Ross Carlson Posted September 4, 2015 at 07:05 PM Posted September 4, 2015 at 07:05 PM Hi all, I'm looking at building a new PC for numerous reasons, one of which is of course flight simming. I use P3D 2.5. I realize that FSX is mostly CPU-bound and doesn't necessarily benefit from keeping up with the latest high end video card. What I'm wondering is if that's true of P3D. Does anyone have a good feel for that? Should I buy a high end video card when I build the new PC? I'm going to go for the fastest Intel i7 I can find, but I'm not sure how crazy to go with the video card. My current system is a 2.4 GHz i7 with 8 GB RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 7970 video card driving 4 monitors. I run P3D on one monitor, windowed mode, and use the other three monitors for undocked panels, web browser for charts, VATSpy, and vPilot. I get about 15 to 20 FPS in the PMDG 777. I'm not sure how much of an FPS hit I'm taking by running 4 monitors on the single card (even though P3D is only shown on one of them) ... I should test that. I'm hoping that going with one of the newer i7s, clocked at 4 GHz, with an up-to-date video card, will show a significant FPS boost. I'd like to be able to lock the FPS at 30 or 40 and not have it dip below that even when I'm on the ground at an airport with reasonably complex scenery, or when airborne with bad weather (lots of clouds) in the area. I'm not into overclocking, so the overclockability of the system is not a factor for me. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Board of Governors Tim Barber Posted September 5, 2015 at 02:02 AM Board of Governors Posted September 5, 2015 at 02:02 AM Following... I presume you have reviewed this website Ross? ... http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html TB Tim Barber VATSIM President Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 5, 2015 at 04:55 AM Author Posted September 5, 2015 at 04:55 AM I presume you have reviewed this website Ross? ... http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html I saw a link to that in a thread discussing system builds for FSX, but I'm specifically wondering about P3D and whether or not any of the rendering changes they made make it so that it benefits more from a high end video card than FSX does. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oscar Reimer 1198491 Posted September 10, 2015 at 08:07 AM Posted September 10, 2015 at 08:07 AM I presume you have reviewed this website Ross? ... http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html I saw a link to that in a thread discussing system builds for FSX, but I'm specifically wondering about P3D and whether or not any of the rendering changes they made make it so that it benefits more from a high end video card than FSX does. It does benefit from a modern card way more than FSX does. This is especially true if you run graphic heavy options such as lots of shadows. With that said, in this case I think it's your low clocked CPU which is the bottleneck in this configuration. Change only the CPU to start with and see if you need more performance afterwards. AMDs 7970 is a quite fast card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 10, 2015 at 01:24 PM Author Posted September 10, 2015 at 01:24 PM Thanks for the suggestion, Oscar. I was going to do just that (upgrade just the CPU) at first, but I ended up ordering parts to build a whole new system including a new video card. I need to build a smaller form factor system so that the machine is more portable (I will be using it to demo software at trade shows) and the 7970 just barely doesn't fit in the case I bought. (Antec 600M.) So I ended up getting a new video card (GTX980 Ti) as well as the i7 4790K CPU. The last of the parts should arrive today, so I'll do the [Mod - Happy Thoughts]embly this evening and put it through its paces during FNO tomorrow and post a quick summary of before & after results. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhruv Kalra Posted September 11, 2015 at 02:30 AM Posted September 11, 2015 at 02:30 AM My i7 5820K/GTX 980 combination easily gets frames locked at 30 in P3D 2.5 with complex add-ons without breaking a sweat (3.3 running stable OC'd to 4.5). It is worth pointing out that with a modern i7, you're robbing yourself of quite a decent boost by not overclocking even a modest amount. Dhruv Kalra VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 11, 2015 at 05:27 AM Author Posted September 11, 2015 at 05:27 AM Thanks DK ... I think I will try a modest overclock ... I've read that the i7 4790K overclocks to at least 4.4 pretty easily. Have you tried the PMDG 777 with your rig? That's the one that really kills my frame rates. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhruv Kalra Posted September 11, 2015 at 03:00 PM Posted September 11, 2015 at 03:00 PM Have you tried the PMDG 777 with your rig? That's the one that really kills my frame rates. I have. One of my most recent long-hauls on the network was KLAX-YSSY in the 77L in order to fully OOM stress-test this rig. Frames were consistently above 40 (running unlocked with moderately high rendering/AA at 2560x1440). Vataware track: http://vataware.com/flight/556beb8ea765656201000002 (yes, I was at my machine the whole time and fully admit to having nothing better to do that weekend) Screenshots (frame counter hidden, but any time I turned it on, the number was north of 40 ) http://puu.sh/i84mr/10ed5d93b2.jpg http://puu.sh/i8t9U/3c065efd3f.jpg http://puu.sh/i8Owc/79122d2de2.jpg http://puu.sh/i8OFc/97ae0dd853.jpg PMDG 777, FTX Global + Vector + Trees HD, ASN, REX 4 with Soft Clouds. Dhruv Kalra VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 11, 2015 at 03:10 PM Author Posted September 11, 2015 at 03:10 PM Great, thanks. I finished the new PC build last night but didn't have a chance to do much testing in P3D. I did fire it up for a super-quick test, and found that I was getting frame rates of 35 to 45 sitting on the tarmac in the 777. With my old system I was getting 15-20 FPS in the same situation, so the new CPU/GPU have more than doubled my framerate without any tweaking of the P3D configuration. Pretty happy about that. And this is with no overclocking yet ... running all stock default settings in the BIOS. I'll start messing with the overclocking this weekend. Just waiting on some low-profile RAM sticks to arrive because the ones I ordered are too tall and they interfere with the radiator. So I'm on the stock cooler until I get the low profile RAM. DK, would you be willing to share your P3D settings? Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhruv Kalra Posted September 11, 2015 at 11:02 PM Posted September 11, 2015 at 11:02 PM DK, would you be willing to share your P3D settings? Sure. I'll trade you for an update to the QU logic in vERAM (In all seriousness, when I get back to my FS rig I'll dig them all out and post) Dhruv Kalra VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 11, 2015 at 11:53 PM Author Posted September 11, 2015 at 11:53 PM DK, would you be willing to share your P3D settings? Sure. I'll trade you for an update to the QU logic in vERAM (In all seriousness, when I get back to my FS rig I'll dig them all out and post) Thanks DK ... and if you just want to send me your cfg file, I can extract the differences from my own cfg pretty easily. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhruv Kalra Posted September 13, 2015 at 01:04 AM Posted September 13, 2015 at 01:04 AM You've got mail, Ross. Dhruv Kalra VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted September 13, 2015 at 03:02 AM Author Posted September 13, 2015 at 03:02 AM Thanks. I spent the last couple hours reading lots of tweaking guides, and copied a few settings from your file, and I'm now at 50-55 FPS in the 777 cockpit, and 80-90 FPS in external views. Still haven't overclocked yet. This is with no add-ons for textures or weather, and I'm [Mod - Happy Thoughts]uming I'll lose some performance when I run ASN or an add-on like FTX Global, but we'll see. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evan Reiter Posted September 14, 2015 at 06:18 PM Posted September 14, 2015 at 06:18 PM Ross, what have you found works well? Would you mind sharing YOUR latest settings? I also recently upgraded to P3D, although I haven't done anything with hardware. Evan ReiterBoston Virtual ARTCC/ZBW Community Manager Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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