On MSFS2024 with my preferred graphic settings, my GPU (see in my signature) is always at 100%, whatever the situation: at the gate in a big addon airport or at FL350 (PMDG 777).

On the one hand, I fear that such an usage will reduce the life expectancy of my GPU. On the other hand it’s good that my GPU is used at its maximum capacity.

What do you think guys?

Something is off. Especially in cruise the useage rarely goes above 50% with my 4060TI.

 

Maybe you are asking too much of it and should reduce your settings and resolution.

Edited June 12, 2025Jun 12 by Farlis

Thanks Farlis, I confess that I was lazy and I put on Ultra as global setting. But even on High the GPU is at 100%. I prefer flying than tweaking but maybe I should dig into the different options under Ultra. And more specifically the most demanding settings.

53 minutes ago, Simicro said:

I fear that such an usage will reduce the life expectancy of my GPU

Usage is not what would reduce life expectancy, on the other hand, high temps will, today's GPU's will last quite a bit even under high stress scenarios.

If your temps are within normal range, I wouldn't worry about life expectancy.

50 minutes ago, Farlis said:

Something is off. Especially in cruise the useage rarely goes above 50% with my 4060TI.

 

Maybe you are asking too much of it and should reduce your settings and resolution.

What resolution do you use? @Simicro has 4K in their signature, so this obviously makes it easier to fully load the GPU than e.g. 1440p or FullHD. 

Thanks Carlos, I’ll get a utility to measure the temp.

@pstrub yeah I’m 4k and your explanation makes also sense.

1 hour ago, Simicro said:

On the other hand it’s good that my GPU is used at its maximum capacity.

Are you using any kind of frame generation?  If so, what is the native rate locked at, if locked?

Yeah, and as others already said: As long as the temperatures are within specs, you shouldn't be worried about running your GPU at 100%, that's what it's made for. Almost any gaming title other than MSFS is expected to fully load your GPU most of the time.

The difference with MSFS is that it's a lot more CPU-heavy than modern games - especially with the main thread that runs on a single core and can't be distributed to all the CPU cores, so that you can be CPU limited at way less than 100% CPU load. 

CPUID HWMonitor is a must if you want to know everything your system is doing EG temps clocks and fans speed. You can run it while in the sim to give real time feedback.

1 hour ago, pstrub said:

Almost any gaming title other than MSFS is expected to fully load your GPU most of the time

What nonsense!

NEVER should you expect nor strive for 100% utilization of neither GPU nor CPU. That's hitting bottlenecks and should be avoided at all cost.

You should always take measures to stay below 100%, either by lowering settings, capping your fps or both.

You silly people...

Ive deliberately run my previous gpu (6800XT) close to or at 100% in FS2020 by upping the render resolution and added framegen to boot. As long as the card is operating within its normal operating temp range you're fine. There will be moments where it will downclock itself if that needs to occur. 

Very few if any games under benchmark testing was found to have used all the power of the 4090, buy the well know benchmarkers, and even less so in titles that are CPU bound and we know them well "flight sims".

2 hours ago, neumanix said:

What nonsense!

NEVER should you expect nor strive for 100% utilization of neither GPU nor CPU. That's hitting bottlenecks and should be avoided at all cost.

You should always take measures to stay below 100%, either by lowering settings, capping your fps or both.

You silly people...

I disagree.  MSFS is coded to load your vram up and also load your gpu fully - there's a dev explanation for that but I don't have it in front of me.

Ideally MSFS swaps between CPU and GPU limited when viewing the fps monitor in dev mode.  

If you're capping your fps you're not fully utilizing your system.  I didn't buy a rtx 4080 to run 30 fps.

That all being said I think vram needs to be better optimized in 2020 dx12 and 2024.  It's easy to swamp the buffer in 2024, even with little addon usage.

2 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

If you're capping your fps you're not fully utilizing your system.  I didn't buy a rtx 4080 to run 30 fps.

I bought my 4080S (and 5800X3D) to run MSFS2020 at 60fps capped and with the type of flying I do, I can achieve that.

Completely stutter free with a straight line in RTSS (frametime). GPU is at 50-60% and very modest CPU usage as well.