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Hardware recommendations for P3Dv4


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It will provide you excellent results with P3Dv4.4, but I wonder why not going directly to the new soldered CPUs from Intel such as the i7-9700K or even the i9-9900K?

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The i7 will be more than sufficient for P3D v4. Unlike FSX and older P3D versions P3D v4 doesn't lean on the CPU that much, a good graphics card is far more important. Therefor in my opinion upgrading to the i9 isn't worth it, it hardly makes any difference.

 

Instead of a CPU upgrade, I would invest in a graphics card upgrade. The GTX980 is about the minimum you need for running P3D v4. However if you can lay your hands on a GTX1070 or GTX1080 that would make a good difference. The GTX2070 or GTX2080 are even better, but also more expensive.

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I recently built a PC dedicated to flight sim. Below are the main specs and why I chose them.

 

CPU:

Intel Core i7-9700K. P3D and its ESP engine still relies primarily on single-core performance. It will use more cores obviously, but the speed of the first core is still what dictates performance. So I went with the 9700K over a Ryzen CPU (which I use on my main desktop).

 

GPU:

Asus RTX 2070 Strix. The only reason I went with RTX was because this card is new, and priced reasonably. It performs identically to the 1080 Ti in P3Dv4 (I have both cards). Also in the event that Lockheed adds RTX support to the sim, I'll be ready.

 

RAM:

I started with 16GB 3200MHz RAM. That was a mistake. I use A LOT of add-ons; scenery, aircraft, enhancements etc, and 16GB was not enough for me. I had some stuttering issues when changing views. So I upgraded the RAM to 32GB 3333MHz and now everything is smooth.

 

SSD:

2x Samsung 970 EVO nvme in RAID 0. Another thing that P3D loves is fast storage, especially if you use a lot of add-on scenery. To avoid textures loading in late with those terrible black boxes, you'll need an SSD. Admittedly, it's a bit overkill to put two nvme drives in RAID 0 but damn are they fast. Orbx TrueEarth scenery is very intensive yet I have no black boxes, and loading speeds are significantly improved.

 

These components give me around 60-80 fps stable with settings not fully maxed out, but close. I can finally keep Dynamic Lighting on and not worry about FPS drops. Btw, I run the sim on a 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor. 

 

This should give you an idea of the components you need to get the most out of P3Dv4. I hope it helps. :)

 

 

 

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On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 3:39 PM, Mathijs Kok said:

The graphics card is overkill for flight sims, rest is luxury and fast!

 

While this might be true for other flight sims, it is not anymore true for P3Dv4.4, especially not if PBR is really introduced into addons sooner or later. Just as a side note: my 1080Ti is totally running at its limits when using 4xSSAA together with dynamic lightning in 2560x1440, I have to reduce down to 8xMSAA or even 4xMSAA for night time flying. A 2080Ti is about 30% faster, means: 4K with dynamic lightning on and 4xSSAA and each and every 2080Ti will be running hot...

 

To me, no GPU can be a real overkill as graphic settings always allow to use the power any GPU provides. Fully use. Not only partially. The price vs. performance question however is a completely different story...

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Well, then please show me that you get the same FPS with dynamic lightning and 4xSSAA versus no dynamic and 4xMSAA. All of this in 4K with cloudy weather and REX clouds at 2048x1048 please. Just because those settings are probably not what one needs, it does not mean you can not use the full power of a 1080Ti...

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4 hours ago, Querer said:

Well, then please show me that you get the same FPS with dynamic lightning and 4xSSAA versus no dynamic and 4xMSAA. All of this in 4K with cloudy weather and REX clouds at 2048x1048 please. Just because those settings are probably not what one needs, it does not mean you can not use the full power of a 1080Ti...

 

Dynamic Lighting isn't PBR.  

 

What he said was that in their testing PBR doesn't show any meaningful load on the GPU.  That is what I heard as well at AVSIM.   

 

Now, dynamic lighting is another animal.  As you say, dynamic lighting with SSAA can kill performance, although with 4.3 that improved somewhat.

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On 12/6/2018 at 8:59 PM, Querer said:

Well, then please show me that you get the same FPS with dynamic lightning and 4xSSAA versus no dynamic and 4xMSAA. All of this in 4K with cloudy weather and REX clouds at 2048x1048 please. Just because those settings are probably not what one needs, it does not mean you can not use the full power of a 1080Ti...

 

I am sorry my posts seem to upset you somewhat, not my intention. 

 

In our office, we have a rather wide range of test machines, some very high end (2080 card) some very low end. And we run extensive test cycles where performance is almost always very important. One of the things we test is how an add-on uses the graphics card and how much the CPU. A balance there is preferable and when it is not balanced (as is unavoidable in many cases) we need to give good advice to customers.

 

In none of these tests, ever, have we seen a medium or high-end graphics card maxed out in P3D. Used extensively, sure, use all of the available memory, sure, but maxed out as in raw performance, 100% load on the graphics processor cores? Never. I'm not saying it's impossible you have it on your machine, I only say that we simply never saw it on any of our machines. High-resolution textures are easy for a graphics card  Dynamic lights are hard because they are calculated in specific parts of the card. As these cards are designed for games where having 20 light sources in a scene is considered complex, throwing an airport with 200 of these light sources at the card for sure starts to bog things down. But per light a 1070 compared to a 2080 card you will see very little difference. You pay a massive additional cost for very little gain. Are you willing to pay $35 per FPS you gain? If the answer is yes you should for sure buy a super high-end card. Personally, I spend that money on something else. 

 

But we were talking about PRB. From a performance aspect, PBR is not important. It replaces an existing way of displaying things, it's not added on top. And with every graphics card above a 1050 or similar PBR is at least as fast as the protocol it replaces. often it is even faster. 

 

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I would always go for 2 modules instead of four if the mainboard supports a max of four RAM modules, as with a fully loaded board, you might have to play around with the values (voltage, latency, clockrates) to get it stable.

 

BUT: you are comparing two different modules here, one with 3000MHz and one with 3200MHz. Personally, I would go for 3200MHz CL14 modules, they are a good compromise between latency and clockrates.

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What do you generally think about Intel's new 9th generation i5 CPUs? For me, the i5 9600k sounds great. Boost clock of 4.6ghz, with the option to overclock it to 4.8 or 4.9Ghz and only about 285€.

 

I'm often reading, that hyperthreading is not working very good with P3D and I also made the experience, that the sim runs better when turning HT off. If HT is not needed, an i7 CPU seems not necessary to me, although the i5 have less L3 cache (9MB vs. 12MB) than i7.

 

What do you think? Does anyone have a new i5 CPU for P3D4 and can give me some advice?

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Thanks, Mathijs. Do you think it's a high performance CPU for P3D or only good value for the money? Is anything known how the CPU cache (L3) affects P3D performance? Is this a factor?

 

I also try to compare it with my current i7 4790k. But I think it's hard to say how much the difference will be, right? I'm thinking of the 9600k together with a MSI Z390 Tomahawk and 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 CL15.

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6 hours ago, Mathijs Kok said:

Keep in mind though that clock speed of memory has VERY limited effect on the speed of the sim. 

so for example to run Barcelona with airbus pro with orbx global LC and vector with active sky with rex force and rainig, do you think taht with a 1070 gtx 8gb will be enougth to run P3DV4.4 WITH 30 fps stable?

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13 hours ago, Eduard Gasull said:

so for example to run Barcelona with airbus pro with orbx global LC and vector with active sky with rex force and rainig, do you think taht with a 1070 gtx 8gb will be enougth to run P3DV4.4 WITH 30 fps stable?

 

Of course you will be able to run P3Dv4.4 with stable 30FPS when combining a GTX-1070 with a decent CPU. But also of course not with the highest possible settings... Means: use those sliders in the settings menue to adjust the settings according to your hardware and you will get decent performance.

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11 hours ago, Querer said:

 

Of course you will be able to run P3Dv4.4 with stable 30FPS when combining a GTX-1070 with a decent CPU. But also of course not with the highest possible settings... Means: use those sliders in the settings menue to adjust the settings according to your hardware and you will get decent performance.

 

9 hours ago, Mathijs Kok said:

Indeed, you can get that to run 50 fps or 10 fps depending on settings. 

what about this settings (these are my vfr settings)

 

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Thank you Guys for all comments and suggestions, finally I place the order:

Intel Core i9 9900K - 3.6 GHz - 5.0 GHz -

be quiet! water cooler Silent loop 360mm,

Z390_AORUS_PRO_WIFI Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI 1 20

Corsair Vengeance, DDR4, 32GB, 3200MHz 1 20

MZ-V7E1T0BW Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2 1TB 1 20

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti GAMING OC 11G -

be quiet! Silent Base 801, window, orange,

Power Supply be quiet! STRAIGHT

POWER 10 850W 80PLUS GOLD

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