[SOLVED] Graphics Card for MS Flight Simulator 2020

engeeaitch

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Jun 13, 2012
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I am not a gamer, but I would like to 'play' the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Here is my setup:
  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z97X-SLI-CF
  • RAM: 16 GB of DDR3 RAM
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
  • Disk: 500 GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe 2x 8.0 GT/s
  • Power Supply: 600W 1 x 6+2 pin PCIe connector, 1 x 6 pin PCIe connector
  • Case: Corsair - full size tower
  • Monitor: AOC Q2770Pqu 2560 x 1440
I have read that my graphics card is not powerful enough for MS Flight Simulator.
My PC is almost six years old now (but performs very well), so it doesn't seem to make sense to spend too much on it - and in any case, the power supply would appear not to support the very latest cards.
I'm guessing that my budget should be something like GBP 300 given the age of the PC.
Can anyone recommend a suitable card that will work in my PC, or should I give up and wait until I need to buy a new PC and spec. it accordingly?

Thanks for your help.
 
Solution
I am not a gamer, but I would like to 'play' the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Here is my setup:
  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z97X-SLI-CF
  • RAM: 16 GB of DDR3 RAM
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
  • Disk: 500 GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe 2x 8.0 GT/s
  • Power Supply: 600W 1 x 6+2 pin PCIe connector, 1 x 6 pin PCIe connector
  • Case: Corsair - full size tower
  • Monitor: AOC Q2770Pqu 2560 x 1440
I have read that my graphics card is not powerful enough for MS Flight Simulator.
My PC is almost six years old now (but performs very well), so it doesn't seem to make sense to spend too much on it - and in any case, the power supply would appear not to support the very latest cards.
I'm...
I am not a gamer, but I would like to 'play' the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Here is my setup:
  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z97X-SLI-CF
  • RAM: 16 GB of DDR3 RAM
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
  • Disk: 500 GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe 2x 8.0 GT/s
  • Power Supply: 600W 1 x 6+2 pin PCIe connector, 1 x 6 pin PCIe connector
  • Case: Corsair - full size tower
  • Monitor: AOC Q2770Pqu 2560 x 1440
I have read that my graphics card is not powerful enough for MS Flight Simulator.
My PC is almost six years old now (but performs very well), so it doesn't seem to make sense to spend too much on it - and in any case, the power supply would appear not to support the very latest cards.
I'm guessing that my budget should be something like GBP 300 given the age of the PC.
Can anyone recommend a suitable card that will work in my PC, or should I give up and wait until I need to buy a new PC and spec. it accordingly?

Thanks for your help.

I have a lot of experience with Microsoft flight simulator 2020, and I can tell by looking at your build that you're going to have a very hard time running it on your PC.

MSFS 2020 is incredibly demanding, even with medium quality settings. Not only that, but your monitor is a 1440p non-variable refresh rate monitor which means you're trying to run the most demanding game of 2020 at a resolution your hardware isn't nearly good enough for.

Alright, lets break it down. First the good news:
  • Its good that you have an SSD, because even with an SSD it takes several minutes to launch the game and more than a minute to load a flight. I hope you don't have your SSD filled very full though, because the basic MSFS files are over 100 GB. If you set a cache file in order to cache streamed data from flying around, that'll increase your space requirements as well.
And now the bad news: your GPU & your CPU
  • At a basic 1080p resolution, GPUs with less than 6 GB of VRAM are going to perform very poorly. The thing is, you're playing at 1440p. Getting playable frame rates at 1440p without turning all the settings way down means that you are limited to more expensive GPUs than you might have imagined. You'll want at least a GTX 1080 or a RTX 2060 Super; if you like older GPUs, know that not even a 980 Ti is going to be powerful enough. The new GPUs from Nvidia and AMD would be best, but those are out of stock for the time being. Until then, a used 1080 Ti / RTX 2070 Super would get you the closest to your goals.
  • CPUs with less than 6 cores and 12 threads have a hard time running MSFS 2020 because it is incredibly CPU demanding; they stutter a lot. This is regardless of resolution or graphical settings mind you. I play at 4K (a traditionally very non-CPU dependent resolution) and even my overclocked 8 core i7-9700k struggles at times with MSFS 2020. You have a 4 core 8 thread CPU; MSFS 2020 isn't going to run very well. You'll need a significantly more powerful CPU which also means a new motherboard.
I hate to rain on your parade, but MSFS 2020 is very, very demanding to run, and you'll need a lot more than 300 GBP to run it anything approaching well on your PC.
 
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