windows, gpu & resolution....

[wain71]

I am unsure yet what I really want to do, built my system a few years back, so not sure if I want to upgrade my GPU or get a complete new system, I understand though that it may be best to wait as there is a limit on components and thus the prices are high(er).....

 

1. AMD or Nvidia? Always had Nvidia, my son uses AMD and does rave about AMD being cheaper but he doesn't do flightsim so not sure if they are good for it now or not.

2. does more Gig (ie- going up to 12 as opposed to my current 8 )  does that mean better or not? P3DV5 for me only ever uses about 5gig anyway, not sure on MSFS...

3. if new system bought with new windows does that mean I would need to buy MSFS again, or are windows and Microsoft account two different things?

4. 2560 x 1440 is my monitor recommended resolution, does this mean I should run p3d / msfs in that or is 1080 better? I get confused with the two things.

 

Like I said I am at a cross roads, currently system seems to be ok, the 1070 has served me well but is getting old now,  and also p3d runs nice at around 30 fps even with pmdg /qw etc over Orbx scenery, don't know how MSFS will perform after the soon to be released optimisation, I get around 30fps mostly but never below 21....

 

My current OS is on m.2 drive and I also have two 4TB drives for sims / games.....

 

any input welcome, I am in no rush.....

[shermank]

Hi Wain,

 

If everything is running well, i.e. 30fps, I think it best to wait until prices fall from their current high levels. That could be a year or so from now, according to what I have read about Intel and Nvidia.

 

 

btw, I have a 6gig  Nvidia 1660ti card and run without any issues at 38 fps, which is equal to half my monitor's refresh rate.

Sherm

[renault]

Hi Wayne

 

You have a very capable machine and I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised with the performance uplift in MS2020 from the July 27 update,

so I think that Sherm's advice is very sound.   

 

I can't comment on P3d or its variants as I don't own them, but on my system i7 9700k @ 4.7 ghz, RTX2060 super 8GB , 2.5K monitor, Z390 MB

and 64 GB ram with my fps locked  at 30 fps  for both MS2020 and XPlane i have all settings on ultra or fully to the right respectively and have a

very satisfactory flight simulation experience, regardless of where I fly.

 

Item 2.

In my experience I have never found that I have run out of VRAM with 8 GB and 2.5K resolution regardless of where

I fly.  Of course everyone's experience my vary in this regard.

 

Item 3. 

When you buy from the MS store the games and apps go with your account at the MS store and are not tied to a particular PC

You just have to make sure that you use the same account that you purchased them with , if you want to install them on a new PC

 

Here is a MS article which gives the essence of the process for installing on a new PC

 

Reinstalling flight simulator 2020 on a different pc desktop - Microsoft Community

 

Item 4

In my experience it is always preferable for best image fidelity to use the same resolution setting in the sim as your

monitor resolution i.e. a 1080p monitor , you set the sim at 1080p , 2.5 K monitor you set the sim to run at 2.5K.

 

Having said that ,here is a little tip that you might find useful and wish to try.  MS2020 has a very good built in upscaling routine that

can allow you to set the simulator to run at a lower resolution than monitor resolution.

 

What I found is that if you set the rendering resolution to 90% then you are rendering 19% fewer pixels in total and this gives

your system a nice little "breathing space" improvement. i.e. you render at 2304 x 1296 pixels in the sim, but MS2020 upscales

the image to your monitor resolution of 2560 x 1440p.

 

The nice thing is that the image fidelity is almost indistinguishable from rendering fully at native monitor resolution,

but you system will run much smoother since it is not working as hard as it does at native monitor resolution.

 

Of course you can reduce the setting even more than the 90% setting , but I found that image quality also starts to degrade

as you go below 90%

 

So what I would do is to pick an area  to fly in, including ground scenery  and fly first with MS2020 set to the

same resolution as your monitor (i.e. 100 % scaling). 

 

Then reduce it to 90%  and repeat. If you are happy with the image fidelity, then you can keep that setting. 

If not reset it back to 100% scaling.

 

I have a forum colleague who has tried this suggestion at 4K and was really pleased with the result.  Image quality was excellent, and his GPU certainly liked the reduced rendering load.  

 

Give it a whirl and see what you think. Combining this with a locked 30 fps (I use NVCP maximum frame rate setting for this)  with your system

I think you will be pleased with how well it will work.  

 

Fingers crossed for the 27th but should be even better  with these settings

 

Hope this is of help

Cheers

Pete

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by renault

[wain71]

@shermank @renault thanks both for taking the time to post an answer, I do agree with your suggestion of waiting, costs are high at the moment and my performance is not to bad in all 3 of my sims.......I will try your suggestion Pete regarding the scaling, hopefully the results will be good, also I now understand regarding installing to a new PC when the day comes......we'll await the update next week and see what we get from it.....

[caleb1]

 

 

22 hours ago, wain71 said:

the 1070 has served me well but is getting old now

 

1070?  Old?

I'm still running P3D v4.5 with lots of Orbx regions and airports at 25 to 35 fps on a GTX 745.