU usage going up a lot when I switched from 1080 to 1440 a year or so back so if you are running 4k then you have to turn a lot of things down to get decent FPS.

Your RTX3060 is holding you back a bit and a weak match for a decent CPU like you have. It doesn't have enough grunt or VRAM for much more than 1080.

Edited February 20 by cianpars

[chevelle505 11]

OK, I feel like a dumba$$ lol...I found the problem, it was in fact limited within Nvidia control panel..not sure how it happened but now I'm getting 65-67fps sitting on the ground with moderate settings. Just curious, I've had my own doubts about the RTX3060 but I'm wondering what's a good upgrade option and if one can be had that's a sizeable jump within a budget of around $300 ish or should i stick with what i have and double my ram (i was already planning on getting another 16gb of DDR4).

[cianpars 1,171]

4 minutes ago, chevelle505 said:

OK, I feel like a dumba$$ lol...I found the problem, it was in fact limited within Nvidia control panel..not sure how it happened but now I'm getting 65-67fps sitting on the ground with moderate settings. Just curious, I've had my own doubts about the RTX3060 but I'm wondering what's a good upgrade option and if one can be had that's a sizeable jump within a budget of around $300 ish or should i stick with what i have and double my ram (i was already planning on getting another 16gb of DDR4).

Still having a problem explaining why you are CPU limited at such low settings.

Doubling RAM to 32 GB did not seem to make any significant difference for me so probably a waste of money (others have said the same).  An RTX 3080 would not break the bank, especially if you buy 2nd hand and sell your 3060.  Much else will probably take you over your budget.

Bear in mind that msfs2024 is just around the corner and is said to be much lighter on resources and will use dx12 more efficiently, so I will be waiting to see how I get on with that before deciding what or if any upgrades will be necessary.

[chevelle505 11]

22 minutes ago, cianpars said:

Still having a problem explaining why you are CPU limited at such low settings.

Doubling RAM to 32 GB did not seem to make any significant difference for me so probably a waste of money (others have said the same).  An RTX 3080 would not break the bank, especially if you buy 2nd hand and sell your 3060.  Much else will probably take you over your budget.

Bear in mind that msfs2024 is just around the corner and is said to be much lighter on resources and will use dx12 more efficiently, so I will be waiting to see how I get on with that before deciding what or if any upgrades will be necessary.

So in your opinion would the 3080 Be a noticeable difference or marginal at best kind of upgrade? wondering if its worth the money from the 3060. I kinda figured The I9 should be golden even through msfs2024, kinda odd they put such a powerhouse cpu matched with a mid grade graphics card. The I9 10900K Was literally the fastes processor i could buy at the time i got it, and it seems now theres cpus that will run circles around it..still seems to be more than enough to run msfs at moderate settings. as for the DDR4, i can get it fairly cheap, im just trying to avoid the occasional stutters i get when in densly populated areas, it seems like the bottleneck is the 3060 fighting to render all that at once.

Also curious if this is a clue..even now that im up in the low 60fps area, it still says "Limited by main thread" although The I9 is only at 19% Load. how is that a limit when its not even breaking a sweat? and yes btw, My Temps are nice and cool, and even flying its around 50 degrees. never hits the 90 degree limit to cause throttling.

Edited February 20 by chevelle505

[Luis Hernandez 575]

1 hour ago, chevelle505 said:

The I9 is only at 19% Load

Averaging all CPU cores (including logical ones if HT is turned on). As you may see in other threads, MSFS uses 2 cores fully. With your CPU model, I guess you have HT off, and 2 maxed-out cores out of 10...well, there's your 19% load.

Edited February 20 by Luis Hernandez

[chevelle505 11]

Seems to be a bit of debate but should I have HT on or off?

[Cpt_Piett 4,736]

21 hours ago, chevelle505 said:

Also curious if this is a clue..even now that im up in the low 60fps area, it still says "Limited by main thread" although The I9 is only at 19% Load. how is that a limit when its not even breaking a sweat? and yes btw, My Temps are nice and cool, and even flying its around 50 degrees. never hits the 90 degree limit to cause throttling.

I'm always mainthread limited, unless I crank the resolution up to something like 6144X3240... My total CPU usage is around 20-30% most of time. Occasionally some of the cores/threads are spiking to 100%. 

2 hours ago, chevelle505 said:

Seems to be a bit of debate but should I have HT on or off?

If you have adequate cooling I don't see why you shouldn't. Look at the screenshot below - all of the 16 P-Core threads are used relatively evenly. This is in DX12 with HT on. 

Edited February 21 by Cpt_Piett

[chevelle505 11]

So you’re running DX12 (beta I guess)? I’m wondering if I should or shouldn’t. My only issue is now when I’m in fairly dense areas, I get a very rhythmic stutter, literally every second it’s ……/……./……/……/ and it looks like a word not allowed slideshow..trying to figure out if this is the GPU or if I’ve actually reached the limits of the 10900k?  I run LOD at 100 and most settings are “high” rather than “ultra”. Thing is, this stutter is happening while at 35-45fps..you’d think if it was cpu I’d be getting much worse frames. I’m at a loss. I’d also like to know if a word not allowed internet connection could cause this? I’ve noticed, take Houston for example, I took off, and it was word not allowed..was getting 25fps, after about half an hour in the air I was back to my usual 38-45fps over the city…is this cache doing that gradual improvement? My understanding is that if you fly out of the same airport routinely, it saves all the data so your performance is better

Edited February 21 by chevelle505