CPU limitations w/ 3080 and MS Flight Sim 2020 ~ AMD vs Intel explanations?

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DarkSideA8

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Apr 13, 2005
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Several weeks ago I ran into an article where someone said that in the next article they were going to figure out why AMD processors weren't running MSFS as well as Intel.

Problem is I can't find the original article on this, and certainly not the one I'm looking for.

Anyone got a good article explaining what's happening?

I'm trying to recommend a processor to a friend building a new system for MSFS - and we'd pretty much settled on Ryzen 9 until the article.
 
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the dx11 engine in FS20 is single threaded thus clock speed and IPC play a huge part in the performance. this is a known issue with all flight sims and is why xplane 11 moved to vulkan and FS20 is moving to DX12 at some point soon should fix most of the issues related to cpu bottlenecking.

so to answer your question, if they plan on legitimately using fs20 for a long period of type and aren't just another person caught in the hype train for an unfinished product go with what ever fits your budget, because the performance difference will likely be very minimal once the move to dx12 happens. also with flight sims you don't need nor want high frame rates, you want to stay in the 30-60fps range.
 
After few days we will know "enough" about it.
If Zen 3 came with something that deserve waiting - he can wait.
If not, then for MSFS (and gaimng) Intel is just better buy.
 
Intel has always always been a better choice for Flight Sim since FS9/2004. Get a 10700K, 2x16gb of Samsung B-Die ram and a RTX3080 when you can find one. Then O/C to 5ghz on all 8 cores. I highly doubt that Zen 3 will match 10700K on single thread. Also even P3DV5 which is DX12 based runs much better on Intel than Ryzen.
That being said, MSFS2020 is an absolute mess. It might looks nice and shiny on the outside, but on the inside it's fucked. They went with wasm (probably for Xbox compatibility reasons) instead of allowing c++ apis on the SDK sabotaging any hopes of competent third party developers making complex to semi-complex models that aren't totally shit. Don't even get me started on the "flight model" and the flight controls sensitivities.
But yeah, find a sweet spot in your settings where you can do consistent 30-45 FPS and then use vsync or RTSS to lock it at half 60hz so it stays smooth and doesn't micro stutter. I actually turn down a bit the scenery detail and remove all AIs and I have no issues making 60FPS in P3DV5 with the PMDG NGXu, zero stuttering, zero skipping but I've been doing this for 15+ years.
 
Very simple. Intel still holds a small performance advantage for single threaded applications and FS2020 is a product of lazy development that does not leverage new low level APIs that allow games to scale nicely across many cores/threads.
 
st1650 said:
Intel has always always been a better choice for Flight Sim since FS9/2004. Get a 10700K, 2x16gb of Samsung B-Die ram and a RTX3080 when you can find one. Then O/C to 5ghz on all 8 cores. I highly doubt that Zen 3 will match 10700K on single thread. Also even P3DV5 which is DX12 based runs much better on Intel than Ryzen.
That being said, MSFS2020 is an absolute mess. It might looks nice and shiny on the outside, but on the inside it's fucked. They went with wasm (probably for Xbox compatibility reasons) instead of allowing c++ apis on the SDK sabotaging any hopes of competent third party developers making complex to semi-complex models that aren't totally shit. Don't even get me started on the "flight model" and the flight controls sensitivities.
But yeah, find a sweet spot in your settings where you can do consistent 30-45 FPS and then use vsync or RTSS to lock it at half 60hz so it stays smooth and doesn't micro stutter. I actually turn down a bit the scenery detail and remove all AIs and I have no issues making 60FPS in P3DV5 with the PMDG NGXu, zero stuttering, zero skipping but I've been doing this for 15+ years.
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RamonGTP said:
Very simple. Intel still holds a small performance advantage for single threaded applications and FS2020 is a product of lazy development that does not leverage new low level APIs that allow games to scale nicely across many cores/threads.
Click to expand...
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Thanks! Follow on question:

I'm not a flight Sim player... If MSFS is a mess... Is there anything else that would be considered a top notch flight Sim with a good flight model?
 
Here I am confused, Ryzen 2700x/2080S @ 3440x1440 having a damn ball of a time with MSFS. *shrugs*
 
is it going to be played at 1080p or 4k? idk might not make much difference
criccio said:
Here I am confused, Ryzen 2700x/2080S @ 3440x1440 having a damn ball of a time with MSFS. *shrugs*
Click to expand...
This I'm not surprised one bit.....just imagine a 3 or 4 series as well.
Or whatever there gonna be called
 
DarkSideA8 said:
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Thanks! Follow on question:
In m
I'm not a flight Sim player... If MSFS is a mess... Is there anything else that would be considered a top notch flight Sim with a good flight model?
Click to expand...
Million dollar question. Depends what you want to do, if you just want to have fun, go try the DCS F18 or the A10. If you want to learn, you want to match the plane (flight model) to the avionics stack to the sim platform.

For example, 10 years ago when I was doing my multi-IFR training, in real life I was training on a C-310 with a Garmin 430/530W. So I would practice at home on FSX using Milviz's C310 and RealityXPs Garmin 530/430. I saved thousands of dollar because I was able to do the IFR portion in 1 flight instead of 3-4 and at 600$ per flight hour you don't really want to "learn" how the GPS works while you're in the air.

In my career, from air ambulance to regionals to airliners and there was always a platform that matched my needs, made the initial type rating certificate and breeze and significantly reduced the time and experience needed for the Capt upgrade. A2A for small piston planes, Milviz for light twins turboprop like the Kingair 350, Majestic for the BBD Q400, Aerosoft for the BBD CRJ, PMDG for the Boeing airliners and FSLabs for the Airbus ones.

That being said, If you just want to learn to fly you're better off just going to your local flight school, any sims will just teach you bad habits at that point: bad scan, self induce oscillations, over-correcting. They tend to be overly pitchy especially if you use a cheap logitech joystick and will teach you bad flaring techniques because you don't have the right depth perception. Where the sim really shines is with complex model systems which allow you to simulate failures and proper IFR navigation which actually does not require super duper shiny sceneries (because you'll spend 99% of the time in clouds or taxiing around at the airport where having proper lighting, layout and taxi charts is much more important than the how nice the FBO hangar looks like).

Last winter I passed my 737-800 renewal check ride and I was practicing with a 10 year old build with a i5 760, a GTX 470, 4gb of RAM and I was running FSX Steam Edition with the excellent PMDG NGX addon. With very little tuning, the sim would handle 95% like the real plane.

Now with modern hardware and P3D V4.5 & V5 it's much better since FSX Steam Ed was limited on ram due to being coded on 32bit, you can even more sophisticated planes like the NGXu or FSLabs A320. I upgraded to the P3D and the NGXu and with the new flight model it behaves 99% like the real one. I'd say it handles as well as the Level-D simulator we have in Toronto and the very few failures they are not allowed to simulate is due to Boeing's license.

MSFS2020 is not only a paid beta experience, it's not at all a simulator of anything. It's toy, closer to an interactive BingMaps viewer than anything else, albeit a very good looking one (those thunderstorms do look really nice) and I suppose a good benchmark to test your new GPU and CPU performance but it doesn't even match FS 2004 in the flight models department and the lack of progress on the SDK signals that serious addon makers like PMDG won't be able to port their products for at least another year, if not more.
 
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