Build the Best PC for Flight Simulator 2020! CPUs, RAM and GPUs tested for the Perfect Sim PC

hi welcome to premium builds i'm john well that's enough about motherboards for now let's get back to some gaming i've had a week off due to covid but that has enabled me to put in some sim time so let's talk about flight simulator 2020. this is a truly next generation title capable of using ai and data from bing graphics to render the whole world in stunning detail it's a truly fantastic experience and one i'd like as many people to enjoy as possible but it's got a reputation as being really hard on hardware is that really fair do you need an absolutely top-flight pc to run this game well well i've been testing it for over a year now and i'd like to dispel some of the myths about this title we've got testing here from a range of equipment from cpus like the i3 up to i9 cpus ryzen cpus as well ram from 8 gigabytes up to 64 gigabytes tested and a range of gpus at various settings as well so that you can pick the hardware that's going to really enable you to get the most out of this fantastic title and i'm going to apologize now for switching between calling it a game and a sim throughout this video i'd probably treat it a little bit more like a game than some people do and i appreciate that some people do take it incredibly seriously this information is important to them as well and i have tested in a way that is relevant to simmers as well as people who just want to casually enjoy this game but let's face it this title is available on xbox now people can play it with a controller as well and part of dispelling that elitist myth about the kind of hardware you need to run a sim like flight simulator 2020 is the purpose of this video i want to show that you can actually get a great experience on this pc title with really quite modest hardware in this video i've tried to get scientific with it i've broken it down component by component isolating variables in order to really dig down into which components matter most to get this game running well to clarify by build the best i don't just mean choose the best of everything that would be too easy for me and it wouldn't be fair on you as well if i come up at the end and say you need to spend five thousand dollars to get a pc that's going to run this game well it's also not true our goal here is to find out where you can get the most performance for your money whether you're building a pc from scratch with flights in 2020 as a consideration or perhaps you're experiencing poor performance on your current pc and you want to know where you need to spend your money to rectify that situation and get the best experience possible at the end of the video i'll suggest some pc configurations to get great performance at any budget using current components so you can maximize your money we've used two benchmark tests here one involves a low-level flight over manhattan in a lighter aircraft the other is a take-off sequence in a 747 at heathrow both represent demanding worst-case scenarios but they highlight slightly different aspects of a pc's performance as well as different ways people enjoy this sim one aspect i do want to explain is the significance of the metrics i'm presenting here the vital ones are the overall average as an indication of system performance i've then also reported that one percent and 0.1 percent lows these metrics are the average of the worst one percent and worst 0.1 brackets of frame rates respectively they give an indication of the frame time consistency a very low 0.1 percent result indicates that a few frames are taking significantly longer to render and this is perceived as a stutter or hang in gameplay it's those stutters that really ruin immersion even more than average frame rates it's the one percent and 0.1 low performance that dictates how smoothly we perceive a game to be running that's why they're important and i will refer to them throughout these results where they represent significant differences also i know a lot of people will be really interested in the testing methodology but it's relatively involved so i've included a section on that at the end so if you're going through this video and you find some of my results improbable or unbelievable please do just refer to the end of that video and see if you think my testing methodology has impacted the results that i'm showing here if you think there are odds then please feel free to call me out in the comments or perhaps present some of your own testing as well if you've got components i don't have access to i'd be really interested to see how they perform and also how perhaps my testing methodology could be improved so strap in because this video could save you an awful lot of money or just help you optimize your current system to get the best performance out of flightsim 2020 and please if you appreciate the results of over 300 individual benchmark runs over 40 hours of testing in benchmarks presented in this video please do click like and tick that subscribe button as well so you can help us produce these kind of videos and get this information to you so you can build the best pcs possible so let's get down to it let's take a look at what it means to build the best pc for flight simulator 2020 first up let's take a look at cpus the sim engine for flight simulator is demanding but what specific features of a cpu are important looking at our overall results in the new york flyover benchmark we can make the broad observation that better cpus are well better but which factors really matter you might be tempted to assume that the core count is the primary factor in performance but the results here indicate that it isn't the i9 10850k with 10 cores fares worse than lower core count cpus in this test and in fact it's matched by the four core i3 12 100 f what we see here is newer cpus doing significantly better but why using a separate benchmark involving a 747 taking off at london heathrow which is an even more cpu-dominated test shows similar results the 12th gen i3 actually beats out the 10 core 10th generation i9 in this test whilst the overclocked 12th generation i7 stretches its lead the zen 3 5800x is also doing well obtaining 60 frames per second we can specifically test for the impact of core count by switching off cpu cores and re-running the benchmarks on the 5800x and the i9 10850k doing this yields results that are perhaps surprising until we understand how flight simulator 2020 is coded it appears that stepping these cpus down to six and even four active cores does little to harm performance and whilst the ryzen shows a slight trend for better performance with core counts the intel i9 shows more varied results note that the 0.1 percent and 1 lows do improve with core count however we're not seeing anything like linear scaling with more cores a second run of tests using the ryzen 5800x in the london heathrow takeoff benchmark confirms this this test like before is even more cpu dominated and even a heavy aircraft in a complex environment does not benefit substantially from higher core counts these runs are all very similar and even full course has no substantial impact on the 0.1 low results which is where you would expect to pick up stutters and poor performance as we overstep a cpu's capacity realistically this is a margin of error result in the testing between the six and the eight core results and the four core isn't at a level where you'd perceive any difference in frame rates we can conclude that there's no scaling with core count in flight simulator 2020 beyond four and certainly six cores there was some hope that a move to directx 12 could see better usage of high core count cpus but sadly it's not that simple the game engine itself runs on a single main thread and breaking that apart isn't a trivial task for the developers in fact with the game now much better optimized and a big portion of its audience on console i wouldn't anticipate any major advances in multi-core usage going forwards directx 12 is worse than directx 11 right now so if core count isn't important what does matter in terms of cpu performance then going back to our key results helps us here the two factors that have a primary impact on flight sims performance a single core speed and a large level three cache this is the real reason for the different scaling between intel and amd cpus amd gives you 32 megabytes of level 3 cache per core cluster and their peak clock speeds don't actually vary that much between products the 5600x performs much the same as a 5900x if you don't need the core count and the cache is split between the two core clusters on those higher end ryzen 9 cpus meaning that any particular set of cores only has 32 megabytes available the same as in a 5600x or 5800x intel on the other hand take a much more aggressive approach to product segmentation in moving from i3 to i5 and then i7 and beyond you're not just buying faster cores as denoted by the boost clock speeds you're also getting more level 3 cash as you step up the product stack it's this combination of faster cores and larger cache size that lead to the more marked performance increases across the intel product lineup when we're looking at the 12th generation older lake cpus and across the board this is why more modern cpus perform better they have ipc improvements which allow the cpu cores to perform more efficiently getting more done with each clock cycle and that's why a modern cpu is the single biggest improvement you can make to performance on flight simulator 2020. our conclusions here are pretty clear-cut to run flight simulator 2020 well you need a fast modern cpu with at least four but preferably six cores you need very high individual core speed and plenty of level three cash as well the ryzen 5600 x is a great option on a budget whilst the intel i5 12 400 is a fantastic starting point as well moving up to the k series and i7 12th gen cpus will buy you more performance but it's through both single core speed and cache increases not core count remember you can buy more powerful and expensive cpus but you're probably not buying a great deal of additional performance as other components limit overall performance as we'll show later only considerate them if you're already getting the best gpus and ram you can afford more recent cpus fare better through ipc improvements faster single core speed and whilst the cheaper intel i3 cpus are easy to overlook the 12th generation shouldn't be dismissed out of hand if they're what you can afford you can still get acceptable gaming performance out of them at just 100 to 120 it's insane how well the i312 100 does in this title for example it's a four core cpu with that very fast individual core speed that means that it can match the i9 108 50k a 10 core cpu flagship or one step below flagship from intel released just two years ago at 450 dollars you've now got 120 cpu that will match it in flight simulator 2020. but it's 2022 and i'm not going to tell you to buy a four core cpu for this or any other demanding game if you can afford slightly better options like the ryzen 5600 x and the 12 400 to 12 600 and 12 600 k exist and provide a great deal more performance in this title and for more general use for relatively little extra investment obviously at the high end an i9 12 900k will offer the best performance possible at the moment with a high 5.2 gigahertz boost clock and 30 megabytes of level 3 cache but in our opinion the i7 12700k offers the best balance of performance and cost at the high end giving high clock speeds and 25 megabytes of level 3 cache the ryzen series don't offer significant benefits for the cost past the 5600x but they are strong performance the upcoming ryzen 5800 x 3d has a massive level 3 cache however its clock speeds have been taken and notched down so it'll be interesting to see how it performs in flight sim 2020 versus the original 5800x as an aside we'd love to see good data on the ryzen 5900 and 5950x if you've got those cpus and you don't believe my testing here and you think that core count is a factor particularly in those 1 and 0.1 lows then by all means run some testing and get back to us we'd love to see your results another contentious issue with microsoft flight simulator 2020 is how much ram you need to run this title well originally it did specify 32 gigabytes recommended on the spec sheet that's actually been revised downwards now to 16 gigabytes and there's also been some major optimizations made particularly with the release going out to xbox as well they've obviously really cut back the ram demands of this game so to test it we ran a range of ram sizes and configurations in order to work out what's going to perform best to test capacity first up we ran the same benchmarks on the 5800x equipped with varying amounts of ram in different configurations we controlled speed and timings at 3200mhz cl16 throughout take a quick moment to double take these results because they've surprised us too and prompted a number of verification runs in the new york city benchmark there does seem to be some small trend with ram capacity with a couple of frames per second improvement between 8 gigabytes 16 gigabytes and 32 gigabyte configurations this is in line with what you'd expect but the performance of just 8 gigabytes of ram surprised us even the 1 and 0.1 lows don't suffer significantly although you can perhaps see a slight trend towards more consistent performance from 8 gigabytes up to 32 gigabyte capacities note the obvious detriment of single stick configurations at the bottom of the chart single channel ram hurts performance in almost all games and flight sim is no exception here we tested both our scenarios to see if there was any variants in the heathrow takeoff benchmark involving the 747 we see no significant difference between performance on 8 16 32 and even 64 gigabytes of dual channel ram which is remarkable the 8 gigabyte kit is nominally on top but that's within margin of error in effect we can say that all of these configurations perform the same but note a slight trend of improving 0.1 lows as we increase capacity indicating a slight improvement in frame time consistency with larger ram amounts overall then while there can be minor differences in performance with ram we're not seeing any major scaling with capacity and we're happy to say that 16 gigabytes is ample to run this game well 32 gigabytes certainly would make sense if you're running very high settings or with modded aircraft or scenery however it's not a requirement to simply enjoy the title moving on to ram speed let's take a look at our data on how ram speed impacts this title it's perhaps more relevant to flight simulator 2020 than most because it runs so much closer to a cpu limit most of the time than other games in other games you're probably getting very high frame rates and you're limited much more by your gpu whereas the game engine is relatively non-critical and sitting with a good amount of headroom on flight simulator 2020 you do frequently run into situations where you want as much cpu performance as possible because that's your ultimate frame rate limit and ram does impact that so let's take a look at the numbers we've done significant work investigating ram speeds on this and other games in the past and broadly we know that ram speed assists cpu performance and therefore results in potentially higher frame rates to test this we ran 16 gigabytes of ram in a 2x8 gigabyte configuration and varied the speeds as shown it's well known that amd's ryzen cpus are ram speed sensitive and our testing with the ryzen 5800x bears this out moving from basic jdex specification at 2400mhz cl 16 through to speeds of 3200 megahertz and 3600 megahertz sees a substantial 15 frame per second improvement in average frame rates the highest performance ram we've been able to test is a samsung b die kit manually tuned to 3800 megahertz cl 16 with infinity fabric and memory controller locked at one-to-one ratio given this ram took several days to tune and verify stability the out-of-box performance of 3600 megahertz cl 16 ram running xmp is far more attractive giving away just 5 frames per second potentially and with near identical 1 and 0.1 lows the 4 000 megahertz spec uses slightly looser secondary timings to achieve stability and so it doesn't perform quite as well overall however there's often a belief that ram speed isn't as important for intel if we switch to the data from testing of the i7 12700 k we can see this isn't true ram speed matters just as much we have the same 20 frames per second spread from the worst to the best ram here with the highest performing ram being the ddr4 4000mhh samsung bdi kit that cl 16 timings manually tweaked note that ddr5 is also included here and it doesn't justify its cost whilst the g-skill kit tested here clocks at 6000 megahertz the high cl 36 cast latency means it's not able to challenge the best performing ram and it performs about the same as 3200 megahertz cl 16 ddr4 ram for ddr4 once again 3600 megahertz cl 16 hits the sweet spot of cost the ease of applying an out of the box xmp profile and good performance making it our pick for intel as well as zen 3 ryzen to conclude our ram section then we can see that 16 gigabytes is sufficient to run this title well rather than spending money on very expensive high capacity kits we'd suggest you focus in on getting the best speed and timings of ram possible to aid cpu performance for an entry-level setup 16 gigabytes of 3600 megahertz cl 16 ram is probably optimal for a more complex installation 32 gigabytes is probably optimal and still allows you to get those fast kits with tight timings an acceptable price without compromising the rest of the system or getting a really much larger capacity kit that actually has to run slower and will actually hurt performance versus a faster smaller kit we can also advise you to avoid single stick setups they really do hurt performance and should be avoided at all costs for a number of reasons not just flight simulator 2020 performance and finally if you are on a ddr5 platform already older lake or you're looking at ddr5 for zen 4 in the upcoming release later this year we can say you really will need to focus in on getting the fastest ram possible you can see even some of the faster kits available today struggle against moderately priced ddr4 kits so you will be looking at 5600 megahertz as a minimum 6 000 6400 megahertz kits with those timings brought down as low as possible to assist latency it's that latency penalty for ddr5 that's hurting performance at the moment we also tested a number of different ram configurations here throughout our testing i couldn't see any appreciable differences between four stick and two stick configurations and that's paralleled with whether you're running dual rank or single rank sticks as well i'd say there's not enough information to make a specific recommendation either way there and you get plenty of performance out of a dual stick kit overall then ram speed and timings do assist cpu performance and because cpu performance is so critical to the overall experience of flight simulator 2020 that's where you should focus your energies when you're looking for ram for building a system we did conduct some brief testing on loading times with ssds a frustration in this title to see if faster ssds made any particular mark on waiting times our data here is messy and owing to the combination of systems we have available for test they're not controlled for cpu we've also found significant run to run variants read sometimes 30 seconds additional for no apparent reason in our results we're including this to demonstrate that unfortunately even fast ssds such as the subreddit rocket 4.0 don't appear to have any marked advantage in load times and one of the slowest drives under the test the intel 660p shows one of the fastest load times please don't base any purchasing decisions off of this slide we're really including it here just to show that we did try our conclusions really for ssds are that while they're a must you shouldn't agonise over spending extra on a high performance ssd for this title on the expectation of improved loading times other factors in the system matter more and it's so random that realistically you're probably not going to get a huge benefit from a spend here however what we would prioritize is getting an ssd at least you certainly do want to run a large demanding title like this off of an ssd and making sure that it's at least 500 gigabytes in capacity we'd say that's the bare minimum for a pc dedicated to flight simulator 2020 with even a basic install and updates now running at 230 gigabytes so whilst we found that flight simulator is much more dependent on cpu performance than a lot of titles it is still the gpu that's going to dictate ultimately the settings resolution and frame rates you're going to achieve so let's take a look at some of our testing here please do accept our apologies that we haven't got the widest range of graphics cards available for testing here we don't get given graphics cards by manufacturers and as i'm sure you're aware the last year or so hasn't been the most conducive to obtaining or keeping hold of graphics cards they've been a pretty expensive investment first up let's check out gpu performance at 1080p resolution with high settings here we can see that the rtx 2060 sets the baseline for performance achieving 60 frames per second average as close as possible on high settings we do have legacy data for the 1660 super and found that acceptable as well achieving around 50 frames per second in this test lower tier cards like the 1650 super will require settings being lowered to medium but are still perfectly functional the 6600 xt equips itself well at this resolution giving 61 frames per second average as we approach 100 frames per second using the higher tier cards you can see that the very high end isn't really appropriate at this resolution you're spending a huge amount to go from the 99 frames per second to the 3060 ti to 112 frames per second of the rtx 3080 ti and it's the cpu that's dictating the performance with these cards at this lower resolution any of the cards above the 3060 ti are better suited to a higher resolution monitor an rtx 3050 is also going to be perfectly acceptable at 1080p but we'll avoid the amd rx 6500 xt owing to a number of issues in performance of that card that extend beyond its capability in flight sim stepping up to 1440p we can see a dramatic falloff in the performance of the 6600 xt and the rtx 2060 at this resolution with adjusted settings they will work acceptably well but they're not ideal the rtx 3060 ti and rtx 3070 achieve a comfortable 60 frames per second and an rx 6700 xt will do likewise the rtx 3080 and 3080 ti achieve 90 and 105 frames per second respectively but again this is really overkill and overspend at this resolution note that the lower 0.1 lows in particular indicate that we're hitting a cpu limitation with these top tier gpus even at 1440p moving up again we've tested ultrawide owing to our preference for it in many sims and aaa titles 1440p ultrawide splits the difference between a qhd or 1440p and 4k and the results demonstrate that here we can see the rtx 3070 becoming the threshold card for 60 frames per second performance with the rtx 3080 and rtx 3080 ti delivering 70 and 96 frames per second respectively with any of these cards it will be worth tweaking the settings to get your preferred balance of visual detail and performance and finally at 4k we can see that even the highest performance cards are working hard to deliver 60 frames per second realistically at 4k you're looking at as much gpu as you can afford with the rtx 3080 ti delivering 60 frames per second average in this demanding scenario i would add that this is a take-off and low-level urban scenario that's particularly hard on the gpu and you can expect to add about 50 frame rates when flying at altitude so to conclude for gpus whilst it is a demanding title this isn't actually dramatically out of step with other recommendations for games and gaming gpus at 1080p you'll get great results out of things like the rtx 3050 3060 or the rx 6600 xt or the 6600 from amd moving up to 1440p you'll be looking at cards like the rtx 3060 ti or rtx 3070 or the amd rx 6700xt for good performance and finally up at 4k or using vr you will need to dust off the wallet because you're going to need a very high-end gpu the rtx 3080 3080 ti or even 1390 or the rx 6800 xt or 6900 xt from amd to get an acceptable frame rate 60 frames per second plus at high settings that really do this title justice a quick note about vr i do play this title a lot in vr myself on an rtx 3080 ti and i enjoy really good quality settings and good consistent performance with it i have looked at benchmarking and trying to ascertain exactly where the cutoff point is for gpus with it however there's just so many variables to consider including headset specifications render scaling visual settings and of course individual tolerances for lower frame rates that i'm hesitant to make sweeping recommendations until i've got better numbers like i say i play on an rtx 3080 ti but i appreciate that me telling you to go out and buy that isn't particularly helpful to people on more restricted budgets i'll keep working on data until i'm confident i can present more meaningful findings to you for vr specifically in this game we've been through the core components that dictate performance and the fundamental issue here is that the underlying pc should be able to support your target frame rates with ease as long as you've got that headroom you'll get a smooth and enjoyable experience so when you're planning your pc for this sim focus on a competent cpu then add fast ram to support it ensure you've got sufficient ssd space but don't overspend there hoping for reduced loading times finally make sure your gpu is appropriate for the resolution you want to run in that respect flight sim 2020 has really moved on from a game that was somewhat unique on launch onto its heavy cpu dependence to a game that's much more in line with overall gaming pc requirements as it has matured and refined with performance updates over the last year best of all because it's part of microsoft game pass it's actually cheap or near free to try it out on your system so you can gauge performance for yourself we'd love to hear how you get on in comments i'll round this video up by detailing my recommendations for pc component selections in 2022 that will deliver outstanding results in this title without breaking the bank at the entry level to build a pc for flight sim that will run at 1080p with excellent performance and keeping a close eye on your budget i'd recommend the following component choices for the cpu you really want to try and get an intel i3 12 100 at a bare minimum it's a fantastic four core cpu that will do really well however if you can afford that little bit extra to step up to the i5 range then an i5 12 400 or above is a really solid option gets you those two additional cores slightly more consistent performance and just makes the cpu more flexible overall i'd pair those with 16 gigabytes of 3200 megahertz cl 16 ram to keep costs down and compatibility at a maximum some people do report problems running 3600 mhz ram on those lower tier intel cpus for motherboard you can grab an intel b660 motherboard and we do have videos making our recommendations for those so you can pick one that will allow the cpu to achieve full performance you'll want a 500 gigabyte nvme ssd as a minimum and they cost from around 60 an up however we would recommend one terabyte if you can afford it 500 gigabytes is sufficient provided the pc is basically dedicated to flight simulator and nothing else and for the gpu at 1080p we'd recommend an rtx 2060 3050 or 3060 or on the amd side an rx 6600 or 6600 xt will work well overall this total platform cost should work out around 770 dollars plus additional for a power supply case monitoring any other peripherals you might need moving up to the mid-range this is a pc really aimed at excellent 1440p performance with the gpu selections we've made and just a slightly more solid base specification to ensure that it's running the game really optimally for you for the cpu we'd be looking at the intel i5 range with either the 12400 12500 12600 or 600 k if you can step up to the i7 12 700 that's also a really solid option on the amd side if you're finding perhaps motherboards a little bit tricky to find for the intel side then the amd ryzen 5600x is a really solid option or the 5800x now that's discounted as well for ram we'd look at 16 gigabytes of 3600 megahertz cl 16 ram or if you can afford to step up to 32 gigabytes that's a really good option as well but do make sure you keep those speeds high and the timing's low for motherboards intel b660 motherboards are fine for the i5 again we'd advise you check out our video for our recommendations because there are some motherboards that don't perform optimally with i5 cpus on the amd side the b550 motherboard range is really quite attractive there's loads of good options from entry level up to high end again we've got videos covering that on our channel and that allows you to build a really solid system around the ryzen 5600x for ssd we'd be looking at a one terabyte entry level nvme ssd and around 90 should see you right there and for the gpu again at 1440p we'd be looking at the rtx 3060 ti rtx 3070 rtx 3070 ti or on the amd side the radeon rx 6700 xt prices are falling and availability is improving so it's now a really good time to start looking out for a gpu that fits your budget the total platform cost we're looking at here is around thirteen hundred and fifty dollars plus a psu case and again any other peripherals you might need and finally at the high end my recommendations for flight sim 2020 really getting the most out of it and running fantastic level visuals at 1440p ultrawide 4k or if you want to use a vr headset would be as follows for the cpu i'd look at either the intel i7 12700k the i712700 which performs almost identically but could save you a little bit of money or if you want to go all out there's the i912 900k but i will caution that you're spending an awful lot more money for a very small additional amount of performance with that cpu i think that budget would be better allocated elsewhere within the build on the amd side you can get good performance out of the ryzen 5800x or the 5900x but at the moment the older lake 12th generation cpus are the higher performing option for ram we'd stick with ddr4 ram if you're on the old lake platform and go for 32 gigabytes of ddr4 3600 megahertz cl 16 ram that really does strike the sweet spot of performance ease of setup and the cost as well for motherboards there's a good range of intel z690 motherboards around 300 and on the amd side all you need is a b550 motherboard around 150 dollars gets you a good choice of boards that will run the recommended cpu as well again for ssds there's no need to go for anything particularly special a one terabyte nvme ssd is around 90 and for the gpu if you are running at 1440p ultrawide or 4k you are going to be needing to spend out on the gpu we'd start with an rtx 3070 ti and look around to rtx 3080s 3080 ti's there's the 1390 and even now the rtx 3090 ti as well on the amd radeon side you're going to be looking at at least an rx 6800 xt or the 6900 xt to get acceptable performance in this title these gpus will run well into four figures but prices are now falling so keep your eye out for any cards that are available at or near msrp the total platform cost for the pc itself will be around two thousand dollars plus a psu and a case but with high quality monitors flight sim equipment and any other peripherals you need you will probably be looking at around four to five thousand dollars for a total cost for a pc that will run this title absolutely optimally well that about wraps it up for our testing of flight simulator 2020 i really want to thank you for watching i hope you found this video useful and informative and i really hope it's helped you make some decisions about the kind of components you need to be putting into a pc that's going to get the absolute best out of this fantastic simulator i'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a project we've been working on behind the scenes it's called buildpicker.com it aims to take all of this information we've been gathering about the performance of different components the things you should choose and the things you should avoid and put them together into a one-stop site that allows you to pick the very best build for your needs we've taken data from thousands of components graded those components according to their value and then put them into pc specifications that mean that you will always get the best possible build for any given budget and purpose we've got a number of pc specifications in there already from gaming pcs to video editing pcs and more so you can have a look and see what you think about the kind of builds it recommends so please do drop us a comment either on this video or from the site itself let us know what you think could be improved or if you've had good results with it and the kind of builds it's recommending to you finally then this is the section on test methodology and exactly how we configured these systems to run um and this is really for your benefit so if you want to understand a little bit more in depth about how we obtain the numbers we've presented in this video you can check out this section before you get super angry in the comments and say i've done it all wrong first up with the test systems we didn't overclock the cpus or gpus under test other than when shown in the charts and we did use pbo for the ryzen cbe use which is enabled by default on the motherboards we tested with we did overclock ram for the ram speed testing and our settings are clearly indicated in those charts the systems used motherboards that we've cross checked to ensure that they perform properly at default specification that is they allow the cpus to perform to their full potential cpus were adequately cooled with at least a 240 millimeter aio to ensure they didn't thermally throttle the bulk of our testing was done on windows 10 although the older lake cpu results are tested under windows 11. we a to b tested and found the performance difference with it was within margin of error between the two operating systems we spent a good deal of time developing and refining the benchmark runs we use it took us over a year to finalize the exact settings and specifications to ensure that we were getting consistent data they typify the worst case scenarios for this sim the new york city flyover test is a three minute flight which leaves laguardia and heads over manhattan at low altitude in a daha light aircraft it's run in chase cam and runs for three minutes from wheels up after takeoff until the statue of liberty passes out of view it's a stern test of cpu owing to the volume of cityscape displayed as well as gpu given the photogrammetry and textures which we left on the initial takeoff was omitted because originally this portion of the flight tended to corrupt 0.1 and 1 low figures with highly variable results run to run something that's now been eliminated with game updates to address this we've got a second benchmark which is more cpu focused and demanding this test involves a large aircraft the 747 taking off from heathrow in poor weather and lasts for the duration of the initial climb two minutes the view remains internal because it is so cpu-dependent it's less revealing of gpu capability so we haven't used it in those tests we intend this to be more representative of a serious simmers experience of this sim using a demanding aircraft and the internal cockpit view we didn't test third-party aircraft because these add-ins can drastically impact performance and it just introduces too many variables to give meaningful results suffice to say these tests represent some of the most demanding in-game circumstances and actually the systems presented will dramatically outperform the results in these tests in less complex flying conditions we chose the settings we run out in these tests for a number of reasons we wanted the test to be representative and meaningful so we opted for 1080p high-end visual settings for the bulk of the cpu and ram testing this is necessary to give insight into cpu performance as at 4k you're almost entirely gpu limited we also wanted the numbers to tally with real-world settings we don't see that the value of presenting data are obtained at 720p or low visual settings when no one will be using that in the game it's also important you're getting the best out of this game and higher settings help it achieve the visuals it's capable of we also wanted to provide a reference point you can tweak both ways from increasing quality to ultra if you can accept lower frame rates or lowering some settings to boost frame rates if preferred ultra settings do place a heavier load on the gpu but the level of detail sliders heavily weight towards increasing cpu load therefore i'd encourage everyone to test for themselves to find their own optimal balance of performance and visual fidelity you can find settings optimization guides on many forums which go into much more depth than i can present here we ran all tests with bing data on photogrammetry on but live air traffic and weather conditions off in order to limit run to run variants over the testing it took to obtain these results talking about the game version and drivers the game has been through a number of evolutions but all the data presented here is from service update 7 of the game after the major performance optimizations were made the gpu data is current and was refreshed for this video we used current drivers and up-to-date operating systems we did not use any third-party content in the test as this can have a dramatic impact on performance although the hardware factors that impact their performance remain the same in particular some larger complex and less well-optimized aircraft can be very detrimental to frame rates that's what ai piloting does for you brilliant

Channel: BuildPicker

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Keywords: PremiumBuilds.com, PremiumBuilds, Premium, Builds, PC, PC Builds, Build Guides, Technology, Tech, PC Hardware, Tech News, Optimization, Enthusiast, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, Gaming, Gaming PC, Computer, Computer Hardware, Gaming Computer, Motherboard, CPU, GPU, Graphics Card, Ryzen, Threadripper, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, Benchmarks, Performance

Id: mSLaJ_7pFLE

Length: 34min 56sec (2096 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2022