News Microsoft Flight Simulator Performance and Benchmarks: Your PC May Need an Upgrade

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"Or maybe you're reading this in 2025, in which case we'd love for you to travel back in time and give us some future tech so we can hit 60 fps. "
We broke 60 fps at 1440p Ultra before the end of the 2021 GPU wars, but now can only send very short messages back in time... sorry, no tech for you.
 
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NightHawkRMX said:
The minimum specs for this game are a 4th gen i5 and a GTX770 2gb with 8gb system ram.

The minimum specs will give you around 25-30fps at sub 1080p lowest. The i5 4th gen can't even get above 30fps even with a 1080ti. And 8gb system ram isn't enough for this game.

Cmon.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJiWClorCZY
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When microsoft talk about "minimum" specs, it's the ABSOLUME MINUMUM for the program to run.

Microsoft does the same with windows. minium specs are like 2gb of ram, everybody knows you need 8Gb on win10 to not be limited in everyday's tasks.
For win10, 2gb is the absolute minium for the installer to complete it's job, and then boot into the desktop. that's all.
 
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Until developers utilize it fully and move away from DX11 it's in it's infancy. That just hasn't happened yet, not by a long shot.
 
Personally, I feel while the graphics look great in this game, I cannot deny the fact that this is a poorly optimized game. What is surprising this is a game from MS, the same MS that's released DX 12 quite a number of years ago. So the use of DX 11 here is perplexing. It is also clear that the game is very CPU limited at this point because it can only effectively utilize 4 cores (a limitation from DX 11 as well if I am not mistaken). The graphics are very forward looking, but the hardware optimization is like 2 generation backwards.
 
udidwht said:
Until developers utilize it fully and move away from DX11 it's in it's infancy. That just hasn't happened yet, not by a long shot.
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I believe the complexity to use DX 12 could be the reason why game developers still stick on to DX 11. It is not about infancy here, but rather an easier way out is my opinion.

In this game, the developers should have tested and determine that they need further optimizations before releasing the game. I feel a flight sim may not be for every one, but the fact that you need a cutting edge specs to run the game with high resolution and graphic setting is going to put the game out of most people's reach, those people that like flight sims. Of course you can still game at lower graphic settings, but the main draw of this game is really the realistic graphics, and hopefully realistic aircraft handling.
 
udidwht said:
Until developers utilize it fully and move away from DX11 it's in it's infancy. That just hasn't happened yet, not by a long shot.
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The problem with DX12 vs. DX11 is that in many ways, it's like comparing the use of assembly code to the use of C++. It's not quite that bad, but low level vs. high level APIs are not something where there is a clear winner. If you have the resources to put into doing lots of tuning and optimizations, low level APIs come out ahead. But high level APIs are far more programmer friendly and leave much of the optimization work to others -- specifically, GPU driver teams can do a lot of great work.

As I noted elsewhere, it's surprising that not even a major game published by Microsoft is getting DX12 support at launch. That speaks volumes about how much more developer effort is required to make it work well. And I'm not aware of a single game -- not even Ashes of the Singularity -- where DX12 (or Vulkan) makes more than about a 20% improvement in performance (assuming decent optimizations for both DX11 and DX12), and even that's only in specific cases.

Hitman 2, DX12 at 1080p low, performance was only 6% higher (187.3 fps vs 177.3 fps using 2080 Ti and 9900K). At 1080p ultra, it was an 8% difference (143.1 vs 132.7). Ashes of the Singularity, at 1080p low, DX11 with RTX 2080 Ti and i9-9900 gets 117.1 fps, Vulkan gets 135.5 fps, and DX12 gets 132 fps. Bumping to 1080p Extreme (not even the maxed out 'crazy' setting), DX11 gets 108.9, DX12 gets 115.7, and Vulkan gets 113.6. So that's a 16% difference at 1080p low, and only 6% at 1080p extreme.

Based on that, I question how much Flight Simulator can get out of a DX12 patch. Best-case, it might match Ashes of the Singularity and performance with a fast CPU and GPU improving performance by 15-20% at 1080p low. But at 1080p ultra, it seems just as likely to still run into other bottlenecks that end up only yielding a 5% improvement in performance.

Basically, low level APIs are no panacea. They're an option that can help a bit, maybe even a lot (if you consider 50% a lot). But they're just as likely to cause poor performance, particularly with previous generation architectures, and potentially even future architectures. If Flight Simulator gets an awesome DX12 patch, what will that focus on? Nvidia Pascal and Turing, maybe even Ampere. AMD Navi 1x, Vega, and Polaris, maybe even Navi 2x. Older Maxwell and GCN architectures will probably not make the cut, and neither will RDNA 3 or whatever comes after Ampere.
 
It'd be great if when talking about how much effect a CPU has, you could advise how many cores the program is using, your average program these days still only uses a few cores, the cores it does use tend to be one or two that get hammered and the rest doing low level tasks.. they day they figure out how to use all cores equally will be the same utopian day we see multi GPU worth as it should.
 
JarredWaltonGPU said:
As I noted elsewhere, it's surprising that not even a major game published by Microsoft is getting DX12 support at launch. That speaks volumes about how much more developer effort is required to make it work well. And I'm not aware of a single game -- not even Ashes of the Singularity -- where DX12 (or Vulkan) makes more than about a 20% improvement in performance (assuming decent optimizations for both DX11 and DX12), and even that's only in specific cases.
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https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-12/
From the get go DX12 was only supposed to lower the CPU requirements so if you have a CPU core that can happily max out your GPU under Dx11 then obviously you will get zero point zero % improvement no matter how well Dx12 gets implemented.

You needed CPU cores (well one main one) capable of doing that much work with DX11
QTfcoqO.jpg

but you only need CPU cores capable of doing that much work on DX12
RalCzrS.jpg

Weaker cores are able to do the same amount of work (FPS) as much stronger cores thanks to Dx12.
Of course all websites "translated" this into meaning that Dx12 will somehow increase performance for strong cores and now all that people can remember is the overhyping from all the sites.
 
Would love to see Ultrawide resolutions added as well, mainly 3440x1440 but 2560x1080 will be good also.

3440x1440 is hard to extrapolate, it's 34.5% more pixels than 2560x1440, and 59.7% less pixels than 2840x2160.
 
Very helpful interesting thread, already done some changes but just seems that I can go better, Flying and the sims feels smooth and good, and yet FPS details are in the red the next to green or just yellow throughout. Able to keep it green when framerate is set to 30FPS but not smooth and so I left it with V-sync off.

i7 -3930K at 3.80ghz 6 cores 12 thread
24gb ddr3 ram
1660TI OC card
2k -1440p set at 60hz (does 144hz)

Any good settings for that I have that keeps it good.
 
Wow!! This game will bring 3090ti to its knees as well..

Even if it manages to be 2x faster than 2080ti (I doubt so), it will still be barely 60fps @ 4K Ultra......Incredible....
 
escksu said:
Wow!! This game will bring 3090ti to its knees as well..

Even if it manages to be 2x faster than 2080ti (I doubt so), it will still be barely 60fps @ 4K Ultra......Incredible....
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Except it would need a faster CPU than a Core i9-9900K -- by about 20%! -- to break 60 fps at even 1080p ultra settings. I'm trying to get a 10900K to see if that helps at all. I don't expect it will do too much, considering the Core i5-9600K wasn't far off the 9900K results. Perhaps the extra 200-300MHz and two cores will boost performance a bit, but really the game needs some updates to better utilize multi-core CPUs. DX12 would likely be part of that.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again.

"I AM THE PROGRAM THAT WILL BRING YOUR RIG TO ITS KNEES. I HAVE BEEN KNOWN BY NAMES LIKE CRYSIS AND ARMA III. LOOK UPON ME, YE MIGHTY GAMING BUILDS AND DESPAIR, FOR I AM FS2020!" 😈
 
InvalidError said:
Doesn't matter what the GPU is, won't change the fact that based on these results, Intel's 9600k gives you a ~20% higher chance of maintaining a solid 60+FPS than AMD's 3900X - the GPU cannot put out more frames than what the CPU is able to send to it. Finding that limit is the whole point of using the fastest GPU available in CPU benchmarks.
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Be careful with the 'message' - wouldn't want to give the wrong impression!!
In the "real world", simmers are very well known to spend $$$$ on hardware and add-on's (way, waaay above gamers). Expect many simmers to be playing at >1080p, and you very well know that here, the difference between Intel and AMD very significantly reduces from your lower res finding.
 
Excellent optimization....
Rtx 2060 super~=rtx 2080 ti in fps on 1080p ultra and it is also supporting directx 12.
Excellent job Microsoft on this release.
It is good to see that nothing will beat the rtx 2060 super. Microsoft is really saving a lot of money to people in those covid-19 days.
 
Jim90 said:
Be careful with the 'message' - wouldn't want to give the wrong impression!!
In the "real world", simmers are very well known to spend $$$$ on hardware and add-on's (way, waaay above gamers). Expect many simmers to be playing at >1080p, and you very well know that here, the difference between Intel and AMD very significantly reduces from your lower res finding.
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If they are "known to spend $$$" and "play at >1080p", then expecting them to have RTX2080Ti or better is a non-issue... and the gap between AMD and Intel will be re-opening once sufficiently powerful GPUs become available... or if just water down details to get FPS up.
 
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damric said:
You should also do a test with various RAM configurations of quantity, speed, 2 channel versus 4 channel, ect.

I pulled almost 26GB utilized yesterday while flying around Dubai, which is the most I have ever seen any game use. I'm about to run a few of my own tests and see just how far I can utilize this 32GB RAM.

I've seen lots of people with 16GB complaining about performance tanking, and I suspect it has to do with online data cache.
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Glad I loaded my latest build with 32GB of DDR4 when I built it early this year (before I learned of Flt Sim 2020). I'm upgrading my monitor and will do the same with GPU before I buy it (will allow time to do a shakedown on some of the bugs that have been reported).
 
benbird7 said:
Hi all, bit of advice if you could please, I've got a 9600k o/c to 5.1ghz with 1080ti, 32gb ddr 3600mhz & ssd. Do you see any benefit for me to go to a 9900k if I can get it o/c to 5ghz or am I wasting my time.
https://valid.x86.fr/b6rc3g
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What settings do you want to run? If you're doing 1080p high or 1080p ultra, I don't think the 9900K would make much of a difference. Everything else in your PC should be more than sufficient. Especially if you're only shooting for 40-50-ish fps (which is probably all most GPUs will get out of 'reasonable' settings).
 
This feels like a game that really need some more fine tuning from the developers. Probably launched before time, to meet the announced launch date.

Its funny to see a "Microsoft" Game that doesn't support the latest DX api. Its funny and lame.
 
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RodroX said:
This feels like a game that really need some more fine tuning from the developers. Probably launched before time, to meet the announced launch date.

Its funny to see a "Microsoft" Game that doesn't support the latest DX api. Its funny and lame.
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Absolutely terrible optimization....
I wonder what makes this game to be stuck on 50 fps in ultra setting.
 
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