I actually ended up buying all new parts but still remaining on the solid AM4 platform. I purchased an ASUS B550 mainboard, Ryzen 5800x3D CPU and an RTX4080 Super GPU (the first truly premium GPU I have ever bought since the Voodoo 5500 I bought 25 years ago!!). The older parts including the RTX3070 and 5700X CPU will be going into a different machine that is my main "office" machine (I am retired) but also does some occassional video rendering for which the RTX3070 will be an excellent addition.

I am very happy with the P3D performance. It took quite a while to fine tune it all though - as time consuming as it was to get FSX Steam to work at its very best. This did surprise me a bit given that P3D straight out of the box so to speak was smoother and more fluent than FSX ever was. Still, I got there over the Winter here in Australia.

I just love P3D compared to the old FSX. Now there are zero blurries - ever. Now there is zero texture popping. Everything is crisp and "high definition" and remains that way. And for the first time, my ORBX regions don't bring the computer to its knees.

There has also been a lot of discussion about the x3D CPU architecture from AMD and how it influences performance. Although most agree (as they ought to) that it significantly improves MSFS, I found the same for P3D as well. The differences were obvious in dense scenery areas and in taxiing around where stutters have been dramatically reduced if not all but eliminated. And this is compared to a plain 5700X CPU that basically runs at a slightly faster clock speed to the 5800x3D but without the extra cache. So I suspect that those who do not find an x3D CPU helps for P3D, they are probably bottlenecked by their GPU.

Edited September 5, 20241 yr by JonP01

1 hour ago, JonP01 said:

I actually ended up buying all new parts but still remaining on the solid AM4 platform. I purchased an ASUS B550 mainboard, Ryzen 5800x3D CPU and an RTX4080 Super GPU (the first truly premium GPU I have ever bought since the Voodoo 5500 I bought 25 years ago!!). The older parts including the RTX3070 and 5700X CPU will be going into a different machine that is my main "office" machine (I am retired) but also does some occassional video rendering for which the RTX3070 will be an excellent addition.

I am very happy with the P3D performance. It took quite a while to fine tune it all though - as time consuming as it was to get FSX Steam to work at its very best. This did surprise me a bit given that P3D straight out of the box so to speak was smoother and more fluent than FSX ever was. Still, I got there over the Winter here in Australia.

I just love P3D compared to the old FSX. Now there are zero blurries - ever. Now there is zero texture popping. Everything is crisp and "high definition" and remains that way. And for the first time, my ORBX regions don't bring the computer to its knees.

There has also been a lot of discussion about the x3D CPU architecture from AMD and how it influences performance. Although most agree (as they ought to) that it significantly improves MSFS, I found the same for P3D as well. The differences were obvious in dense scenery areas and in taxiing around where stutters have been dramatically reduced if not all but eliminated. And this is compared to a plain 5700X CPU that basically runs at a slightly faster clock speed to the 5800x3D but without the extra cache. So I suspect that those who do not find an x3D CPU helps for P3D, they are probably bottlenecked by their GPU.

Good news on your new sim PC. Glad everything worked out and that your sim experience with P3D is a good one.👍Good you also have a use for the legacy RTX 3070. My one will make it into my next PC that I plan to use for aviation photography.

 

The only real gripe I have about P3D  is the anti-aliasing. Its still not fixed in v5 and I am not sure if that goes for v6 too. Unless your are running a 4K monitor , i still see the "ants crawling" on very thin edges/surfaces like light poles and fences. 

I have yet to bump up my texture parameters in Nvidia control panel/beta app to see if I can get rid of that now I am running a RTX 4070 Super.  My main monitor is a 34" 3440x1440 (UWQHD) which is equivalent to ~2K pixel count wise.

 

Apart from that, I am stutter-free, get decent frame rates at the majority of airports.

My real test for my new RTX 4070 will be Orbx's Brisbane airport plus city scenery. If my sim can run that combination without stuttering and CTDing, then I have finally cracked it I think!

The other test will be the MD-11F landing at a busy Aerosoft Heathrow airport with a decent amount of AI traffic loaded.

 

@787flyer have you tried reshade to get rid of the AA issues?  I haven't gone that route yet, but have been thinking about trying it out. 

Just now, okupton said:

@787flyer have you tried reshade to get rid of the AA issues?  I haven't gone that route yet, but have been thinking about trying it out. 

Good question Orman. 😉 I am in the same boat as you. Have been considering it, but have not made the jump yet. I am not sure its the solution though. I am still hesitating, but I would like to know what results you obtain if you decide to try that out.

 

FWIW: The best conclusion I have come to for fixing AA in P3D, is use a 4K monitor. People that have this type of monitor are not complaining about AA.

The alternative is the famed lossless Frame Generation tool that has been excitedly discussed within this forum, but I have not opted for that route because currently that tool doesn't support G-sync monitors and that's what I have today.

I really love the Acer 34" extra wide screen. Not sure I could justify an equivalent one that runs at 4K though! My wife may have something "interesting" to say about that, something along the lines of ... "why do you need to buy another monitor for simming when you already have 2 ???" - along with the proverbial raised eyebrow! 🥰

OK so there is definite improvement using reshade (FXAA setting removes jaggies).  I tried to share images but couldn't get it to work.

Not sure how stable the sim is yet after applying reshade but will test more

 

 

Edited September 5, 20241 yr by okupton

11 hours ago, 787flyer said:

The only real gripe I have about P3D  is the anti-aliasing. Its still not fixed in v5 and I am not sure if that goes for v6 too. Unless your are running a 4K monitor , i still see the "ants crawling" on very thin edges/surfaces like light poles and fences. 

The anti-aliasing was actually one of my biggest challenges to overcome. It was a reason I both stuck with version 4.5 and also purchased the RTX4080 Super since the conclusion I came to is that you have to throw the kitchen sink at P3D in terms of AA to get it to look good. I am actually still using a 1080p monitor but at 27 inches it absolutely without question needs to use the Nvidia DSR at 4K and I also have the sparse grid super sampling enabled. And that needs the RTX4080 Super to manage that. It still does not resolve all the AA issues with P3D - there still seem to be instances where no matter what the AA does not seem to reflect the settings (such as the outline of mountain tops in the medium distance) but in the end I still did get it looking better than FSX - but at the cost of a lot of GPU horsepower.

The reason I shied away from version 5 is because no matter what I tried, all the taxiway signs in P3D v5 simply refused to anti-alias no matter what and this drove me nuts for flying at dawn, dusk and night.

I would actually have been happy to use a small 27 inch 4K monitor however at least here in Australia it is not possible to buy a 27 inch 4K monitor that can refresh faster than 60 Hz. And although I do not require this (higher than 60 Hz) ability for P3D of course, I do require it for some other applications. The best compromise would probably be (for most people) something like 32 inches 4K but I have a neck problem which restricts the physical height of monitors that I find comfortable. 27 inches 16:9 in terms of height is my comfort limit so even if I did use a larger monitor it would have to be widescreen but no higher than the normal height of a 27 inch 16:9 monitor. For brevity I am sticking with the 27 inch 1080p monitor and am happy to use the DSR 4K settings!

12 hours ago, JonP01 said:

The reason I shied away from version 5 is because no matter what I tried, all the taxiway signs in P3D v5 simply refused to anti-alias no matter what and this drove me nuts for flying at dawn, dusk and night.

The only way I could remove jaggies in v5 with my 1080p screen was by brute force: 8xSSAA. I could have done with DLDSR 1.78x (i.e., "upgrading" to 1440p) and 4xMSAA, but P3D crashed. Since I fly the Aerosoft A330, using SGSS is not an option for me.