Do I need a new graphic card?? (GTX 970)

[DeeJay]

Hi together,

 

I've thought about finally upgrading to a newer graphic card meanwhile.

 

So my system is now:

- Intel i5-3570K @ 3.4 Ghz

- NVidia Geforce GTX 970 (4 GB)

- 850W power supply unit

- 16 GB RAM

- Windows 10 64bit, of course

- Only SSD hard drives

 

and I'm running P3D v4.5 with HF 2. Sooner or later (probably sooner), I want to switch to P3D v5 - when some more addon developers offer updates.

Well, even if the system is quite some years old now, it's running extremely stable, but it's getting slow on newer addons. For example, for most of the bigger airports that I fly to with complex aircraft (let's say PKSim Bogota with the FSL A320 or Aerosoft Frankfurt with the Wilco Embraer), I won't get anything more than 12 fps from the VC. What is strange: It has been faster with the same addons with earlier P3D versions, but now, even after deleting P3D.cfg and the shaders, it's not getting a lot better anymore - with most sliders set to medium. What is even stranger: Some settings that have had a big influence on performance, don't bother anymore: For example the AA settings: Wheather I choose 2 x MSAA or 8 x SSAA has absolutely zero influence on performance! Some time ago, it did significally. Furthermore, when descending and only using time acceleration a little bit, ground textures are blurry on approach for a long time, and autogen scenery is loading very late - way too late. Doesn't look very good in most cases.

 

Now, I've learnt that from FSX to P3D v4, the sim has always been programmed to support more and more GPU rather than CPU. And so, they say about P3D v5 in comparison to P3D v4.

 

Do you think the graphic card should be the weakest point in my system? I know, my CPU isn't high end either, but with the development described above, could that be less of an issue?

Does anyone know, which settings in P3D are exceptionally CPU related and which ones GPU related?

And one more question: Which experiences do you have with second-hand graphic cards?

 

I'm thinking about the GTX 1070, the 1070 ti or the 1080. I should say that I'm not a fps hunter, I'm perfectly happy with 20 fps at the big airports - but not with 12^^

 

Has anyone got experiences with switching between these particular graphic cards?

 

My concern (exept from spending too much money) is that I spend this money on the graphic card, but don't see too much effect because something else isn't right either. Furthermore I'm a bit worried abount power supply - and thus maybe having to spend money again in an even more powerful power supply unit (??). I've read quite some test reports and comparisons between the graphic cards mentioned above, but none with Prepar3d as a reference.

 

Maybe someone more experienced has some advice for me in these situation?

 

 

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

Best regards,

Dominik

[Ardbeg1977]

To be honest, both your CPU and GPU need upgrading but if you can only afford to do one, you should upgrade the CPU. A new CPU will increase your frame rate, a new graphics card will not - it will be CPU limited, i.e. the old CPU is not fast enough to feed the new graphics card. The budget option would be Ryzen 3600 with MSI X470 Tomahawk Max motherboard and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM. Otherwise, go 9700K or 10700k with new Intel mb, if you’re prepared to wait. I’ve just upgraded from a 3770K and GTX 970 to a Ryzen 9 3900X with GTX 970 (for now, until the new Nvidia cards come out). I am very pleased with it - increased frames and very smooth. AA and texture settings are set quite low in X-Plane but that’s because the 970 has only 4GB VRAM (3.5GB). I am running 3*1600*1200 Nvidia surround - that’s a lot of pixels. Once I get the new graphics card, I’ll be able to turn the wick up :-). 850W is plenty, you could run two graphics cards with that (not that you should - SLI is dead, mostly).

The future of pc gaming in general and flight simulation in particular will be multi-core. Vulkan and DX12 will make more use of more cores and you only have to look at PS5 and the new Xbox to see how console gaming is going, i.e. 8 core. IMO, FS2020 will be the ‘killer’ app for the new Xbox (although pc version is coming out first).

I think P3D has been optimised to use more cores to load the scenery in, as priority. With only 4 cores, your CPU is probably being hogged by the scenery, which won’t leave much for the aircraft. You can probably have Orbx scenery with simple aircraft or default scenery with complex aircraft but you can’t have both. N.B. clouds kill frame rate, whatever, particularly if you have AA turned on, even with a 1080 ti.

Regards

David

 

[Ardbeg1977]

Dominik,

Also, see this thread:-

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/189542-amd-3900x-verses-i9-9900k/

I think it backs up what I said above (mostly).

The Hardware Unboxed, Gamers Nexus and Tech Deals YouTube channels are good sources of information, as well, for CPU and GPU comparisons.

Ultimately, for an overall good flight sim experience, you require a balanced machine - don't spend too much on one area and neglect another.

Also, check out the JonFly YouTube channels - he's just built a 3900X system to stream with and he's very pleased with it (part of what influenced me to do the same).

Regards

David

[DeeJay]

Thanks a lot for these information.

 

Oh, that's a surprise to me, that the CPU is the even weaker point in my system.

One thing I didn't count in, is a new MB - do you think my ASUS Z77 won't do it anymore with a new CPU? I forgot to mention it at the specs above.

 

14 hours ago, Ardbeg1977 said:

 I am very pleased with it - increased frames and very smooth. AA and texture settings are set quite low in X-Plane but that’s because the 970 has only 4GB VRAM (3.5GB). I am running 3*1600*1200 Nvidia surround - that’s a lot of pixels. Once I get the new graphics card, I’ll be able to turn the wick up :-).

 

 

So, are you only running X-Plane? I'm asking, because I only have P3D and I'm pretty sure I will stick with it. Can you compare XP's and P3D's system demands enough to conclude you could take the same hardware options for P3D?

[Stillwater]

56 minutes ago, DeeJay said:

Thanks a lot for these information.

 

Oh, that's a surprise to me, that the CPU is the even weaker point in my system.

One thing I didn't count in, is a new MB - do you think my ASUS Z77 won't do it anymore with a new CPU? I forgot to mention it at the specs above.

 

 

So, are you only running X-Plane? I'm asking, because I only have P3D and I'm pretty sure I will stick with it. Can you compare XP's and P3D's system demands enough to conclude you could take the same hardware options for P3D?

Hi Dominik,

you can see from my spoiler I have got quite a similar system than you - except that I have upgraded my graphics card 3 years ago in preparation for p3dv4. Works well, with my settings usually with sufficient FPS - except in autogen-heavy regions like the cityscapes. The CPU does not seem to be a bottleneck, but surely this is also depending on the settings. 

I can therefore support the idea to just upgrade your GPU, for the time being - if you manage to get a 1070 or 1080.

My next hardware step is probably going to be a completely new rig. Someday.

 

 

[Ardbeg1977]

3 hours ago, DeeJay said:

So, are you only running X-Plane? I'm asking, because I only have P3D and I'm pretty sure I will stick with it. Can you compare XP's and P3D's system demands enough to conclude you could take the same hardware options for P3D?

 

I have P3D V4.5 and I like it but I prefer X-Plane. I think if you turn all the sliders up on X-Plane, it's actually more demanding than P3D. I've just done some quick testing, nothing very scientific. Remember that my resolution is 4800x1200 (Nvidia Surround). That's nearly 70% of 4K, so a lot of pixels for a 4GB (3.5GB) VRAM card. I did some quick testing, nothing very scientific:-

P3D V4.5

A2A Comanche @ KFHR (Orbx PNW + airport): 30fps completely smooth, no stutters, as long as V-sync and triple buffering enabled.

Terrain sliders all to the right

Use high-resolution terrain textures ticked

Water detail: Low

Enable Bathymetry ticked

Clouds turned off

Scenery complexity: Extremely dense

Autogen and scenery draw distance: High

Auto vegetation density: Normal

Autogen building density: Dense

Dynamic 3D Autogen Vegetation: Unticked

Special effects detail: High

Special effects distance: High

Enable HDR unticked

Dynamic reflections off

Dynamic Lighting, Landing-lights illuminate ground and Display lens flare ticked

Shadow quality medium

Shadow draw distance: Low

FXAA: On  AA: 2xMSAA  Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 8x  Texture resolution: Medium - 1024x1024

 

X-Plane 11.5 beta 6, Vulkan renderer enabled

Default Cessna Skyhawk 172 @  KSEA default scenery: 40-55fps, generally but  occasionally up to 70, completely smooth, no stutters.

Visual Effects: High

Texture quality: Medium

Number of World Objects: High

AA: FXAA (i.e. low)

Reflection Detail: Minimal

No clouds. Visibility: 100sm

 

It's possible that you may see some benefit with a better graphics card because you will lift the 4GB restriction on VRAM but I do not think you will be completely happy until you have upgraded the CPU and motherboard , as well. Also, on eBay, second-hand 2080 ti's are going for £500-600. For that you could get a new RTX 2070 Super with a 3 or 4 year warranty. I know because I've been looking but I've decided to wait for the new Nvidia cards to come out, to see if they can come up with a better value proposition than they did with the first gen RTX cards.

 

I'm wondering before embarking on this upgrade: have you tried a complete clean re-install of your graphics driver (using DDU from Guru3D.com) and P3D? It seems strange that changing the AA doesn't change the performance, at all.

 

[DeeJay]

6 minutes ago, Ardbeg1977 said:

I'm wondering before embarking on this upgrade: have you tried a complete clean re-install of your graphics driver (using DDU from Guru3D.com) and P3D? It seems strange that changing the AA doesn't change the performance, at all.

 

Indeed.

 

So far, I've only updated the graphic driver to the newest version. Complete reinstalls are something I've tried to avoid so far, because in the case of P3D, it's so much work to reinstall all the addons, which still installed into the programm itself instead of outside using the xml method.

But maybe I should really do that first. Would also be a chance to tidy up my addon empire.^^

 

Do you think I do anything wrong when I switch to P3d v5 when I reinstall everything anyway? I mean ....GTX 970 and DX12 is something I don't really get through... for the case that I'm gonna keep the 970..

[DeeJay]

3 hours ago, Stillwater said:

I can therefore support the idea to just upgrade your GPU, for the time being - if you manage to get a 1070 or 1080.

My next hardware step is probably going to be a completely new rig. Someday.

 

That supports the idea of trying and reinstall my whole P3d first and see what happens. Getting a 1070 or 1080 second-hand seems no problem at ebay.

[Ardbeg1977]

Hi DeeJay,

I just read your pc specs. Is that 2*4GB sticks or 1*8GB, that you have? I’d be inclined to add another 8GB, matched to what you have, if I were you, before I bought a better graphics card. You may be hitting your RAM limit when running the game. I think 16GB is generally thought to be the minimum, now, when gaming. Also, Windows 10 has better memory management than Windows 7, so I’d be inclined to upgrade there, too. You may be dead against that, though - many people are.

Maybe you should upgrade the RAM first and do a clean graphics driver install. Then if no improvement, try installing v5, maybe after the next hotfix update, whenever that will be. Only after you’ve done those things, consider replacing the GPU.

I still think you won’t get the full benefit of the newer GPU without a more modern CPU. You need the CPU horsepower to drive the frame rate. A 2012 processor doesn’t really cut it in 2020 with these modern / modernised simulators, imo. However, a new CPU, MB and RAM would be 2-3 times the cost of a secondhand GPU. So, I could see why you would be reluctant or unable to go down that route.

I won’t be upgrading to v5, as I am happy enough with 4.5. I am just waiting for FS2020 to release. I think it will blow P3D and X-Plane out of the water. I will still use those, as there will be specific aircraft that I will still want to fly, but FS2020 is the future.

On the eBay front, be careful. You won’t get a warranty with a secondhand card, if you buy from a private individual. In the UK, 1080 ti’s are not good value, in my opinion, when you can get an RTX 2070 Super, with warranty, for similar money. However, I prefer to wait for the new gen to come out, then I will be sorted for a good few years, with DX12 and Vulkan fully supported.

All the best

David

[DeeJay]

Oh sorry, only now I see that I forgot to update the specs in my profile when I updated my RAM. Meanwhile I have one single 16 GB DDR 4 RAM installed. I've installed it when I switched to the 64bit P3d v4 some time ago. I've got to correct that in my profile.

 

Yes, that's it. Of course, the best would be to get MB, graphic card and CPU new and good. Even if Corona certainly doesn't take me into financial trouble, it still doesn't make me earn any extra money over the next months. So, I could afford some new parts, but there are really many other things around my house and family that would make far more sense to spend the money on.

 

With this in mind, it might be the best to tidy up and reinstall graphic driver and P3d v4 first, and later upgrade step by step, where neccesary - certainly a lot of work, but I hope it will be worth it by not wasting money for things I wouldn't have needed, as the reasons for the bad performance in my sim isn't clear enough yet. P3d v5 won't run away until that point, for the case I still want to update. In any case, I will only stick with ONE simulator, not 2. I did this twice with FS9+FSX and later with FSX+P3D v2, and both configurations have been a real mess for me, concerning addons.

 

Thanks again for your detailed information and your great help.

 

Regards, Dominik

[AnkH]

Honestly, I doubt that you have DDR4 memory on your Z77 mainboard... so add RAM to your list of what you would have to buy new if you decide to do an upgrade. And it was not very wise to go for a single 16GB RAM stick, as you lost dual channel like this. If you ever upgrade, please always get at least two RAM sticks for whatever amount you are going to buy.

 

The only thing you could try to improve what you already have now, if you have a good cooling solution: overclock this i5. I had my 3570K running easily at 4.5GHz. It will provide you some extra performance.

[DeeJay]

4 hours ago, AnkH said:

Honestly, I doubt that you have DDR4 memory on your Z77 mainboard... so add RAM to your list of what you would have to buy new if you decide to do an upgrade. And it was not very wise to go for a single 16GB RAM stick, as you lost dual channel like this. If you ever upgrade, please always get at least two RAM sticks for whatever amount you are going to buy.

 

Oh, really? I remember hearing people say that I should do exactly that^^ Not sure, maybe I remember wrong..

 

4 hours ago, AnkH said:

The only thing you could try to improve what you already have now, if you have a good cooling solution: overclock this i5. I had my 3570K running easily at 4.5GHz. It will provide you some extra performance.

 

OK, overclocking was completely new to me when I bought the CPU. So I tried just a little bit and I was very careful, because I never got the feeling that I really completly knew what I'm doing there. I think I have a good cooler built over the CPU. Is there any other way I can accidently destroy the CPU than overheating it?? If not and if I finally go for a new CPU and mainboard, I could new say I've got nothing to lose^^

[Stillwater]

23 minutes ago, DeeJay said:

overclocking

Hi Dominik,

from my spoiler below you can see that I run the same processor as you have at 4.2 GHz. Only now with the 4k monitor my GPU produces more heat, so that I get some ">70°C" warnings for the CPU, but nothing more serious.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I would imagine that you have 16 GB of DDR3 RAM.

Chris' point is that it will not work on a later motherboard that will require DDR4 RAM.

 

I don't know much about RAM but I do know that DDR is "Double Data Rate".

There is also something called "Dual Channel Technology".

Most motherboards have four sockets for RAM, two channels and two slots for each channel.

If each slot of one channel has a matching memory module in it, that channel will operate at

double the bandwidth of a single memory module in one socket. I understand that to mean that

it can deal with twice as much data at any moment.

On that basis, it is very unlikely that you would have been advised to use one 16 GB module

versus the better solution of two 8 GB modules.

 

It is quite possible to melt a CPU by overclocking it and it looks like your present CPU is capable of a

turbo speed of 3.8 Ghz. If it's anything like mine, this is applied to all of its cores and to be honest,

trying to clock it up to 4.5 GB will probably result in at least cooling problems and for only a handful

of frames per second.

 

I have a 970 in my loft and the main reason that I upgraded it, to the 1070ti, was that it has of course

only 4 GB of onboard RAM, versus the 8 GB of the newer card.

Buying a 2070 could be a good idea, there doesn't seem to be a ti and the 2080ti is seemingly more

expensive than most of the other components added together.

 

Food for thought for you, in any case.

 

[AnkH]

Another option would be a RTX-2060 Super, also offering 8GB VRAM (in contrast to a RTX-2060, that only offers 6GB VRAM).

 

Regarding CPU overclocking: you can do a lot of things wrong, that is right, but it is almost impossible to do any harm to the CPU, unless you totally go maniac with vcore values. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to start your BIOS with the default settings and reconfigure everything. You can do no harm due to temperatures, before the CPU gets damaged, it will simply shut down. Damaging the CPU due to heat is basically only possible when you remove the cooler while it is running or by using totally silly vcore values.

 

But of course, it needs some knowledge. There are plenty of good guides online, you need to do some reading and then you will be fine.

[DeeJay]

23 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

I would imagine that you have 16 GB of DDR3 RAM.

Chris' point is that it will not work on a later motherboard that will require DDR4 RAM.

 

OK, I might remember that wrong. Then it's probably DDR3 RAM. I'm not saying it has been a good expert who told me about the strategy with the RAM at that time^^

But now, it would probably make sense to buy an additional 8 GB DDR3 RAM to fill the second channel, right? 24 GB RAM might be oversized for the moment, but I guess it wouldn't be more expensive than buying two new 8 GB sticks new and sell my used 16 GB stick for a few pennies?!

 

So, I'm gonna start reinstalling, see how it works, then go deeper into overclocking and then upgrade my hardware components step by step where it seems neccesary.

 

One last question on a possible decision of a new graphic card: What exactly can be improved by having more V-RAM in the graphic card (for exaple 4GB in the 970 vs. 6GB in the 1060 vs. 8GB in the 1080)??

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

the 1060 is not really an upgrade to the 970, it has more RAM but performance is similar.

I think you would be disappointed.

Here is the 970 vs the 2060, which is  a much bigger difference than the 1060 but of course, more money.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2060-vs-Nvidia-GTX-970/4034vs2577

 

The 1060 and 1080 are in two different leagues.

I suspect also that your choice will be 2060 vs 2080 and the price difference is

spectacular, the second is roughly twice the price of the first and if you went for a

2080ti, almost double the price of the 1080.

 

As ever, the 70 series seems to offer the best value for money.

So far, my money has been where my mouth is, GTX 570  > GTX 970 > GTX 1070ti.

You can compare any two, I have set it up for you to see the 970 vs the 2070

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-Nvidia-RTX-2070/2577vs4029

 

 

[BrianV]

I took the jump, and placed an order for a 2070 super, to replace by 5 year old 980 gtx (should arrive next week). This gives 8 rather than my current 4 GB and in my i7 computer, I hope P3D v5 will perform well. The 2080ti is still very costly and not sure it is worth the extra unless also having a new top-of-the range computer. 

[DeeJay]

23 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Hello,

the 1060 is not really an upgrade to the 970, it has more RAM but performance is similar.

I think you would be disappointed.

Here is the 970 vs the 2060, which is  a much bigger difference than the 1060 but of course, more money.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2060-vs-Nvidia-GTX-970/4034vs2577

 

The 1060 and 1080 are in two different leagues.

I suspect also that your choice will be 2060 vs 2080 and the price difference is

spectacular, the second is roughly twice the price of the first and if you went for a

2080ti, almost double the price of the 1080.

 

As ever, the 70 series seems to offer the best value for money.

So far, my money has been where my mouth is, GTX 570  > GTX 970 > GTX 1070ti.

You can compare any two, I have set it up for you to see the 970 vs the 2070

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-Nvidia-RTX-2070/2577vs4029

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Dadtom65]

I wish they would bring out a 2070ti. Just that bit extra grunt would do it for me. I was thinking of getting the 2080 Super but like Nick says it’s the cost for even that one. Thanks Derek.

[DeeJay]

All right, I've tried what I could do with overclocking. While doing that, I came to an app called CPUID HWMonitor. And watching all the components running while flying in a critical area, I got proved what Ardbek1977 supposed: All 4 CPU cores are running at 4021 GHz all the time during preparation, taxi and takeoff! They just get a little relief while climbing outside the big cities and in cruise, but not a lot.

The GTX 970 does well, GPU and memory are between 50 and 75% most of the time, with the memory being the weakest point here (it reached a peak of 89%). Texture loading times are moderade. Not good, but not too bad either..

I've tried this in the PMDG 737 NGXu at DD Newark with plenty of traffic and dense autogen - which is a real killer so far, thus good test conditions to see the limits.

 

So, CPU really seems to be the most urgend problem by far. The graphic card might also be replaced anytime in future, but isn't the big problem at the moment.

 

BTW, no problems with CPU cooling. It still keeps little over 60°C even after running at full power for a longer period.

 

So, the big questions are now:

Is it still an unwritten law that an NVidia graphic card should be combined with an Intel processor?

Can a new CPU be damaged when it's installed into an older MB (which MIGHT not be compatible). Honestly, if possible in any way, I would avoid a new MB for both financial reasons and some tricky installing work (at least for me).

Is it a big advantage for P3d to have more cores (for example 8 instead of 6 or 4 only) or are the value of the GHz still more important (I might remember that the latter was the case for FSX then).

[Joe Smith]

Hi,
1060 is not really an upgrade to the 970, it has more RAM but performance is similar.
Here is the 970 vs the 2060 comparison.

https://www.gamingcutter.com/gtx-970-vs-rtx-2060/

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

welcome to the forums.

I guess that you didn't read the topic first.

[DeeJay]

All right, for the case someone might be interested because he has similar thoughts on upgrading his hardware, here's a little update on what I did:

- Just tidying up the sim brought nothing than a little shorter loading times.

- Deleting the graphic driver completely and reinstalling didn't help either.

- Various settings almost changed nothing at all.

 

So I had to invest. I tried a new graphic card first, not because I thought it was the main issue, but because it was the easiest part to change. Now, I've got the RTX 2060 Super with 8 GB VRAM. What to expect: The blurred textures on the approach have gone, autogen scenery is now ALWAYS there - yay! Even at very dense settings, and I could extend the LOD, cloud and shadow radius a bit. Very good, but fps only improved very little at the big airports (unfortunately, as predicted^^). But at least I've tried if it might have been "good enough" - well, it wasn't.

 

Upgrading the CPU means indeed a new mainboard (no octa core for my 1155 socket), and updating the mainboard meant also updating the RAM - because it now really needs to be DDR4 RAM. And that means probably a new Windows 10 licence, because the old one was a free upgrade from a Win 7 OEM licence, which would be linked to the old mainboard, as people say... (?) You see where things go... I hope at least the CPU cooler, the PSU and the case will do their job as well as before.

 

I've now grit my teeth, closed my eyes and ordered an ASUS Prime Z390-P with an i7 9700k and 16 GB DDR 4 RAM, additionally to my new RTX 2060 Super. Don't this new system dare and work brilliant for anything less than the next 10 years of flightsimming I'm gonna report back again how much better it is when it's done.

[73samster]

I am running a new IMAC 64gb RAM, 1TB SSD drive, Radeon Pro 580x 8gb GDDR5 VRAM, 3.7GHz 6-core 9th generation Intel Core i5 processor turbo boost up to 4.6HHz.  With these specs , can I run True Florida HD?  Should I download the SD products instead and if so, is there a big drop off?

[KEVOone]

@73samster 

 

Hi, I was in the same boat (or plane) as you when I went to purchase the Northern and Southern California sceneries for Xplane 11.50 b9.  I wasn't sure, so I purchased both & experimented, installing SD & then HD. I found that I can easily run HD with my 2017 iMac.  I have uploaded my iMac specs & the graphic settings I use in XPlane where I get between 30 - 35 frames.

 

Note:

• I use the XPlane "default monitor setting" & the iMac Display setting "Default" at 2560 x1440.  This helps with FPS.
• Your SSD is is going to make things run fast.  Just be careful, the HD scenery files are big.  I put mine on an External HD (non-SSD) creating "aliases" to the main XPlane "custom scenery" folder and it works great.

 

Best of luck to you!

Kevin

 

[73samster]

3 minutes ago, Kevoone said:

@73samster 

 

Hi, I was in the same boat (or plane) as you when I went to purchase the Northern and Southern California sceneries for Xplane 11.50 b9.  I wasn't sure, so I purchased both & experimented, installing SD & then HD. I found that I can easily run HD with my 2017 iMac.  I have uploaded my iMac specs & the graphic settings I use in XPlane where I get between 30 - 35 frames.

 

Note:

• I use the XPlane "default monitor setting" & the iMac Display setting "Default" at 2560 x1440.  This helps with FPS.
• Your SSD is is going to make things run fast.  Just be careful, the HD scenery files are big.  I put mine on an External HD (non-SSD) creating "aliases" to the main XPlane "custom scenery" folder and it works great.

 

Best of luck to you!

Kevin

 

Thanks for the reply. You are running i7. Mine is 9th generation i5 6 core. Is this better? Meaning isn’t there requirement an i7?  I really want the scenery. Also is it just download and the installer puts all the files in right place?

[KEVOone]

30 minutes ago, 73samster said:

Thanks for the reply. You are running i7. Mine is 9th generation i5 6 core. Is this better? Meaning isn’t there requirement an i7?  I really want the scenery. Also is it just download and the installer puts all the files in right place?

 

Hmm I'm not sure.  I know that scenery requires a lot of GPU horsepower and it looks like we have the same graphics card.  However your CPU seems newer and has higher GHZ.

 

Here's what I would do (and did do  ). Buy the HD version.  It's about $10 more than the SD version.  IF, it doesn't work to your satisfaction, swap it out for the SD version (included in the price of the HD version).  Just uninstall the HD and install the SD at no additional charge.  

 

And yes, the installer will take care of everything, but you have to tell it where to go.  You'll see.  Experiment

 

Let me know how everything turns out!  ~K

[73samster]

you were so so helpful.  Didn't know it includes the SD.  and I guess you are right.  My GPU seems newer so lets give it a shot.  I will definitely give you feedback.  Seems you are very satisfied with the product and out of everything I have seen, looks like this is the nicest but I will see.

[73samster]

Do you know if this install affects the existing Airport HD plug in?

[KEVOone]

50 minutes ago, 73samster said:

Do you know if this install affects the existing Airport HD plug in?

No sorry, I'm not familiar with that plug in.