Need help interpreting VR performance

[1Sascha]

With my current settings (tried both 150 and 120% SS in SteamVR, resulting in 1.23 and 1.10 PD) plus "balanced" preset and modest graphics settings in the game itself, the game runs decently enough in quick-missions (2x8 planes plus the usual ground targets on Rheinland). Career missions (especially on Kuban and Normandy) are a different matter. I will get FPS drops down to 50/55 FPS at times once the fighting starts. It's still playable (sort of), but the drops are quite noticeable.

 

The weird thing is that neither my CPU nor my GPU seem to be at or close to their limits when this happens... at least not according to the data in Afterburner/RT overlay:

 

 

I have about five minutes recorded from that mission and this shot was taken during one of those FPS-loss instances - guess this might have been when the game spawned in most of the enemy planes, since there were none there during the 100km+ flight to target (CTRL-F2 came up empty).

 

Specs are:

CPU: i5-12600k, OCed to 5GHz

RAM: 4x8 GB, Corsair DDR4 3600, CL18

GPU: GB RTX 3070 Eagle OC, undervolted to 0.925 and OCed to 1935 GPU and 7800 on VRAM (<- resetting the GPU to stock and/or OCing without the undervolt only seems to increase temps and power-draw while giving minuscule gains in FPS/benchmark-score)

VR: Occulus Rift-S, set to 120% in SteamVR (1.10 PD in-game) in this example. Normally I have it at 150%/1.23 PD.

 

What I don't get is that neither the CPU nor the GPU are ever at full load - so I don't see an obvious bottleneck here. Max power-draw in IL-2 VR is never more than 150 W on the GPU - with the UV/OC I run, it'll draw around 200 W in benchmarks. Hard powerlimit on that card is 240W which it'll only reach if I take out the undervolt and then manually OC the GPU and VRAM. It probably should, but I'm not sure it'll boost itself to 240W at stock-settings.

The only thing that seems to be maxed out (at least in this instance) is VRAM usage. In the quick missions on Rheinland that I also tested, VRAM usage was never higher than 6.4 GB or so - not sure if that's the map or the fact that a QM probably has way fewer objects than your typical career mission.

 

 

So... where's my bottleneck here? Could it be as simple as a lack of VRAM?

 

S.

Edited August 3, 2023 by 1Sascha

[dgiatr]

2 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

With my current settings (tried both 150 and 120% SS in SteamVR, resulting in 1.23 and 1.10 PD) plus "balanced" preset and modest graphics settings in the game itself, the game runs decently enough in quick-missions (2x8 planes plus the usual ground targets on Rheinland). Career missions (especially on Kuban and Normandy) are a different matter. I will get FPS drops down to 50/55 FPS at times once the fighting starts. It's still playable (sort of), but the drops are quite noticeable.

 

The weird thing is that neither my CPU nor my GPU seem to be at or close to their limits when this happens... at least not according to the data in Afterburner/RT overlay:

 

 

I have about five minutes recorded from that mission and this shot was taken during one of those FPS-loss instances - guess this might have been when the game spawned in most of the enemy planes, since there were none there during the 100km+ flight to target (CTRL-F2 came up empty).

 

Specs are:

CPU: i5-12600k, OCed to 5GHz

RAM: 4x8 GB, Corsair DDR4 3600, CL18

GPU: GB RTX 3070 Eagle OC, undervolted to 0.925 and OCed to 1935 GPU and 7800 on VRAM (<- resetting the GPU to stock and/or OCing without the undervolt only seems to increase temps and power-draw while giving minuscule gains in FPS/benchmark-score)

VR: Occulus Rift-S, set to 120% in SteamVR (1.10 PD in-game) in this example. Normally I have it at 150%/1.23 PD.

 

What I don't get is that neither the CPU nor the GPU are ever at full load - so I don't see an obvious bottleneck here. Max power-draw in IL-2 VR is never more than 150 W on the GPU - with the UV/OC I run, it'll draw around 200 W in benchmarks. Hard powerlimit on that card is 240W which it'll only reach if I take out the undervolt and then manually OC the GPU and VRAM. It probably should, but I'm not sure it'll boost itself to 240W at stock-settings.

The only thing that seems to be maxed out (at least in this instance) is VRAM usage. In the quick missions on Rheinland that I also tested, VRAM usage was never higher than 6.4 GB or so - not sure if that's the map or the fact that a QM probably has way fewer objects than your typical career mission.

 

 

So... where's my bottleneck here? Could it be as simple as a lack of VRAM?

 

S.

Have you ever tested your system with that ?

 

to check where you are bottle-necked?

[1Sascha]

Yes... my results are in the Google-doc. Three different ones, actually, since I had a 1060 3GB and a 2070S before switching to the 3070. Rest of the config was unchanged other than me adding another 16 GB of DDR4 (for a total of now 32 GB) a few months back.

 

 

S.

Edited August 3, 2023 by 1Sascha

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

It wont ever show your CPU at 100% overall because the game is only able to use a single core. If your able to use a monitor that will show cores individually it will show one core being maxed out, and the rest taking a break.

Theres just too much AI in the career mission overloading your CPU, and you could up your graphics in that situation and still get FPS in the 50s as long as your increased graphic settings dont increase CPU load as well.

[1Sascha]

1 hour ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

It wont ever show your CPU at 100% overall because the game is only able to use a single core. If your able to use a monitor that will show cores individually it will show one core being maxed out, and the rest taking a break.

Theres just too much AI in the career mission overloading your CPU, and you could up your graphics in that situation and still get FPS in the 50s as long as your increased graphic settings dont increase CPU load as well.

That's all well and good... but if it's all those AI-units clogging up a single core of my CPU, shouldn't I also be bottlenecked that way in non-VR when I run the same mission? Been a while since I played on my monitor, but I don't recall anything but high framerates - and certainly no "hiccups" when I played that way.

 

 

In any case... it'll be a bit of a mess visually, but I just added CPU usage for all 10 cores to my OSD and will check that same mission later today. Probably a bit of overkill since I don't think the E-cores will be much of a factor in IL-2, but better safe than sorry..

 

 

 

 

 

S.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Vr and desktop performance are different beasts, what works fine on desktop may or may not run smooth in VR. If you're running the simpler missions fine, but the more complex career mission is running poorly and your graphics card is underutilized, then the problem is the mission just has too much going on for the CPU to handle. 

[spreckair]

I had this same problem when running an HP Reverb G2 on an I7-11700K with an RTX 3080.  Everything worked fine through the Battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, where the aircraft counts tended to be lower, but when I hit the Kuban map with a large numbers of aircraft at one time; it looked like I was flying through water.  I upgraded to an I7-13700K (along with the necessary new motherboard), and this solved the problem for me.

 

(Also, I learned later that the I7-11700K was the runt of the litter anyway, and I should not have bought it.)

Edited August 3, 2023 by spreckair

[1Sascha]

FWIW...

 

^ video still uploading.

 

This is getting weird... still not much to see WRT CPU-activity on the overlay with all cores/threads monitored. I'm starting to think I'm missing something here .... ?

 

Occulus Tray tool reports little headroom, even when sitting on the runway at mission start, so *something* seems to be working hard, here... I'm just not sure what the "something" is ... ?

Note: This mission only had 2 enemy AC in it ... plus, IIRC, 7 109s in my flight (myself included) and 6 or so FW 190 ground-pounders. So not that much more going on than in a "full" QM.

 

I guess I should probably dial back the ground activity setting (it's on medium here) and see if that'll help.

 

2 hours ago, spreckair said:

(Also, I learned later that the I7-11700K was the runt of the litter anyway, and I should not have bought it.)

 

 

If we're going to assume that single thread performance is what we should be after here, the 12600K isn't that far off the 13700K (~10% slower). The 11700 seems indeed a bit lacking in that department.

 

 

 

S.

Edited August 3, 2023 by 1Sascha

[firdimigdi]

It's not so much that the CPU is overloaded, or that even a single core of the CPU is overloaded - it's more that a specific thread of the game delays the rest, which is why you see low GPU usage and what appears to be low CPU usage. So, for singleplayer, even if you have the top of the line CPU with a top of the line GPU and the framerate was rock solid at 90fps with ample headroom it would still result in one form of stutter or another eventually.

 

You can see some about this in whatever I dug up at a time that I actually thought something might be done about it:

 

[1Sascha]

1 hour ago, firdimigdi said:

It's not so much that the CPU is overloaded, or that even a single core of the CPU is overloaded - it's more that a specific thread of the game delays the rest, which is why you see low GPU usage and what appears to be low CPU usage. So, for singleplayer, even if you have the top of the line CPU with a top of the line GPU and the framerate was rock solid at 90fps with ample headroom it would still result in one form of stutter or another eventually.

So it's more of a deficiency with the game and not my HW and/or settings? That would explain things.

 

Sadly, I don't really play any other games besides IL-2 in VR, so I can't compare. I did play ST Bridge Crew for a while, but that thing doesn't seem to be very power-hungry.

 

Guess maybe I should finally try out DCS in VR - I've been reluctant to do so for fear that it'll just be a slide-show... ?

 

All that said and after reading a bit of the thread you linked: This mission never added more than two planes (2 Spits that appeared about 5 minutes after the 109s and 190s arrived over target). All the other ones were friendlies and there right from mission start and during flight to target - and I didn't experience any stutters during that time.

 

?‍♂️

 

S.

Edited August 3, 2023 by 1Sascha

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

I always wondered what that unavoidable stutter was, and I guess it's here to stay. There's so many wonderful secrets just waiting to be discovered in this game.

[kraut1]

Hi,

Sorry, I can't explain the reason for your issue, but maybe have

an idea to create missions for comparison:

I am myself have always to care for mission design because my 3.5 year old PC ist always at the limit with my Rift-S.

Because of that I am using very often EMG by Vander for mission creation.

With EMG you can define/control the number of planes very effectively.

And as far as I know all planes are present from the beginning of the mission.

 

[firdimigdi]

17 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

So it's more of a deficiency with the game and not my HW and/or settings? That would explain things.

 

Sadly, I don't really play any other games besides IL-2 in VR, so I can't compare. I did play ST Bridge Crew for a while, but that thing doesn't seem to be very power-hungry.

 

Guess maybe I should finally try out DCS in VR - I've been reluctant to do so for fear that it'll just be a slide-show... ?

 

All that said and after reading a bit of the thread you linked: This mission never added more than two planes (2 Spits that appeared about 5 minutes after the 109s and 190s arrived over target). All the other ones were friendlies and there right from mission start and during flight to target - and I didn't experience any stutters during that time.

 

?‍♂️

 

S.

 

You can use the "spawn fw190 on flare" mission in the first post of that thread to find the limit of AI planes it can handle, although in career/aqmb the limits are rather approximately set and other spawns or map complexity can affect it further.

[1Sascha]

Grabbed fpsVR for €2.40 or so and tried it for the first time just now.

 

I went and used SS from 120 to 170%, ASW always off, etc and even though I still had IL-2 set to "high" graphics-preset (forgot to switch it back to "balanced"), a QM on Kuban Summer with 8 LW and 8 VVS planes ran pretty smoothly.

 

 

It was pretty much 79 or 80 FPS all day long in the cockpit - even at 170%. I think the app takes into account the slow-ass framerate when IL-2 launches for the first time, so average FPS look a bit worse in the log than they were in-game.

Reports for CPU/GPU usage and temps were also very similar to what I've seen in the RT overlay before.

 

Haven't tested the Kuban- or Normandy career-missions yet, but I'll do that later tonight or over the weekend.

 

BTW: Does anyone know how to get that fpsVR overlay to show up in the cockpit without having to pick up the controller? I set it to "bottom" under the "seated VR" setting, but I could only ever get it to appear through manipulating the VR controller.

 

S.

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by 1Sascha

[chiliwili69]

You RAM usage is a bit high (around 16GB),

Normally in VR it should not go higher than 12GB. Didn´t try the latest update but in the past it was around 11GB:

 

You can also try to trend the CPU clock, just to be sure no throttling for any other reason (Amp, power, etc).

 

BTW, you CPU clock is at 4.5GHz. That CPU can run at 4.9GHz just with Turbo.(no manual overclock).

 

BTW, with fpsVR you can reset the counter at any time with a hotkey (so you just have statistic about what it matters) :

"Ability to reset statistics at any time for benchmarking/testing"

https://store.steampowered.com/app/908520/fpsVR/

 

Can you try to run just with 16Gb (2x8)?

Edited August 4, 2023 by chiliwili69

[1Sascha]

2 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

Can you try to run just with 16Gb (2x8)?

I don't think I'll rip out two of my four sticks for that ... ?

 

Hmm... I wonder if that's just the game hogging all that RAM... I do have a bit of stuff open and ... holy chit! Just sitting here with only FF open, my PC is using 24% of my RAM:

 

I guess I should try killing off some of those background processes down there ... ?

 

S.

Edited August 4, 2023 by 1Sascha

[1Sascha]

Oh well... just pulled the trigger on a "once used, practically new" GB RTX 4070 Gaming OC on ebay. Got it for €610 incl shipping - which is 60 less than new and near about the same as the "cheapest", bare-bones 4070s are over here. Still highway robbery (thanks NVidia), but at least I'll have a little more VRAM now... Couldn't talk myself into spending 800 on a 4070 Ti and I hope I won't regret it...

 

 

 

 

S.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, 1Sascha said:

RTX 4070 Gaming OC

I have one of these. I can run a Pico 4 at 3120 pixels with 80% FSR in OXRTK and a steady 72 FPS in most situations. It looks great. Like you, I could not justify the extra cost of 4070ti. 

[dburne]

20 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

You RAM usage is a bit high (around 16GB),

Normally in VR it should not go higher than 12GB. Didn´t try the latest update but in the past it was around 11GB:

 

 

A lot can change in over 3 years...

[1Sascha]

13 hours ago, Qcumber said:

I have one of these. I can run a Pico 4 at 3120 pixels with 80% FSR in OXRTK and a steady 72 FPS in most situations. It looks great. Like you, I could not justify the extra cost of 4070ti. 

NVM.. seller turned out to be a weirdo and/or scammer. Complained that ebay didn't release the funds to him (30 mins after I had paid, lol). Cancelled purchase and then suggested I look up the card on ebay classifieds. Also implied I should pay via PP FF over there at which point I told him the deal was off. Ebay already reimbursed my money, so no harm done ... other than me having to continue looking for a new GPU and resist the temptation of going 4070 Ti... ?

 

Anyway: So the Pico 4 runs good with a 4070 non-Ti? I'm currently thinking about a Quest 2, but Pico 4 would be my other choice (Reverb G2 just is too expensive considering I only use VR for IL-2 and I still fly other sims in non-VR). I'm going to guess if the 4070 is good enough for the Pico 4 it should also be able to handle the Quest 2... at least at native res. Correct?

 

S.

21 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

BTW, you CPU clock is at 4.5GHz. That CPU can run at 4.9GHz just with Turbo.(no manual overclock).

I have it OCed to 5 GHz (via simple BIOS offset, didn't go too deep into OCing).

 

And I'll repeat my question about fpsVR overlay: Is there any way to have it appear constantly in the cockpit? As it is, I only managed to get it to appear bound to the VR controller, so I have to fumble for that controller when I want to check the overlay while flying.

 

 

S.

[Qcumber]

14 minutes ago, 1Sascha said:

4070 is good enough for the Pico 4 it should also be able to handle the Quest 2... at least at native res. Correct?

The 4070 works well for me. As the Q2 has a lower resolution than the Pico 4 I imagine it would work well for this too but I have not tried it. 

[1Sascha]

Just played around a bit in career missions and then in QM for comparison and the results are pretty consistent. Steady 80 FPS with 140SS set in fpsVR in QMs - some FPS drops in career missions on Normandy and Kuban during fights.

 

VRAM usage stood out to me again when I checked the video I shot of one of the bigger fights. While the career mission starts out with about 6 GB used, VRAM gets fuller and fuller once the fighting starts and eventually maxes out (99.2% according to HWMonitor). This doesn't seem to happen in QMs.

 

All the more reason to get those 4 additional GBs of VRAM. Just got outbid by a hair on an Asus TUF 4070 Ti on ebay - or maybe I also chickened out a bit as the price approached €750 ... ?

 

What's the consensus re Pico 4 vs Quest 2 for IL-2, BTW? Price difference seems minimal 2nd hand, so I'd like to get the one that's better suited for flight-sims and IL-2 in particular.

 

S.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

That thread will answer your VRAM questions. More won't hurt, but I don't think VRAM is your issue. The slowdown is more likely caused by the ineffiencys Firdimigdi discovered and/or the single core engine being overloaded by complex missions.  

 

For flight sims I wouldn't recommend any headset that doesn't have a display port connection. IDing is very important, and I want the clearest picture possible. The G2 sometimes goes on sale for 50% off, or you can maybe find a used one cheap somewhere. I have a Pico 4 and G2, (never tried Q2), and I wouldn't recommend the Pico for IL2 because of compression and jitter issues, but other people are happy with the Pico 4.

[dgiatr]

3 hours ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

 

For flight sims I wouldn't recommend any headset that doesn't have a display port connection. IDing is very important, and I want the clearest picture possible. The G2 sometimes goes on sale for 50% off, or you can maybe find a used one cheap somewhere. I have a Pico 4 and G2, (never tried Q2), and I wouldn't recommend the Pico for IL2 because of compression and jitter issues, but other people are happy with the Pico 4.

...totally agree, i own Q2 and G2.

Q2 image isnt as clear as G2 image due to compression process making IDing harder and worse image quality.

I also have to set MSAA to 4 in Q2 but when i play with G2 i set it to 2 and its ok.

[Customizer171]

17 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

 ?

 

And I'll repeat my question about fpsVR overlay: Is there any way to have it appear constantly in the cockpit? As it is, I only managed to get it to appear bound to the VR controller, so I have to fumble for that controller when I want to check the overlay while flying.

 

I have kind of the same question, but the other way around.

I can't turn it off! 

Would like to know if there is an easy way to switch it on/off?

[1Sascha]

1 hour ago, Customizer171 said:

Would like to know if there is an easy way to switch it on/off?

 

I haven't tested it, but I would *think*, this might help:

 

 

Just set it to "hide" and see what happens.

 

I also think there's a hotkey to toggle it on/off, but, again, I'm not 100% sure of that. I only started to use this thing a couple of days ago, so...

 

 

6 hours ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

The G2 sometimes goes on sale for 50% off,

 

 

Not sure about that... prices look consistently high over here...

 

 

Heck, I've found dealers selling used/returned G2s with scratches on the lenses for around €350 over here on ebay... ?

 

 

 

 

S.

Edited August 6, 2023 by 1Sascha

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

It was 50% off last black Friday, maybe they'll do it again this year.

 

To change where the FPS VR overlay is use the second and third option in your pic that start with Position for...

[1Sascha]

40 minutes ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

To change where the FPS VR overlay is use the second and third option in your pic that start with Position for...

Very first thing I tried, but it won't show up on its own when in-cockpit. It will only appear bound to the controller. Meaning it seems to ignore whatever I set in the "seated games" entry and only go by what I've set in the "room-scale games" entry. Do I need to turn off my controller for this to work?

 

 

 

 

S.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

If your controller is on it uses the first option, if your controller is off it uses the second option. So with that current setup it will always attach the overlay to your left controller when the controller is on. You could alternatively just set both options to left or w/e else so you don't have to worry about your controller being on or off. They should delete the room-scale/seated part of the text, and just put controller on/off instead to make it clearer.

[1Sascha]

Great... now all I need to do is figure out how to turn these things off. They don't have power-buttons and what I usually do when not using the headset is just remove the battery. Those things will drain the battery rather quickly for some reason even when my headset is not in use and hanging from its hook on my desk.. ?

 

S.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Just set both to left.

[1Sascha]

Oh well... just found a V1 Reverb G2 for sale about 20km from where I live. Guy will let me have it for €270, so I'll be picking it up tomorrow. Hope he doesn't have face cooties or anything like that ... ?

 

I will probably have to upgrade the cable (failed to ask whether or not he has the original, crappy one), but that's ok.

 

Any way to mod the thing to enlarge the FOV? Or are there ready-made, upgraded face-gaskets available?

 

S.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

1 hour ago, 1Sascha said:

Hope he doesn't have face cooties or anything like that ... ?

You should wipe it down with alcohol and pray he didn't use it to "appreciate nature in it's most beautiful form".

 

1 hour ago, 1Sascha said:

Any way to mod the thing to enlarge the FOV? Or are there ready-made, upgraded face-gaskets available?

I've tried 3D printed ones, and the one from VRcover, but I like the original one the best. The original one is more comfortable, and I don't get enough of a FOV increase to make it worth it. Depending on face shape, you might get a huge increase from other ones, but I'd just try the original and see if that's good enough for your face shape first.

[Customizer171]

12 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

 

I haven't tested it, but I would *think*, this might help:

 

 

Just set it to "hide" and see what happens.

 

I also think there's a hotkey to toggle it on/off, but, again, I'm not 100% sure of that. I only started to use this thing a couple of days ago, so...

?

 

Thanks, I will give it a try later this week. Right now I am busy adjusting and setting up some new stuff to my simpit ?

[1Sascha]

Hmm.. just tried again and the results are... interesting. First off, I disabled SteamVR home, having read that this might be a resource-hog, but I'm not sure if this applies when running IL-2. Don't need it, so it's off now, anyway.

 

I fiddled with my in-game settings a bit, reducing shadows to Medium, disabling SSAO and HDR, raising viewing distance to 100km and lowering detailed landscape to 2x. Kept the preset on "high". And I even enabled FXAA 2x.

 

QM went smooth as silk, as per usual.

Stalingrad career mission with a ton of friendly and enemy planes also went surprisingly smooth - VRAM usage started at 5.6 GB and never went over 6.3 GB and aside from a few seconds of slow-down when the fighting started, everything ran at 80 FPS all the time.

Went to Normandy career where I was handed a Free Hunt mission with just two other 109s in my flight. VRAM started out higher than on Stalingrad at 6.5 GB at mission start. After take-off, VRAM usage shot up to 7.8 GB for some reason - but at least it stayed there even after the fighting had commenced. Never went above 8GB like it did on my previous Normandy career-missions. Slightly more hiccups during the fight, but nothing bad.

I did make sure to set ground activity for the career missions to "scattered" (lowest setting).

 

I was checking fpsVR the whole time and the only times that my CPU or GPU showed spikes was when I started my recording of the mission via NVidia-SW. FPS-drops did not seem to coincide with either of the two being overloaded/spiking. I don't think either of the two ever went over 60 or 65% usage during any of these missions.

 

Overall, the whole Normandy-mission only produced one dropped frame - and I'm going to assume that was due to me starting the recording..

 

So.... yeah... not sure if more VRAM will do anything here (it might, I shall see soon-ish), but it seems clear to me that Normandy and Kuban are much more demanding maps and career mission are also more demanding - nothing new there. And perhaps those two newer maps are also not as optimized as some of the older maps?

 

 

 

 

S.

Edited August 7, 2023 by 1Sascha

[1Sascha]

Oookay... looks like my GPU has met its match, now that my 2nd hand G2 has arrived.... ?

 

 

I mean... technically, there's still headroom (card will draw up to 240W in benchmarks), but sitting on the runway by myself in a QM, the game ran at 68 FPS or so and the fpsVR-graph was pretty damn orange.. ? . 

Not too good, I suppose, given I was using the default 90 Hz refresh-rate.

 

Haven't done any tweaking like switching away from SteamVR and all that and this was still with my old in-game settings. High preset, FXAA 2x. And at 100% resolution.

 

One thing's for sure though: It's been over a year since I've flown IL-2 on a G2 and I'd forgotten just how much nicer it looks on there than on my old Rift-S.

The other thing that's for sure is that I'm glad I have a new GPU coming in two days. I just hope that thing (4070) will be enough to give me decent frame-rates.

 

 

 

S.

[chiliwili69]

On 8/5/2023 at 1:50 PM, dburne said:

A lot can change in over 3 years...

 not 3 years but 1.

Last test in the post was done Sep-2022.  ?

 

[1Sascha]

I followed Neph's guide to OpenXR/Opencomposite yesterday and FPS improved quite dramatically after that. I still had hiccups in career-missions on the newer, more demanding maps but when everything was working ok, I managed steady 60 FPS (his guide calls for lowering refresh-rate).

 

I did disable SSAO and HDR and went a bit lower on the in-game-settings than he did on his 3080 Ti. Landscape 2x, clouds high, shadows medium. More importantly, I reduced the G2's res to 90%.

 

Let's see what this thing will do - DHL delivered a day early.. ?

 

 

S.

Edited August 11, 2023 by 1Sascha

[dburne]

I got my first Gigabyte Card earlier this year, a 4090 OC. I  had always ran EVGA in the past but of course they dropped out of the GPU game with the 40xx series.

Have been very pleased with the card, big performance increase over my 3090 and runs pretty cool - when gaming tops out around 61c.

 

I miss being able to use EVGA Precision software though, the Gigabyte software is not quite as broad in settings as the EVGA was, and EVGA was more intuitive.

Edited August 11, 2023 by dburne

[1Sascha]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

Have been very pleased with the card,

 

Yeah.. mine's pretty sweet, too I think. Cooler is probably absolute overkill for the 4070-chip, but it looks pretty damn cool. Only have a pic I stupidly took when I had the glass-panel already attached to the case again, so...

 

She's pretty massive... ?

 

 

Performance is a rather big leap from the 3070 I think - despite what everyone says about sheer numbers, the added oomph! is noticeable.

I even got my first ever "excellent"-score in Time Spy with it, and according to Passmark, my GPU score is now in the 99th percentile. Dang, do I feel privileged and snooty .. ?

 

 

^ This was after a quick manual overclock. Nothing too crazy. Just 120 MHz on top of the OCed BIOS values, 600 MHz more on the VRAM and power-limit set to 120%, so 240 W, I guess. The card goes, theoretically, up to 320 W which is quite insane, despite the large cooler. Also probably rather pointless.

 

Next I undervolted a bit and found a decent compromise setting which gave me a little better than stock/OC BIOS performance but with way lower temps and power consumption.

 

Had to go a bit higher on the voltage to achieve near 2900 MHz on the GPU - 1000 mV was fine, 975mV made the card crash at that clock-speed.

Not sure if 300 to 500 points more in Time Spy is worth feeding that much more power into the card and putting another ~ 6°C on the hotspot. *shrug*

 

In any case: After re-fiddling with Opencomposite and all that stuff, I tested the card in IL-2. Only used the UV profile - should probably also try the "excellent" profile without any undervolting.

At 60 Hz and 100% resolution I was getting very steady 60/61 FPS in a 2x8 plane QM on Rheinland. I kept my in-game settings the same as they were with the 3070 - for now.

 

Then I went and tried 90 Hz which didn't go too well. It was *mostly* flyable, but I never got more than 75 FPS and I did have some stutters.

Reduced resolution to 90%, which upped the FPS max to 80 to 85 - occasional stutters were still a thing.

 

The weird thing is that while the card has 50% more (and  GDDR6X) VRAM, it used less of it than the 3070 did... at least in the quick mission. According to the overlay, it never used more than 4.5 GB or so, IIRC. HWMonitor recorded a max of 58% VRAM usage which would be more in line with what the 3070 used in terms of absolute numbers.

 

 

^ Temps after 90 Hz, 90% res run using the undervolted settings. Similar behavior as with my UVed 3070 WRT temps and power-draw. No idea why Power Limit and Temp Limit got triggered. The max values are well below the thresholds for that.

 

I guess I'll try my OC-profile next and see what that does, but I doubt it'll be a game-changer - guess I will have to switch back to 60 Hz and 100% res ... or should I go 80% and stay at 90 Hz? Not sure. I'll also absolutely want to put this card through the IL-2 bench-run. Don't remember the rules for that one - I don't want to have to switch back to SteamVR again - I'm just happy I got everything running again now and don't want to have to change all that stuff around again.. ?

 

S.

Edited August 11, 2023 by 1Sascha