GPU?

[Sebpilot]

Good day friends

I am currently flying my full size B-738 simulator in my basement with 4 external monitors (2x 32" TV monitors and 2x projectors) connected to a single graphics card. Yes it is a mixt of displays because of economy I took what I had at home. Sooner or later I will update but the simulator room has no room for ceiling mounted projectors so I will transfer to 4x TV monitors sooner or later.

The graphics card I use today is a GeForce ASUS GTX 1+60 Dual OC, 6 GB with a maximum resolution of 7680 x 4320 which I also use, four monitors at 1920 x 1080.

It works okay but I cannot use complex scenery or advanced graphics before I end up with whatever it is called, stuttering, or hacking frame rates. 

My computer is a single computer working with an Intel i7-8700K 3.7 GHz processor and a memory of 48 GB DDR4
Now I have been looking at upgrading my graphics card to a 16 GB card and was looking at this;
ASUS Radeon 16 GB, RX7600 XT Dual OCWould I be able to use better graphics setting with that graphics card instead of the 6 GB card I use today?

What I see is that the new 16 GB card has a BUS of 128 bit and my present has  192 bit, does that affect anything?

I am far from a millionaire so I look for a graphics card within my budget and the ASUS Radeon 16 GB can I get for about USD 450 which is very okay to me. I can spend a bit more but not extremely much money. 

My simulator works very well on present settings and I have been flying all world around two times in the past 3 years visiting all commercial airports in all capitals of the world which has been real fun. But I want to use more detailed scenery.

I use ORBX scenery addon, more or less everything they have and find that very okay, but I want to be able to add settings in P3D v4.5 that I am running my system in. 
Currently I am moderate settings and not too much details in landscape and when flying in Germany with all addons ORBX has for Germany and my setup as is, it is very hard in bad weather but okay in good weather, no clouds and no other traffic.

I also use VOX ATC communication to be able to speak to the computer, it works very well. 
The aircraft I use is PMDG 737-800 and have no problems at all.
I use virtual cockpit for outdoor view but I zoom everything out from cockpit windows so I have no moving parts or any VR in cockpit while flying that is visible.
Why I use PMDG, well it has a full functioning aircraft which others do not have and I will not discuss this issue. 

Am also using Active Sky, for weather.

The thing I want to know is if more or less any 16 GB graphics card will perform better than my present 6 GB graphics card with heavy load and addon traffic and weather?

Anyone have any comments on choice of graphics card?

Have a wonderful weekend friends.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Sebpilot said:

Anyone have any comments on choice of graphics card?

For a system with so many displays you need a powerful card.  I’d suggest a 4060Ti. Its 16Gb VRAM should provide a decent improvement.

[Bob Scott]

I'm not a fan of AMD video cards with P3D.

I'd imagine you could find a decent used nVidia RTX3090 for somewhere near your target price point.

[Sebpilot]

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

For a system with so many displays you need a powerful card.  I’d suggest a 4060Ti. Its 16Gb VRAM should provide a decent improvement.

Thank you for your reply to this
Yes I suspect that but I only use 4 TVs for outside view for the displays in flightdeck there are external GPUs for larger monitors one for each since they do not require much power and that works great. So its only for the "outside" view = scenery I am flying in I use the more powerful GPU I want to upgrade now.

Thank you very much for your reply.

[Ray Proudfoot]

@Sebpilot, I see you’re running P3Dv4.5. Have you considered v5 as Enhanced Atmospherics would suit a 3000 or 4000 Nvidia card very well. It’s a big improvement over v4 and fps are quite a bit better.

You would need to buy the PMDG again but all your airports will work okay.

[Patco Lch]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

You would need to buy the PMDG again but all your airports will work okay.

Pardon if I’m mistaken but I don’t believe he would have to buy again for P5D if he has the NGXu. I believe it’s compatible for both versions.

[Ray Proudfoot]

8 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Pardon if I’m mistaken but I don’t believe he would have to buy again for P5D if he has the NGXu. I believe it’s compatible for both versions.

The weather radar won’t work I believe. Other than that it’s probably okay.

[Sebpilot]

On 6/9/2024 at 9:36 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

The weather radar won’t work I believe. Other than that it’s probably okay.

I consider update to P3d v5 but so far not sure if all add-ons from ORBX will work without purchase again. 

While talking about v5 do the airports finally have sloping runways? 

Thank you very much for you answer

[Sebpilot]

On 6/8/2024 at 4:00 PM, Bob Scott said:

I'm not a fan of AMD video cards with P3D.

I'd imagine you could find a decent used nVidia RTX3090 for somewhere near your target price point.

What would you suggest for 4x TV monitors set to 1920x1080 to get best graphics with maximum resolution without lagging screen? 

For an example at the moment push backs work fine, taxi too in good weather, use active sky real time weather if I didn't mention that

But when I fly with the very perfect add on for scenery in Germany from ORBX in dense clouds then it is hard to fly smooth the screen will tick and that annoys me. 

I want smooth flight in all weather conditions and no buildings up in the sky like other than ORBX have sadly

Just looking for the best possible graphics without getting ruined it's still a hobby and most time spent in my simulator is in winter

Another question I have about multi screen setup is what happens if I tilt the front screens and put them in place just as they should be instead of a distance from the window screens? 

I simply put the TV monitors as windscreens, would that work with screen alignment with all 4 windows? 

Thank you very much for you reply to this question friend 

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Sebpilot said:

I consider update to P3d v5 but so far not sure if all add-ons from ORBX will work without purchase again. 

While talking about v5 do the airports finally have sloping runways? 

Thank you very much for you answer

ORBX addons are fine from v4 to v5. No issues with the ones I have.

No sloping runways. EGCC has one with a hump in the middle but it's still flat in v5.

[Bob Scott]

On 6/17/2024 at 6:27 AM, Sebpilot said:

What would you suggest for 4x TV monitors set to 1920x1080 to get best graphics with maximum resolution without lagging screen? 

For an example at the moment push backs work fine, taxi too in good weather, use active sky real time weather if I didn't mention that

But when I fly with the very perfect add on for scenery in Germany from ORBX in dense clouds then it is hard to fly smooth the screen will tick and that annoys me. 

I want smooth flight in all weather conditions and no buildings up in the sky like other than ORBX have sadly

Just looking for the best possible graphics without getting ruined it's still a hobby and most time spent in my simulator is in winter

Another question I have about multi screen setup is what happens if I tilt the front screens and put them in place just as they should be instead of a distance from the window screens? 

I simply put the TV monitors as windscreens, would that work with screen alignment with all 4 windows? 

Thank you very much for you reply to this question friend 

The video bandwidth of four HD monitors is the same as a single 4K monitor.  Based on my experience with 4K displays, I'd want the performance and higher memory capacity of a 3090, 4080, or 4090.  I would suggest a used 3090 as a potential lower-cost approach to handling that kind of GPU workload without slowdowns in GPU-intensive scenarios, like bad weather, dynamic lighting at night etc.

That said, a four-monitor display array is really something of a fringe use case...the best advice you can get would most likely come from someone that's already doing something similar.  I have not run multi-monitor for a long time, so the best practices and pitfalls on current hardware are unknown to me.  My 3090 and 4090 cards all have 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI outputs--I have no idea how using all of them at once might work with current drivers etc.

[Bob Scott]

On 6/9/2024 at 1:36 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

The weather radar won’t work I believe. Other than that it’s probably okay.

The NGXu works without issue in both P3Dv4 and v5 using the ActiveSky weather interface.  The previous NGX (without the "u") for P3D has to be wrangled with some installation trickery to work in v5, with the potential for some incompatibilties.  The only P3D add-ons I know of that have wx radar issues in v5 are those that incorporated the Rex/Milviz wx radar, which does not work in P3D in versions after P3D v5.1.

As far as ORBX, their payware add-ons mostly work OK in P3Dv5.  The freeware airport collection for FTX Global was ported from v4 to v5 without modification, with the caveat that some may not work properly or at all in v5.  The author of many of those freeware airports died prior to the release of v5, so they were never modified/updated.  So a number of them are broken in v5 as a result of elevation model changes and use of default scenery objects that either no longer exist or had their GUIDs changed in P3Dv5.

[Ray Proudfoot]

2 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

The NGXu works without issue in both P3Dv4 and v5 using the ActiveSky weather interface.  The previous NGX (without the "u") for P3D has to be wrangled with some installation trickery to work in v5, with the potential for some incompatibilties.

That’s it. I had reservations about buying it a second time but eventually relented.

2 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

The only P3D add-ons I know of that have wx radar issues in v5 are those that incorporated the Rex/Milviz wx radar, which does not work in P3D in versions after P3D v5.1.

More a case of the programmer couldn’t be bothered. How could something be so broken with a point update? Funny how Roland’s freeware Radar DLL works perfectly well with 5.x.

[Rogen]

 

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

7 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

The only P3D add-ons I know of that have wx radar issues in v5 are those that incorporated the Rex/Milviz wx radar, which does not work in P3D in versions after P3D v5.1.

More a case of the programmer couldn’t be bothered. How could something be so broken with a point update? Funny how Roland’s freeware Radar DLL works perfectly well with 5.x.

Well, Roland's works only if you have Active Sky given it hooks into the AS API, plus the bezel itself has no usable controls.

The MilViz WX doesn't have such dependancies, but anyway this is what they had to say regarding.

I will say my experience with reviewing and updating the DHC2 package (as well as in fixing other MilViz packages), has shown they are very sloppy with regards to workmanship, bordering on negligent and they get (or did get) away with it because the consumers didn't know any better. Personally after watching a couple of their rambling YouTube update vids I can see such company culture must be coming from the top.

They are probably still doing P3D Mil stuff by the bucket load, and maybe their radar is even fixed but we'll never know.

Anyway all off topic and is historical anyway.

Cheers

[Sebpilot]

On 6/18/2024 at 4:14 PM, Bob Scott said:

The video bandwidth of four HD monitors is the same as a single 4K monitor.  Based on my experience with 4K displays, I'd want the performance and higher memory capacity of a 3090, 4080, or 4090.  I would suggest a used 3090 as a potential lower-cost approach to handling that kind of GPU workload without slowdowns in GPU-intensive scenarios, like bad weather, dynamic lighting at night etc.

That said, a four-monitor display array is really something of a fringe load on those use case...the best advice you can get would most likelym come from someone that's already doing something similar.  I have not run multi-monitor for a long time, so the best practices and pitfalls on current hardware are unknown to me.  My 3090 and 4090 cards all have 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI outputs--I have no idea how using all of them at once might work with current drivers etc.

I never had problems just connecting 4 displays to the GPU it works great and for instrument panels I use small external GPUs since there is no heavy load on those displays. 

However I wonder if P3d v5 has real time weather built in? 

Will update my system during winter and see how things improve

Thank you very much for your reply I will report back once the update has been completed at least on my blog site about my flightsim