Iiari

From what I have seen, the 4080 and 7900XTX should be pretty even in performance, but the XTX with more VRAM, as you point out. You do lose DLSS, though, so you have to decide if that matters to you.

Totally agree that it was disappointing that none of the new gen cars minus the 5090 had higher VRAM. That said, personally, I'm at 3440x1440, not 4K, and I am crossing my fingers that 16GB VRAM will be enough.

So, as far as I can see, there have been three benchmarks online at this point that show the 9070 XT to perform at or near equally as well as the 7900 XTX and the 5080 with MSFS 2024, which is the only title I care about (it's perhaps a tad slower on some other titles, a bit better on others), so I went with a 9800X3D and 9070 XT combo for about $2150. Happy with this decision at the moment. We'll see how things go. It arrives in 2 weeks....

@VeryBumpyThanks for the link. Other than the one I posted above, no MSFS 2024 benchmarks on the card I've seen yet...

So, interesting, on the first Youtube channel I've seen testing the 9070 XT with MSFS 2024 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_a-FhQCqCE&t=1s) the performance in 1440p (which I use) is identical to the 5080 test they did earlier on that card (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C7bv2mpDvs), with better lowest 1% FPS as well. In 4K, the 5080 has only 6% better FPS. Very interesting...

Great post. Thank you for the information!

Good point. The 9070 XT is going to slot a smidge under the 5070 Ti (per AMD's own stats), so it too will probably be about 15-20% down in performance from the 7900 XTX and 5080. What bothers me there is its 16 GB of VRAM, which is the same as the amount I'm not impressed by with the 5070 Ti and 5080. As we're all seeing, that might be the new MSFS floor for VRAM. Overall, though, It will be interesting to see how close this card gets to the 7900 XTX for MSFS 2024 (the only title I really care about) and what its availability looks like at launch.

It's an interesting dilemma. Especially considering: In some direct comparisons, the 5080 seems to be 18-20% faster for MSFS 2024 than the 5070 Ti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPpiBVhWY68&t=543s) In another direct comparison, the 7900 XTX is about 22% faster for MSFS 2024 than the 5070 Ti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQxJ9B_Hbs&t=589s) Of course, right now, in any pre-built, neither the 5070 Ti or 5080 are currently available at all As you point out, except used (where they're being gouged), the 40 series also isn't available at all This is what's leading me towards the 7900 XTX....

Hi all. I've been puttering along flying mostly airliners with an i9 10900 with an RTX 3080 GPU I purchased early in 2021 in 3440 x 1400. At that time my system was nearly cutting edge and it served me well through the First Age of MSFS 2020 (base game plus FBW A320, CRJ), decently through the Second Age (PMDG, other third party airliners, early bespoke scenery and airports), but it's clearly not up to the Third Age of MSFS (iFly Max, Ini airliners, most airports being third party, 2024, and especially traffic injection and third party ATC). Sure, a combination of Frame Gen mod and especially the heaven-sent AutoFPS are hacks that can keep the game mostly flyable at medium settings, but DLSS (for me) is unusable given the glass cockpit blurring and I feel like I spend as much time tweaking settings as I do flying. Sooooo, my plan was early 2025 to finally break down and buy a new system, but the current 50 series launch has proven disappointing and nothing is available anywhere anyway. Looking at my options and some comparison videos (referenced below), I've come to the conclusion that, first, I'm unwilling to spend on a 5090 and, second, there seems to be no decisive advantage to the 5080 over the two year old AMD 7900 XTX (null to a measly 3-9% better for the 5080, even with Ray Tracing), and the 7900 XTX is already in stock in pre-builts and out there for hundreds less than the eventual 5080 pre-builts will go for. Plus, the 7900 XTX also has a higher VRAM, which is increasingly important with traffic injection and ever more complex airliner and airport models. So, in early 2025, is there any reason not to buy an AMD 7900 XTX paired with a 9800 X3D? I know a hypothetical 5080 Ti or Super with hypothetically more VRAM might come in late '25 or early '26, but I'm unwilling to wait that long at this point. Thoughts? Thanks! Videos reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnpmEPry18I&t=295s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1y4hNkQ4D4&t=570s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4x9yJg45JA

Also an off topic question, what is the purpose of locking your FPS? Other than power savings, I've never understood the benefit of this. Thank you.

This is a really interesting and underappreciated take. This is one of those situations where "crisper and clearer" actually at times comes off feeling more "gamey" and unrealistic. Look at any real-life TY video of a flight, and there's all kinds of haziness, humidity, smog, distortion, wash-out, etc in actually looking out the window at the real world. "Better" graphics doesn't necessarily equal "more realistic" graphics.

Perhaps the app was overriding or conflicting with the Nvidia Profile Inspector settings, who knows. Also, FWIW, I deleted the Custom...xml file from the Nvidia Profile Inspector directory, but then I did redownload it, as if you don't have it, you don't have one of the options in Nvidia Profile Inspector that needs changing. I think after this fiddling, though, we're all done for some time. If a new generation of MSFS (2024) plus a new generation of DLSS coupled with a big launch (5000 series) can, at best, only bestow upon us a slightly less blurry glass cockpit, I don't think we're going to witness any further significant advances for some time. Maybe there are other titles out there that DLSS will be transformative for, but MSFS (non-VR) doesn't seem to be one of them. Frankly, for me, making these changes with FG plus AutoFPS lowering my LOD at TO and landing below 100 ft will probably prevent me from needing to upgrade from my 3080 for a while. If I did, what more would I get? Changing the textures setting from medium to high? Adding some RT shadows? That's not worth the $1,000+ dollars or more. My 3080 runs every other title I own like butter, so.... For mid-range hardware like mine (3080, i9 10900), for all of its alpha-level bugs, MSFS 2024 looks dramatically better than 2020 and its multicore processing handles 3rd party ATC and traffic injection much better as well.

THANK YOU! Deleting the Nvidia App made all the difference. Repeating all the steps in the video, now everything works and FG is back in both sims. Who would have thought it... Experimenting, FWIW, at 3440x1440, I still think FG+TAA is the best setting for me right now. DLSS4 is better than it was for glass cockpits, but still blurry overall. A shame, because it does feel smoother and look sharper OTW than TAA and adds another 10 FPS in FG, but airliners are about displays, and that trumps everything else. Maybe switching to TAA from DLSS should be just part of an MSFS airliner's final approach checklist... Again, THANK YOU!

HAGS is definitely on. I'll try the rest tomorrow and report in. Thx for the advice.

I tried everything in that video and it didn't work for me. In fact, I just rolled everything back to the prior driver, reinstalled the old framegen mod version, and the prior DLSS files, and I'm still not getting FG as an option. This is a serious bummer, and I fear I've broken something here....

Ugh, if you have a guide to doing that you'd recommend, I'm all ears. I'll search Google in the interim. I also posted about this on the FG Mod github. Thx.

I too had a 3080 and have this problem. Is the only way you got Frame Generation back was to roll back to the prior driver and DLSS?

While I largely agree with this, the one thing that does worry me is their seeming universal issues with optimization. It feels like V1 of everything that IniBuilds does, from planes to scenery, is very heavy on FPS and it's usually a 1.3 or 1.4 update that finally is optimized so that simmers other than those with cutting edge hardware can use it. For example, their KJFK was nearly unflyable for me, with all of the options turned off, for, what? 6, 8, 10 months? All the while, on Discord, Ini was saying there were no performance issues or problems until they finally released an optimization update which brought the FPS of KJFK into the mainstream. Let's hope the coming A350 and A380 will be usable by everyone on release.

Just today flew the same quick flight (KSAN to KLAS) with the default V2 IniBuilds A320, the FBW, and the Fenix. First, before giving my quick opinion, I think it's amazing we're living in a flight sim age where three such terrific planes are available to users, and including the FBW's ecosystem of the LVFR A319/A321 and Headwind A330 even more such planes. And to think that for someone just buying a sim for the first time and, with no add-ons, having this V2 A320, the A310, and the CJ4 as default and, for a bit more, the Citation Longitude and the 787? Just terrific. So my opinion as a casual simmer flying all three back-to-back-to-back? The Fenix is just amazing and is the clear pick of the bunch, as it should be. After these last few updates, what doesn't the Fenix do well at this point? Does it have any weaknesses at all? The default V2 is far better than I thought it was going to be overall and flew the flight perfectly I thought someone online was exaggerating when they said the V2 gave him a 15 FPS hit. On my system (considered, I guess, mid-range these days for this forum, with a 4 year old i9-10900 and Nvidia 3080) at the gate at BMWorld's KSAN (with FSLTL) I took a solid 12 FPS hit vs the FBW and 14 FPS hit vs the Fenix (27 FPS vs 39 with the FBW and 41 with the Fenix). This was probably even worse, as AutoFPS turned down my TLOD a bit with the V2 vs the other two planes to keep the V2 between 27-30 FPS on takeoff. This performance hit alone will probably prevent me from using it that much. The sounds are - not great. I didn't get any clicking with switches at all, or at least not very audible. The engine is - fine... The wind noise was very good. Unlike many planes, speed differences have clearly audible wind sounds. Great EFB I did notice as some YouTube reviewers said that it doesn't seem to dip the nose at 30 ft when landing A "pause at TOD" function would be nice... Overall, the V2 feels like it's an optimization update (oh, that IniBuilds....) and a good sound pack away from being truly excellent. The FBW is enjoyable as always. For me as a casual simmer, I still would like a performance calculator in the EFB that can copy over to the MCDU and, especially compared to the excellent V2 model and the sublime Fenix model, the old default model is looking a bit goofy... But still, all of this is an embarrassment of flight sim riches all around. Great time to be alive as a simmer...

Absolutely true. There's nothing you can do, no setting you can lower, no add-on you can turn off that makes KEWR flyable...

Certainly haven't reviewed all 32 pages of posts, but after spending the last month flying the airlines quite a bit as a passenger and paying close attention to weather along the way and using ASXP since launch, with a lot of "out the window" comparisons, I've come to really believe it looks far more accurate. Less "dramatic" than sim default? Absolutely, but that's how real weather often looks too. I'm very happy with turbulence implementation so far, and historical weather is great. No dramatic transitions yet. So far, I'm very pleased with the purchase.

Yes, and I'd like to see adjustments for temperature as well.