We’ve received a number of reports over the last month of X-Plane hanging on startup with NVidia graphics cards on Windows. Most users don’t see this, but some do. We fixed one use of off-screen rendering in X-Plane 9.67 and this fixed some of the users with hung video cards but not all.
I am working with the remaining users now; my hope is that we’ll find something we can change in X-Plane to work around the problem. I don’t believe that the code in X-Plane 9.62 was actually incorrect, but it was simple enough to change.
I have also read some posts regarding poor performance on the GeForce 400 series (Fermi cards) vs. the older 200 series. I have no hard data on this, and frankly, a lot of the discussion on the net strikes me as completely speculative.
Fortunately alpilotx has a GeForce 500 series card on order, and he is working with me on next-generation DSF renders for X-Plane 10. From my perspective, the big question about the GeForce 400-500 series (Fermi and beyond) is: how well do they implement the DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.0 feature set? In particular, X-Plane 10 is going to make heavy use of full hardware instancing, and while this has been available on ATI cards since their HD2000 series, the implementation has been partly in software on NVidia DirectX 10 cards.
The question our users want to know is: if I have a preference for NVidia, can I get a DX11-class NV card for X-Plane, or should I move to ATI. By looking at instancing performance, perhaps we can determine if these cards are contenders.
(I am not worried about overall “how many fps” do you get because y’all can measure that now with X-Plane 9.)
Edit: since a number of you have jumped in with performance reports: please post the following performance info in your replies:
- Precise graphics card
- CPU with clock speed
- Results of –fps_test=3 (3 phases) with X-Plane 9.67.
Hi Ben,
I have a EVGA Nvidia GTX 570 SuperClocked video card, I am not having any types of problems with X-Plane 9.67 running at 1920×1200.
If you need any testing done let me know.
My old GTX285 card produces more frames than my new GTX 580. I don’t know what the problem is but I have tried everything but still no gains in FPS. Last night I borrowed GTX 470 from a friend and did some testing but still the same poor performance. I’m running on 4ghz quadcore i7 .
I’m running a i7@3.6ghz, how do I run that fps test?
See here for how to use cmd line options if you’ve never used them.
//wiki.x-plane.com/Using_Command-Line_Options
Run with the command-line option –fps_test=3
Hi Ben,
I found how 🙂
Here’s what I got:
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=1789fps=60
HASP USB-key message: hasp_login: no key found
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=1799fps=60
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=1799fps=60
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: plugin disabled
SimplePushback 0.5: Disabled
DiscreetFPS: disabled
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: XPluginStop
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: AptNav::pluginEnd
SimplePushback 0.5: Stopped
You appear to be vsync locked, perhaps in the NV control panel?
Also, forgot:
Windows 7 x64
6gb 1600 DDR3 Ram
ooops:
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2604fps=87
HASP USB-key message: hasp_login: no key found
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=3258fps=109
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=3589fps=120
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: plugin disabled
SimplePushback 0.5: Disabled
DiscreetFPS: disabled
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: XPluginStop
Airport-Navigator v1.1.2 [INFO]: AptNav::pluginEnd
SimplePushback 0.5: Stopped
ATI 5870, 1GB
MacPro 2.93GHz, 4cores
2560x1600pix
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2578fps=86
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=2735fps=91
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=2735fps=91
regards
arti
Radeon HD 3870 512 MB GDDR4 @ 1680×1050
MacPro3,1 – 2.8 GHz (5400-series Xeon) quad-core x2
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=1643fps=55
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=1756fps=59
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=1759fps=59
The GPU performance seems decent but I’d like more objects. I run it with ‘a lot’ of object with medium detail distance. It really struggles in a city when it’s cloudy with a modern aircraft model like the x737 v4.
I suppose a new graphics card won’t increase the object and cloud performance much if at all? The new i7-2600 quad only benchmarks equally as fast as my 8-core machine at multithreading but is almost twice as fast with a single thread. It doesn’t seem like much of an upgrade, all things considered.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 480
Dual Xeon X5680, 4GHz, 12 cores, 24 threads
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=4196fps=140
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=4622fps=154
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=5096fps=170
My system specs.:
//valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1668699
Core i5 2600K 3.3GHz @ 4.7GHz (no bottleneck here)
EVGA GeForce GTX460 SC EE
Medium settings yield:
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2261fps=75
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=2493fps=83
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=2629fps=88
Patrick
nVidia GTX 485
Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66GHz (4 cores)
8GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=1484fps=49
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=1498fps=50
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=1584fps=53
– Robin
– RObin
OOOPS – delete my stats here. I was dreaming that I had a GTX485 … really it’s a GTX285! Must get a new card next week … or a whole new PC . Or a Mac Pro …
– Robin
Hey, Ben,
I tried to run the FPS test again with max settings (which run fine at Innsbruck) but it won’t perform the test anymore. I successfully did it once as you can see above, so I wanted to see the results with max settings. Now, it seems the command line options don’t work. I’ve tried both single and double dashes, and different tests, but the commands simply have no effect. Any ideas?
Regards, Patrick
Update: It seems the Cmd options are working, so something else must be wrong. Excerpts from log.txt:
…
X-System folder:’E:\X-Plane 9/X-Plane 9/’, case sensitive=0
‘-fps_test’=’3’
‘-require_fps’=’20’
OpenGL Vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Render : GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version : 4.1.0 (410)
…
Preload time: 1780328.
Total load time: 21
HASP USB-key message: hasp_login: no key found
HASP USB-key message: hasp_login: no key found
HASP USB-key message: hasp_login: no key found
The first one continued past that. I’m not sure what’s going on.
— Patrick
Hi Ben,
AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor @ 2511.636
4GB RAM
Gentoo Linux
GTX470 Zotac AMP (//www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=100062&lang=ca)
nvidia driver: 270.18
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2044fps=68
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=2145fps=71
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=2269fps=76
I have moved from 8800GTX and did not notice too much of a difference. ;|
I am very glad to hear that there is a room for improvement.
Kind regards,
Kamil
Phenom II X4 @ 3.8GHz, Radeon HD4770
Ubuntu 10.04 64bit, 2/11 Catalyst drivers, XP9.67
1024×768
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=3206fps=107
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=3647fps=122
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=4171fps=139
1920×1200
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=3136fps=105
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=3556fps=119
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=4060fps=135
Plugin problem? If you remove third party plugins does that stuff go away? (If it does you’ll need to contact the plugin author.
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz
cpu MHz : 2801.000
MemTotal: 4110292 kB
S.O = Ubuntu 10.10
‘–fps_test’=’3’
OpenGL Vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Render : GeForce GTX 275/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version : 3.3.0 NVIDIA 270.29 (330)
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=4372fps=146
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=4336fps=145
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=4417fps=147
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz
cpu MHz : 2801.000
MemTotal: 4110292 kB
S.O = Ubuntu 10.10 32 bit and 64bit
‘–fps_test’=’3’
OpenGL Vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Render : GeForce GTX 275/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version : 3.3.0 NVIDIA 270.29 (330)
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=4372fps=146
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=4336fps=145
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=4417fps=147
1920×1080
HELLO GUYS, I HAVE TO BUY A NVIDIA GTX 460 with 768 MB of RAM MEDIAWORLD DDR5.
WITH FSX performance is excellent, OR DO NOT GO ON MEDIA AND MICROSOCATTI 60 FPS with peaks of 100, the SET WITH MEDIUM-HIGH.
HOWEVER, when I started X-Plane 9 HO WAS NOTED THAT THE SIMULATOR TO THE MAX 20 FPS, I HAVE TRIED TO WRITE THE KEY PREFERENCES, but nothing changes.
Then I did a test I removed the NVIDIA MIA, I HAVE REPLACED MY OLD-Vapor-X ATI 4870 DDR5 2GB of RAM.
I DID THAT I WAS RESULTING FSX microswitch, WITH A MAX FPS arriving at 40.
When booting X-PLANE WAS Smoothly 9.
Now there I ask this question, is it true that X-PLANE is optimized for FSX FOR NVIDIA AND ATI?
HOW peformance is more powerful than the GTX 460 CHE THE VAPOR-X 4870.
I already posted above but wanted to show results with SLI. Just FYI.
OpenGL Render : GeForce GTX 480/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version : 4.1.0 (410) (ForceWare 270.51)
Dual Xeon X5680, 3.46GHz, 12 cores, 24 threads
Single GPU
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=3861fps=129
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=4227fps=141
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=4572fps=152
Force alternate frame rendering 1
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2173fps=72
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=2247fps=75
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=2397fps=80
Force alternate frame rendering 2
FRAMERATE TEST phase 1:time=30frames=2324fps=77
FRAMERATE TEST phase 2:time=30frames=2409fps=80
FRAMERATE TEST phase 3:time=30frames=2527fps=84
Interesting…it makes sense that AFR rendering would have poor performance – X-Plane has (as far as the driver is concerned) inter-frame dependencies. (This is more because OpenGL doesn’t provide a simple clean way to break these dependencies that I am aware of than because of X-Plane’s design) so there’s a lot of data transfer going on between the two cards.
Also, we’re not usually fill-rate bound in X-Plane 9 on high quality DX11 cards, so the second card is probably not necessary.
I just wanted to post it since I saw that no one else has. I didn’t expect better frame rates in X-Plane since forcing AFR for other games that didn’t have an SLI profile also resulted in lower frame rates. During the test, GPU usage is at a constant 24% and CPU usage is at 7%(almost 2 threads) so I wouldn’t expect SLI to be beneficial at this point anyway. I can however set Anti-Aliasing to 64x(overkill, I know) and Transparency Anti-Aliasing to 16x super-sampled with both GPUs at 43% usage and still get over 80FPS. I have found that turning on FSAA in X-Plane yields greatly lowered framerates compared to turning FSAA off in X-Plane and overriding anti-aliasing in the Nvidia Control Panel.
I’m really looking forward to all the improvements in X-Plane 10. Thank you for all your hard work!
Hi.
I’m using a Nvidia GeForce 9800GT and when using a Matrox Triplehead2go, X-Plane hangs on start-up.
I’ve updated and downloaded every new driver possible (the triple screen looks amazing). But X-plane hangs.
When I revert back to single screen (original setup), X-plane loads.
Anyone got any ideas what I could try?
Thanks.
Hunnas