On 9/27/2024 at 10:52 AM, Sethos said:

Interestingly, just saw this video posted on Reddit. Uploaded just an hour ago, so perfect for the topic at hand;

Seems that also confirms that even in MSFS 2020, 64GB makes a difference. Lots of hitching in some of the scenes with 32GB.

Though it's curious that it's actually not using up the full 32GB, it's not even close to the limit and it's still causing lower performance and hitching. Wonder if there's a technical explanation for that, perhaps a bug that causes it to hit the page file unnecessarily or something?

Interesting, thanks for the video. Looks like 64GB gets rid of some of the stutters, even when the sim is only using 15-20GB of RAM.

Edited September 28, 20241 yr by RNAVV19R

Upgraded my memory from 32 to 64, same timings so I didn't have to make changes in bios. Sim ran the same. Maybe a little smoother. System memory usage ran between 17-20mb depending on what additional apps I had open while running the sim. 

OLD: G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series (Intel XMP 3.0) DDR5 RAM (2x16GB) 6400MT/s CL32

NEW: G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series (Intel XMP 3.0) DDR5 RAM (2x32GB) 6400MT/s CL32

I was able to turn off PowerDown after flashing the BIOS. Of course I forgot that meant that I lost all of my BIOS profiles. So I had to enter everything again, including the secondary timings. That took a while.

Old timings to the left, new to the right as per Buildzoid. According to him, secondary timings are a lot less hardware-dependent than primary. I’ve given up on CL28 though…

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by Cpt_Piett

13 hours ago, regis9 said:

I appreciate you posting this as I’m trying to get a sense of just what it would take to push me over 32gb.  I flew the new 2024 preorder waterbomber around Ottawa the other night and was only using half of my RAM.  That’s a pretty lightweight test though so tonight I’ll fly the Fenix out of Toronto, which is a typically heavy performance area, plus all of my usual other programs:

- beyond ATC

- Navigraph Charts

- Skalarki hardware / software

- Voltana

- FS ATC Chatter

- Air and Sea AI traffic

- FSFO

Thats about the extent of a Torture test that I can pull together.  Obviously 2024 will be a different sim so it’s not fully comparable but I hope to get a sense.

Instead of flying out of Toronto I decided to fly out of my newly purchased KLGA from MK Studios in the Fenix A319.

After initial loading I was at 97% RAM usage for a bit (possibly while AIG traffic was loading?) then it settled in the mid/high 70's to high 80's range.  The highest I saw after that initial 97% was 87%.  I'm not sure what that means for me or how much of a buffer you generally want from full RAM usage...might be getting close to what my 32GB can handle this tough (but realistic for me) scenario?

One surprising thing was that Volanta took up around 1GB of RAM.  Seems like a lot for what it is.

Having tons of addons and using AIG traffic on big cities my memory use stays around 28~29GB. I already pulled the trigger for 96GB so I should be fine for a while... if not... then I'm gonna open my youtube channel and use those 96GB on video editing... 😅

I’ve been using HWiNFO to check page file usage, but not sure how reliable it is. There’s something about virtual memory in task manager as well, but I find it a bit confusing 🫤 

6% page file usage seemed a bit low for my crazy torture test

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by Cpt_Piett

37 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I’ve been using HWiNFO to check page file usage, but not sure how reliable it is. There’s something about virtual memory in task manager as well, but I find it a bit confusing 🫤 

6% page file usage seemed a bit low for my crazy torture test

I use PerfMon to monitor page file.  Start > type "perfmon".

4 hours ago, jaxgator said:

He also made some voltage changes...

I take it I need to make those changes here as well?

No, I do not.  I tried making these changes and ran into all kinds of problems.  Took me a couple of hours to get it all straightened out.  Ugh!  All good now.  Whew.

Just now, jaxgator said:

No, I do not.  I tried making these changes and ran into all kinds of problems.  Took me a couple of hours to get it all straightened out.  Ugh!  All good now.  Whew.

I’ve left all voltages on default.

1 hour ago, Dexter1979 said:

Having tons of addons and using AIG traffic on big cities my memory use stays around 28~29GB

Tons of addons only come into play when you're in their relative proximity.  I use PMDG/FBW/AS planes everything maxed out to Ultra with Render Scale at 150 and FSLTL and never see over 19Gb of RAM in use even around the biggest cities and payware airports and I don't use a rolling or manual cache.

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I’ve been using HWiNFO to check page file usage, but not sure how reliable it is. There’s something about virtual memory in task manager as well, but I find it a bit confusing 🫤 

6% page file usage seemed a bit low for my crazy torture test

Even if the page file usage was lower with fewer background apps being used (say 1-2%) you'd still get the occasional stutter. See the video that was posted earlier comparing 32 vs 64 GB. RAM usage was between 15-20 GB, but on the 32 GB config there were stutters that did not appear in the same areas on the 64 GB config. The stutters on the 32 GB config weren't frequent, but the stutters and 1% lows on approach were pretty bad. 64 GB seems to provide a better experience.

The sim appears to be going to the page file whenever RAM usage is about 50-60% of your total memory capacity. 

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by RNAVV19R

9 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Thanks! Don't think I've seen it, so I probably need to update the BIOS. Let me check. 

Thanks for the heads up! So to confirm: no need to disable Memory context restore along with power down?

Yup, can confirm. Besides, if you disable Memory Context Restore, the motherboard retrains the RAM on every single boot which will add 30-40 seconds every time. That'll get tiresome fast 😅

 

8 hours ago, jaxgator said:

Christmas came early for me!  Ok, so I made the memory timing changes shown in Buildzoid's video.  Here are my ZenTimings...

He also made some voltage changes...

I take it I need to make those changes here as well?

Looking good. I don't believe he makes any changes. He just talks about the RAM voltage, training it at 1.35v which is a common voltage. Sometimes you can get it down to 1.3v and other kits, like mine, is 1.4v EXPO. So don't have to touch anything. 

Your RAM are running 1.4v, so if you feel like tinkering, you could try bringing that down to 1.35v but running 1.4v won't hurt anything.

 

 

Oh and for everyone who is tinkering with timings and voltages, please do yourself a favor a make sure it's stable. Highly recommend you use something like TestMem5 with the Extreme or Absolut setting by anta777. The Absolut will fairly quickly expose an unstable setup. Here's the new branch by CoolCmd, as the original TestMem5 was abandoned quite some time ago;

https://github.com/CoolCmd/TestMem5/releases

Then make sure you change the test configuration, verifying it's set to either of the two mentioned above. Then run it for at least the default an hour and a half. More is always better when doing stability testing.

You will need to run it as administrator and if it throws up any message boxes complaining about admin still, restart the PC and it should stop.

 

RAM errors don't usually show up as BSODs or something else very concrete. They are the silent killer that will cause weird things to happen, just tiny bit errors that will make games act out, have software crash or close without warning, make your sim suddenly freeze or crash when you least expect while you sit there left wondering why it's happening, blaming the developers or some third party addon.

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by Sethos

4 hours ago, Sethos said:

RAM errors don't usually show up as BSODs or something else very concrete. They are the silent killer that will cause weird things to happen, just tiny bit errors that will make games act out, have software crash or close without warning, make your sim suddenly freeze or crash when you least expect while you sit there left wondering why it's happening, blaming the developers or some third party addon

This.

 
It is ... optimistic ... to suppose that RAM manufacturers would sell their kit with an under-specification. 

Experience tells us that kit specs are likely to err on the side of being too aggressive: very seldom on the side of not being aggressive enough.

Yes, you might have got the "golden sample" but ... well ... just think of the odds. Far more likely is that you get it to work at 28 or whatever but (a) it degrades quickly or (b) it is error-prone in subtle ways. By the time you start noticing symptoms, the chances are you'll have forgotten that you were asking for trouble from the outset.

The same is true of all those numbers. This level of tinkering is a complete rabbit hole.

5 hours ago, Sethos said:

Looking good. I don't believe he makes any changes. He just talks about the RAM voltage, training it at 1.35v which is a common voltage. Sometimes you can get it down to 1.3v and other kits, like mine, is 1.4v EXPO. So don't have to touch anything. 

Your RAM are running 1.4v, so if you feel like tinkering, you could try bringing that down to 1.35v but running 1.4v won't hurt anything.

As you probably already saw, I ran into issues tinkering with the voltages so reset everything and then after re-applying the timings changes, did nothing with the voltages.

15 hours ago, Sethos said:

Note this is not applicable any more (if you have an updated BIOS), that was fixed quite a while ago in an AGESA update. You can now enable / disable them separately. I had that exact issue myself.

For some reason, I seem to have issues when disabling power down mode.  BIOS would freeze sometimes as soon as I disabled it.  When it didn't, I would get Windows infinite boot loops with the blue screen and sad face emoji.  It's currently enabled as I am afraid things will go haywire again if I enable it.

I thought about updating BIOS.  I am currently on version FA2 but can't find any information about that version anywhere.  The current version is F32b for "(rev. 1.0/1.2) rev. 1.3 rev. 1.1" X670 boards on their website but I don't know how to determine what my version is.  I guess I will leave it enabled for now.

Going to run the TestMem5 now as suggested.

Again, thanks for all of your help Sethos!