1080ti upgrade

[Brad Zimmer]

I have a fairly strong setup but think I lack in the gpu area.   Based on what type of flying I do (orbx, fslabs, US payware airports), what would I expect to gain with a 1080ti? Currently, I average around 15-20 FPS on the ground And during takeoff or landing and higher through other phases of flight but smooth to my eyes and flyable. I’m hesitant to shell out $800 for something that will be tough to notice any differences.  Spec are below. 

Win10, Gigabyte Aorus Z270x Gaming 5, LGA 1151, Intel 7th Gen Core i7 7700K (4.7GHz Overclock) Quad Core, Corsair Hydro Series H60 Liquid Cooling, 16GB G.Skill DDR4 SDRAM 2400MHz, 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, PCI Express 3.0, 750 Watt Corsair RM Series Power Supply, 500GB Samsung EVO 850 Solid State Drive (SSD)

[J0hannes Butz]

I've upgraded two months back from a 970 to a 1080 Ti. Without your specific settings and load percentages there's no definitive answer if a GPU upgrade would help you.

I've pretty much exclusively upgraded to get dynamic lighting working and have not really touched my graphics settings. After my upgrade to a 1440p monitor I've even turned down some settings, so my CPU & GPU are able to run stable and with a bit of headroom in dense areas and of course give GSync it's room to work. For me - with the bus - this averages out at around 25-30FPS in dense areas like NY/London in bad weather with ASP4.

BUT my 970 gave me around that FPS count as well - just without dynamic lighting. I would suggest you should take a look at your CPU/GPU usages, then consult the AVSIM P3D tweaking guide as it tells you what settings are pushed by what processor and only after a good optimization reconsider getting the 1080 Ti. Also with Nvidia launching Volta there shouldn't be too much time left until the "gamer"-cards will be released.

In my opinion, better settings optimization will have a way greater impact than upgrading hardware, especially as you are already on the 10 series, maybe reconsider waiting for Volta.

[Roman Heriban]

Brad, the two main factors to consider are:

1. Resolution.
2. Antialiasing.

I would recommend the upgrade, if you use 4K or any SSAA. You can do a very simple test. Find a scenario, where you find your current FPS unsatisfactory (a specific airport, weather, lighting, etc.). Then reduce your resolution by 50% and AA by one grade in P3D settings. Observe the FPS gain. You can expect approximately the same increase in performance from upgrading your GPU to 1080 Ti. Can be 20% less or more, but it will give you a basic clue. 

I do not recommend to upgrade just because of the dynamic lighting. As documented here, even 1080Ti is not able to cope with DL and you will be disappointed, sooner or later. The current implementation of DL in P3D4 is fallacious and even the strongest future Volta would be significantly throttled by it.

[J0hannes Butz]

Well Roman, I will agree with most of what you've said here, but I found that reducing GPU bound settings on my GTX970 had a huge impact on my sim's performance. Also in my setup with the 1080 Ti there's no way to use even 2xSSAA as it introduces so much input lag that you can't even feel any difference between Triple Buffering on/off.

For me specifically the switch was to go GTX10xx from GTX9xx for DL, but I went all the way to the 1080Ti just to support other games and applications.

As Brad already owns a GTX1060 card I do not think that there's a lot of benefit in upgrading. Also with 6GB VRam there should be well enough room to push 1080p?

[Brad Zimmer]

3 hours ago, Johannes Butz said:

I've upgraded two months back from a 970 to a 1080 Ti. Without your specific settings and load percentages there's no definitive answer if a GPU upgrade would help you.

I've pretty much exclusively upgraded to get dynamic lighting working and have not really touched my graphics settings. After my upgrade to a 1440p monitor I've even turned down some settings, so my CPU & GPU are able to run stable and with a bit of headroom in dense areas and of course give GSync it's room to work. For me - with the bus - this averages out at around 25-30FPS in dense areas like NY/London in bad weather with ASP4.

BUT my 970 gave me around that FPS count as well - just without dynamic lighting. I would suggest you should take a look at your CPU/GPU usages, then consult the AVSIM P3D tweaking guide as it tells you what settings are pushed by what processor and only after a good optimization reconsider getting the 1080 Ti. Also with Nvidia launching Volta there shouldn't be too much time left until the "gamer"-cards will be released.

In my opinion, better settings optimization will have a way greater impact than upgrading hardware, especially as you are already on the 10 series, maybe reconsider waiting for Volta.

How do I test load percentages?

[J0hannes Butz]

via task manager - or HW Monitor, that's my preference as it tells you the min/max utilization of every core

start the program when P3D is loaded up and fly a typical scenario, I like to load the worst weather with the A320, then program a takeoff and return to the same runway, leaving all lights, radar etc. on.

[Brad Zimmer]

23 hours ago, Johannes Butz said:

via task manager - or HW Monitor, that's my preference as it tells you the min/max utilization of every core

start the program when P3D is loaded up and fly a typical scenario, I like to load the worst weather with the A320, then program a takeoff and return to the same runway, leaving all lights, radar etc. on.

I did a test flight in my fslabs out of KRSW from LatinVFR in thick fog.  I was getting 15fps on the ground and checked the performance in task manager at was at 49% CPU, 49% memory, and 99% GPU.. so that would show my bottleneck is the GPU and I would benefit from a better card?  I want to make sure I am reading it correctly.

[J0hannes Butz]

5 hours ago, Brad Zimmer said:

would benefit from a better card?

Brad, first you should check if you would benefit from more GPU horsepower by reducing your GPU bound P3D settings after the recommendations of the AVSIM P3D guide here: https://www.avsim.com/files/file/87-avsim-prepar3d-guide/

Make sure to restart the sim and HWMonitor for every run. In addition you could see once you're happy with your GPU's balance wether your CPU can handle something more -> balancing your settings for your machine.

Then you should be able to evaluate if you want a better GPU or if you're pleased with balanced settings for your computer.

This leads to the most important part of choosing hardware and settings: What do you want out of your sim? Some people will prefer better visuals over smoothness and vice versa, but you won't be able to get it all in any hardware config.

From my experience in upgrading to the 1080 Ti: I've now got 2 notches better shadows with now everything recieving shadows, one notch more autogen buildings and of course dynamic lighting but that's about the advantage the 1080 Ti had, I'll let you judge if that's worth the extra money.

[Tim Vancauwenbergh]

On 28-12-2017 at 5:00 AM, Brad Zimmer said:

I have a fairly strong setup but think I lack in the gpu area.   Based on what type of flying I do (orbx, fslabs, US payware airports), what would I expect to gain with a 1080ti? Currently, I average around 15-20 FPS on the ground And during takeoff or landing and higher through other phases of flight but smooth to my eyes and flyable. I’m hesitant to shell out $800 for something that will be tough to notice any differences.  Spec are below. 

Win10, Gigabyte Aorus Z270x Gaming 5, LGA 1151, Intel 7th Gen Core i7 7700K (4.7GHz Overclock) Quad Core, Corsair Hydro Series H60 Liquid Cooling, 16GB G.Skill DDR4 SDRAM 2400MHz, 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, PCI Express 3.0, 750 Watt Corsair RM Series Power Supply, 500GB Samsung EVO 850 Solid State Drive (SSD)

I am having about 15FPS on LHR with the 320X with cloudy weather and it drops to 10's when performing the T/O in case of rain. Using a GTX 970 with all sliders in the middle (almost) and using 1440p without AA.

[Brad Zimmer]

Holy crap!  The prices of these GPU's have gone up approximately $1000 since I last checked!  I saw them in the $750 to the $1000 range around the time I started this thread and now they are $1700-$2000!  Yikes!  I didn't realize there was such a demand

[John Tavendale]

6 hours ago, Brad Zimmer said:

Holy crap!  The prices of these GPU's have gone up approximately $1000 since I last checked!  I saw them in the $750 to the $1000 range around the time I started this thread and now they are $1700-$2000!  Yikes!  I didn't realize there was such a demand

You can thank the Crypto mining boom for that.

What screen resolution do you run? If it's 1080p it's overkill.

[Brad Zimmer]

1 hour ago, John Tavendale said:

You can thank the Crypto mining boom for that.

What screen resolution do you run? If it's 1080p it's overkill.

The monitor I use is a dell u3415w that I run at QHD 3440 x 1440 at 60 H. I don't think it is 1080p. 

[John Tavendale]

Ah nice. It'll work well with 1440p.

[Brad Zimmer]

I guess it’s time to play the waiting game for availability!

[Hon-Chun Chan]

I got a 1080 Ti as well, and the results are a bit average for P3D. (I have a 4K monitor but I use P3D with 1440p windowed) X-Plane flies much better however because of the increased VRAM.

[teohalfen]

I have an i7 4790k and GTX1080 and my performance is poor for the FSL A320 virtual cockpit... THe FSL A320 ND and PFD are FPS hungry... This sim really needs huge performance improvements! Fortunately it has a 2D panel!

[Wayne George]

I have an i7 4790K Overclocked to 4.4GHZ and a 1070 TI FTW2 before Crypto Currency went through the roof. It's NUTS!!! Anyway very happy with the performance with the FSLabs A320 with a 1070 ti.

[Kurt]

L

[philippe dulaey]

On 31/01/2018 at 8:11 PM, Wayne George said:

I have an i7 4790K Overclocked to 4.4GHZ and a 1070 TI FTW2 before Crypto Currency went through the roof. It's NUTS!!! Anyway very happy with the performance with the FSLabs A320 with a 1070 ti.

Hi George

What type of screen are you using, resolution ? It is very different if you use 8 millions pixels(3260x2160) or less, and multiscreens too.

Is the A320x demanding specially on the graphic card, or more on CPU ?

[Wayne George]

9 hours ago, philippe dulaey said:

Hi George

What type of screen are you using, resolution ? It is very different if you use 8 millions pixels(3260x2160) or less, and multiscreens too.

Is the A320x demanding specially on the graphic card, or more on CPU ?

Hi Philippe! I would have have to say it's a bit of both. It definitely hammers the CPU but GPU not so much. I run my resolution at 1920 X 1200. It's a wide screen, LCD. But yeah your right it is very different if you use 8 million pixels.