Hello all - planning on a PC upgrade one day.

What are your experiences with a 16GB graphics card for 4K? With third-party airliners/airports?

Would like to have settings reasonably high, but maybe not crazily so.

I am still on P3D but keen to try the inibuilds A380 and a few others once they release.

Am a bit bummed the 24GB 7900XTX is no longer produced - other option >16GB seems to be the 5090 which is just crazily expensive.

Guess it's a toss-up between 5070TI/5080/9700XT, but am worried it will be the old days of FSX and OOM all over again.

Cheers,
Rudy

Edited Sunday at 07:12 AM2 days by VHOJT

5080/16GB @4K here, almost all ultra settings and ray tracing on, still playable. Rebar off.

I have a 3090 with 24GB VRAM and run MSFS 2024 at 1080p with DLAA and texture resolution set to Ultra. VRAM usage easily reaches 12 GB at heavier third-party quality airports like JetStream Geneva LSGG or Aerosoft Frankfurt EDDH. At other less demanding airports, VRAM usage hovers between 9 and 10 GB. I would imagine that bumping from 1080p to 4k would get too close to comfort for 16 GB but I will leave this for those running at 4k. I know that bumping down from Ultra to High for texture resolution does not make a huge visual difference but it has a significant impact on VRAM usage.

Edited Sunday at 08:23 AM2 days by xsever

Instead of using 4k, stay with 2560x1440 which is more than enough and get much much better performance. I have a 32" 2560x1440 monitor with 165Hz VRR and this thing is just sublime. I drive it with a €700 4070Ti SUPER (16GB) for over 130fps in the air and usually over 70 on the ground in complex airports with traffic from FSLTL. Of course i am using DLSS FG and TAA for the best results possible.

It's all a matter of priorities: Use 4k, break the bank and buy an insane oven of a graphics card while using over 700w flying or go with 1440p, on a much cheaper graphics card while getting better results at the same time. Oh and see those 700w go under 500.

I ran a 49" 32:9 5120x1440 superwide for a while, which is touching 4k resolution in amount of pixels. It did not work too well with RX 9070 XT and 7800 X3D with anything close to high settings. Switching it out for a 40" 3440x1440 21:9 ultrawide was better, and that aspect ratio and size works better for MSFS anyway I think. You'd get by alright with 16gb then, depending a bit on the CPU.

If you want stuff at ultra and high LOD's you unfortunately have to start thinking about a 5090. I don't regret getting mine, and flight simming has never looked this good, but it is VERY expensive.

It's a choice (again) but i see zero reasons to use more than 100-120 LOD. You just don't notice it unless you're pixel-peeping the horizon and i just don't do that. I'm far more concerned with the cockpit tasks and looking outside the window to the near terrain etc. Far away? Who cares.

This alone removes a lot and i mean a LOT of work from the GPU, most of it useless. Also frees up a lot of memory.

Spend some time comparing settings in ultra vs high and even medium and you'll come to the conclusion that most of that is just stuff you don't really need. There is zero difference between ultra and medium in building quality and tree quality and even quantity and 1fps here, 1fps there you'll end up gaining smoothness, less VRAM used for the exact same PERCEPTUAL sights.

By all means, go 5090 if you "just don't care" but i doubt the better results come from brute force. Experience tells me otherwise.

25 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

You just don't notice it unless you're pixel-peeping the horizon and i just don't do that.

You very much notice it when you do moutain flying at 2000ft AGL. If you want far away mountains to remain realistic silhouetes you have to set TLOD to at least 500.

When I go on virtual hikes with FSExplore I set the minimum TLOD in AutoFPS to 600.

Edited Sunday at 10:55 AM2 days by Farlis

Mountains in the distance look fine to me with TLOD @ 250, but maybe the difference is more obvious at higher altitudes than I fly?

I am using the steam version and using the steam overlay including the VRAM utilization was an eye opener for me. (as an alternative, the windows performance tab is also showing detailed VRAM information). I was on a RX 6950XT with a 3440x1444 monitor for MSFS and a second monitor 2560x1440. I have set my FPS to 60 - I do not see any reason for higher FPS in a flight simulator. Anyhow - the only limiting factor was the 16GB VRAM of the GPU. Both my processor and GPU were running far from full load. However - every time my VRAM was fully dedicated, MSFS started to warn me and I get stutters. Experimenting a bit - I found a lot of stuff outside of MSFS that is actually using up VRAM resources. ReBAR should be off, using Firefox for my flightsim related stuff (FSHud, Weather, Simbrief, maybe watching a tutorial on YouTube) is using a lot of VRAM resources (i switched to the BRAVE browser which is far lighter on resources), the Volanta app is using 0.5GB VRAM on my system , I switched to a different PDF viewer for my checklists. Maybe you got also other stuff running on the side?

Figuring this out and adjusting MSFS settings (TLOD, Clouds, Textures, Shadows) and I got a decent improvement. Also - higher monitor resolutions will required a higher framebuffer (pixel memory) - maybe try the MSFS render scaling function - reduce the rendering resolution in 10% steps - see if that helps.

And since you are mentioning it - here in Norway, we still can get the 7900XTX new, but I just got one used (even has 1 year of warranty on it). This is a really good GPU and if getting it used you can get good deals too.

GG

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

You very much notice it when you do moutain flying at 2000ft AGL. If you want far away mountains to remain realistic silhouetes you have to set TLOD to at least 500.

When I go on virtual hikes with FSExplore I set the minimum TLOD in AutoFPS to 600.

We absolutely agree here! 100 TLOD from that other poster... oh my gosh that's a blurry disaster unless you're in the flight levels and never look outside.

I had a 4080 which had 16GB of VRAM. I used it for 4k and it was a terrible experience. It’s just not enough VRAM to enjoy well at 4k. I ended up switching to the 5090 and it was the best decision. I use pmdg and Fenix along with other well known aircraft developers at airports like inibuilds. In these situations, VRAM hangs in the low 20s consistently with 4k.

For smaller default airports and default planes, I’m still using close to 14Gb of VRAM.

I also use the dynamic LOD software. I have it set to 200 until 3000 AGL then 800 for the high altitudes. 200 still asks for a lot of VRAM.

12GB RTX 4070 Super MSFS2024 2560x1440.

Edited Sunday at 04:28 PM2 days by 01pewterz28

4K resolution with 12GB VRAM?? What are your in game settings?

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

4K resolution with 12GB VRAM?? What are your in game settings?

Sorry, I thought it was 4k. I am running 2560x1440 w/ 2 48" 4k monitors, all settings set to high, full AI, BATC, and all 3rd party high-end airports. I do run Prosim737 vs. a heavy aircraft like PMDG. I can also say MSFS24 runs much better than MSFS2020 for my setup. Just did a Las Vegas trip (FT LV to Houston with great performance.

Just to emphasise the truth of YMMV, I use a 3080ti, with 12 GB of onboard RAM, 64 GB of DDR4 system RAM
and a 43" 4k monitor and it doesn't run out of "VRAM", though quite often it will use almost all of it.
I don't go chasing framerates, it's locked at 30.
The graphics card never overheats and the frame rates never go much below 28.

My own opinion, worth as much or as little as anyone else's, is that MSFS 2024 uses a given percentage
of the available VRAM and indeed system RAM, which is why some report using over 12 GB of VRAM
and 30+ GB of system RAM, which, if it was the actual demand, would defeat lesser systems, like mine,
yet it doesn't.

Another of my opinions, is that MSFS 2024 is very good at managing the available resources, while at
the same time, maximising the performance that can be gained from them.