MS Flight Simulator (2020): the 2021 PC graphics performance benchmark review

Posted on: 03/07/2021 01:56 PM

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I think the issue at hand is that this is not a game, and does not live by game standards.
Flight sims are pretty notorious for delivering poor framerates, and while clearly one would like them to perform better... when this one delivers about the framerates people have come to expect from other flightsims, it does beg to question if it's purely poor optimization or if some of the simulations are just difficult to scale.

If it was a game, it could just ignore the simulation side of things and could almost certainly deliver much better framerates for this type of graphical fidelity (I do not think *that* is the issue at all), but it would change its very nature.
I agree that is not a game, or more than a game if you want, since it's a sim. But that does not excuse the poor optimization (as in how bad it takes advantage from better hardware).

From GTX 1080 that gets 41 fps in 1080p to an RTX 3090 that gets 53 fps, same resolution same settings, that's a 30% increase in performance. The average performance increase from GTX 1080 to RTX 3090 in all other games (including other sims) is 233%....

That's some serious mismanagement/under-utilization of powerful hardware there, that or the GTX 1080 is the biggest underdog ever and the most over-delivering GPU, which is not. In any other case the difference would be about what it should be, a huge one in favor of RTX 3090. If this game would be the metric for all games for RTX 3090 performance, this card would be a complete dud. And that before factoring the price, I won't even go there.

So yeah, the issue is with the software, not the hardware.

Posted on: 03/08/2021 10:22 AM

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I had expected a substantive review and I was disappointed. Reality is not what simmers have delivered to them with FS2020. As for your conclusions nothing new there. To suggest FS2020 is the best out there (paraphrasing) is a mile of the mark. The best at what? Scenery? Flight models? Interactive environments? The only thing FS2020 excels at in 2021 is scenery. The flight models are bare bones and in many instances they are crude. As for the pricing lets not go there. I laughed at the recent attempt to put a Mk IX into FS2020. Why bother when DCS has such a great interactive environment and realistic flight model?
Your are wasting your time and ours testing now. We all know how flight sims perform in DX11. I am no XP11 fan but for engines they have shown the way with Vulcan. P3D still kills it for flight modelling.
Do it again when its running DX12 or Vulkan, then simmers who have been at it for 25 years will have something to read. Eye candy is great but FS2020 is yet to add a real flight aircraft model to its ranks imo.
Maybe some day.
Cheers

Posted on: 03/08/2021 10:35 AM

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Welcome aboard Guru3D airlines, after an amazing start of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, we decided to look at the sim again in 2021 in our PC graphics performance and PC gamer way with 37 graphics ...

MS Flight Simulator (2020): the 2021 PC graphics performance benchmark review
It would be nice if you try as well HT on and off to see if the sim has better performance. I do believe that many sims behave better (p3d, dcs) with ht off for a 9900k, for example.

Posted on: 04/01/2021 07:12 AM

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Just got into this review today, and it's half I'd expected. But don't get me wrong... It's amazing in a GPU point of view, but I'm seeking a CPU 'PoV' review to help me decide which CPU I shall buy to get the best experience in FS2020. A few months ago, I had a RX580 (4GB) coupled to an icore 8600 and a 32 GB RAM @2733MHz . Since then, I only upgraded to a OC'd RTX 3080 but I only have ~10 FPS in big cities like NYC, wich makes me believe this 'game' it's CPU bottlenecked at first.

So, what I'd really like would be a review with fixed GPU/Board/RAM/SSD comparing Intel's 11th generation (11900K and 11700K) against Ryzen 9/7 series.

Basically, which is the best CPU to run FS2020 actually?

Best regards,
JJ.