MS FSX vs DT FSX SE: The Conclusive Performance Benchmark

[Jordan King]

So the only question is, with the programming/code improvements that Pete Dawson says are "significant" and the numerous reports from users of better frames and smoother performance, is it just placebo or is it real? 

 

A little about me: I have been a flight simmer for the better part of 15 years. I have belonged to about 3 different VA's where I have accumulated about 3000 hours and have about 180 real world hours in various aircraft such as the 172, 150, and Cherokee. I am an avid computer builder, overclocker, and a watercooling freak. In real life, I am the VP of the Global Technology and Operations group of a large financial institution. I own products from FSDT, Flightbeam, ORBX, Pacsim, PMDG, FS Global, Cloud 9, Aerosim, blah blah blah. Basically I spend too much money on this. )

So enough about me, on to the benchmarks.

 

First, let me share with you the computer I used for these tests: 

• Intel I7 3960k (overclocked to 4.7ghz)
  
• 2xGTX 680 4gb models on 344.75 drivers (I need the Vmem)
  
• 2x Samsung 840 SSD's running in raid (1tb of storage running at 980mb/s)
  
• 16 gb of 2000 mhz corsair dominator gt DDR3
  
• Asus Rampage 4 extreme
  
• 2 gallons of water )
  

 

Both the FSX and FSX SE were done on clean build with all files, registries, and folders cleaned as well as all TEMP data. They are like being on a brand new hard drive and in the case of FSX:SE it was on a newly formatted drive because ORBX installers still have a little work to do for compatibility when switching sims.

 

The tests were conducted in So Cal with the following addons:

• Textures: ORBX Global
  
• Mesh: FS Global Mesh
  
• Vector Data: FTX Vector (frozen water and golf courses turned off due to graphic anomolies and ran the auto airport elevation tool)
  
• Airports: FSDT KLAX, KONT and KLGB by Shez Ansari
  
• Aircraft: Aerosim 787
  

Thats it, no textures, no weather addons, just these terrain addons. Weather used was Cold Fronts. Needless to say this is a OOM/VAS crash waiting to happen as these are all high poly mega airports and a ton of Vector and texture data across So. Cal. 

 

My flight plan took me from KLAX 24R, direct to KLGB, to the PDZ approach to KONT 26R. Cruise altitude was 11000 and speed was 250kn with a manually managed VNAV fixed climb  of 1800 fpm after gear up @ 500 ft asl.

 

The settings are follows: 

Graphics Tab -

• Target Frame Rate: Unlimited
  
• Resolution: 2560x1440x32
  
• Filtering: Anisotropic/Anti-alising on
  
• Global Texture Res: Very High
  
• DX9
  
• Lens Flare
  
• Advanced animations
  

Aircraft Tab -

• Global Settings Ultra High
  
• Scenery Tab -
  
• All sliders to the right except for mesh resolution @ 5m
  
• Land Detail Textures On and Ground Scenery Shadows Off
  

Weather Tab -

• Cloud Draw Distance: 90m
  
• Thermal Visualization: Natural
  
• No Weather changes
  
• Detailed clouds: maximum
  

Traffic Tab - 

• Airline traffic: 40
  
• Gen Av: 20
  
• Airport Vehicle Density: 20
  
• Road Vehicles: 20
  
• Ships, ferrys, and leisure boats: 40
  

 

**In FSX, I applied the Max Texture Size to 4096 and High Mem Fix. I did not tweak or adjust any other FSX.CFG settings**

 

One more note is that I took these strictly with screen shots in sim and desktop shots. I was worried that FS Recorder would create too much debate so these are raw, unadulterated, straight from sim results. They were tough to reliably get but after a few hours I got consistent data. 

 

Now before we get into the results, I can tell you that I already knew how FSX was going to perform, I have used this benchmark for years as my "stress test" to test out new planes, tweaks, programs, and anything else that I wanted to test a quantifiable performance increase. I can tell you that the only way to get FSX to complete this flight is to turn down Scenery Complexity to Very Dense, Autogen Density to Dense, turn off cars, and decrease Airport Vehicle Density to High, this will not be reliable on DX9 and will usually require you to run DX10 as it manages VAS better. I have done it countless times and these are generally the only settings that will allow FSX to complete this pattern. But can FSX: SE do it?

 

First lets look at departure. I took some idle shots from the ground. You can see that FPS is pretty much exactly the same give or take a few frames which fluctuated anyway. 

 

FSX 20.9 FPS:

 

 

 

FSX SE 21.3 FPS (note, that for some reason colors look to have more "punch" in FSX SE):

 

 

 

FSX 17.4:

 

 

 

FSX SE 14.7:

 

 

 

Now, lets get in the air, these shots are taken after making a 180 to the left to intercept the course to KLGB. 

 

FSX 13.3 FPS:

 

 

 

FSX SE 11.5 FPS:

 

 

 

Ok, so now we are just beginning our turn over KLGB and you can start to feel the strain on the sim. We have now fully loaded 2 high quality airports with a ridiculous amount of autogen and the VAS is building. 

 

FSX 22.4 FPS and 2.78 GB of Memory used:

 

 

 

FSX SE 18.1 FPS and 2.79 GB of Memory used (note the color difference once again):

 

 

 

Now we are 12 NM from PDZ and the KONT scenery is about to be loaded we also have a number of other airports populating such as KRIV, KCNO, KPOC. This is usually where the FSX "pings" start. I was looking downward and both sims performed very well. 

 

FSX 40.6 FPS and 2.78 GB of Memory:

 

 

 

FSX SE 40.7 and 2.64 GB of Memory (this is where things begin to get interesting because I have never seen VAS fall while flying this route even in DX10 and it appears that the Fix to flush all levels of detail in terrain cache is possibly starting to kick in. 

 

 

 

Sadly, this is where the story ends for FSX, about 4 miles up the pinging began and as soon as the PDZ procedure turn started the sim died. 

 

This is also where the FSX SE story just begins... 

 

I didnt hear a single ping, I made it through the turn and said "to hell with it, lets land". The PDZ turn to 27R is a wide one and the plane did another 180 through to make it to the runway. This was while loading even more autogen, descending, and making the approach. It was absolutely shocking that with the sim COMPLETELY maxed out it was able to make this approach successfully. My mind is blown. Here is one last shot for the end. As you can see, the Memory barely climbed and it still stayed well within limits and FPS did very well. 

 

FSX SE 28.4 FPS and 3.10 GB of Memory:

 

 

I will conclude by saying that I am yet to convert to P3D, or X-Plane because FSX has always served my needs well, but as more and more addons have come into play over the years, I have found myself running into OOM problems at mega airports and have had to turn down eye candy and invest a good sum of money into the DX10 fixer to manage the VAS of modern day simming.

 

We know that without a significant re-write of the FSX code, it is very hard to increase FPS significantly, but with the stability and VAS improvements in FSX SE, simply put, FSX SE manages my flying much better. 

 

Any questions, please let me know. I put hours into the installs, setup, and validation of this test so I hope you enjoyed. 

 

One last shot, this is my computer "Penelope" who made it all possible. 

[cabnz]

Thank you very much for your time efforts putting this benchmark together - I found it very interesting.

 

I'll be watching this sort of information with interest.

 

Thanks again,

 

Craig

[Ken Terry]

Excellent study and summary of the FSX and FSX SE performance, thank you very much.

It would be interesting to compare on the same route FSX DX10 to FSX SE

Since adding the DX10 fixer my OOMs have been greatly reduced.

One can scramble further using the FSPS FSX Fibre Booster to land at complex airports with complex aircraft.

Love the rig.

Regards

Ken

[Dooga]

That is interesting.

Does anyone know - it should be possible to just copy patched/changed SE files into an existing installation, should be identical in almost every respect - which files contain the cache flush fixes?

[rocsen]

Ironkidz, have you tried disabling SLI? I find running Crossfire actually reduces performance a fair bit in FSX SE, especiall in DX10 mode.

[pvs193]

Your results seem to indicated that FSX-SE has a slightly worse frame rate, but doesn't suffer from memory crashes. Hence it's more stable, but less smooth.

 

So why have I been hearing people talk about improved smoothness? Are they referrering to the frame rate or lack of stutter? You didn't mention stutters in your report. That's the one thing I hate the most.

[Jordan King]

Your results seem to indicated that FSX-SE has a slightly worse frame rate, but doesn't suffer from memory crashes. Hence it's more stable, but less smooth.

 

So why have I been hearing people talk about improved smoothness? Are they referrering to the frame rate or lack of stutter? You didn't mention stutters in your report. That's the one thing I hate the most.

 

Neither one really stutters for me and I am sure that if I wasnt intentionally trying to push the sim to the limit, I would have far more acceptable frame rates. But throughout the flight, I was getting a pretty solid 20 FPS or higher. That is of course until FSX was on the brink of death and slowed down. 

[Morpheus]

Hi,

 

I also made a benchmark comparison and I'm getting very close results.

 

Both clean install with Global, Vector, FSG Ultimate, UTX. Texture size was set in both to 2048, the rest to max.

 

System-Watercooled 1x360, 1x280 Phobya G-Changer: Core i7 3770@4,8ghz HToff, GTX970@980clocks, 16Gb ram@2666, Crucial MX 500Gb SSD

Temps during Bench: Core i7 41°C, GTX970 48°C  -  Fans at 700rpm

 

Bench was the FSX11mark running 5min, repeated 5 times, mesured with Fraps

 

________MIN__MAX__Average

FSX ____16____38____28,6     Frames 8584

FSXSE__17____40____27,9     Frames 8367

 

watching the screen no difference in smoothness to see.

[pvs193]

Neither one really stutters for me...

 

I get big stutters, usually when turning toward complex scenery, for example when I take off from Vancouver and turn toward the city (using Pacific Northwest and Vancouver+). That Vancouver scenery is a real frame rate killer, often dropping to 15 or less (with all my scenery settings on max but no scenery shadows), but it's the stuttering that really peeves me. Even elsewhere, when I'm getting really good frame rates, I still get sudden stutters, usually when a lot of new scenery comes into view (with a million trees...)

[AVI8TOR]

Any chance of doing a full 15hr flight in the pmdg 777 300 with alot more addons??

And see if you get an oom?

Thanks merry christmas

[AVI8TOR]

Any chance of doing a full 15hr flight in the pmdg 777 300 with alot more addons??

And see if you get an oom?

Thanks merry christmas

[AVI8TOR]

That Vancouver scenery is a real frame rate killer, often dropping to 15 or less (with all my scenery settings on max but no scenery shadows), but it's the stuttering that really peeves me. Even elsewhere, when I'm getting really good frame rates, I still get sudden stutters, usually when a lot of new scenery comes into view (with a million trees...)