GTX 770 with 2gb VRAM not enough for 10.50 update?

Question

Hi,

I was able to run X-Plane 10 against my i7-4790 and Asus GTX 770 just fine (and on high settings) before 10.50. After the 10.50 update, i noticed I was having trouble running against high settings (frame rates would drop from 30's on high to 19.90 fps suddently (and always to that low #), and then when lowered to medium rendering settings, would drop from 50-60's + frames per second (and sometimes in the 70s) to that 19.90 again (and once 19.90, it would never go back up or down again - would just stay at that till restart). This would happen randomly throughout the simulation. I uninstalled x-plane, and reinstalled without any plugins. I am just using the jardesign a320 without any plugins for testing. After running GPU-Z it appears that the problem is I am running out of vram (the max amount reported as utilized in gpu-z was over 2gb and this seemed to be reported around the time that x-plane was reporting the 19.90 frame rate) ? Does this make sense ? GTX 770 is a great card, but light on memory 3.5 years after it's release. With the mainstream amount of vram on cards being 6 -8 gb now, is it so that x-plane just really can't run adequately now on 2gb vram? Especially given the vast amount of scenery updates that seem to encompass the 10.50 release.

I was thinking about buying a GTX 1060. I'm just looking for the cheapest solution to fix my problem. I only use my GPU for x-plane. I wanted a sanity check before I buy. Any other recommendations ? Can anyone comment on what the possible impact will be when x-plane 11 comes out soon enough ? What it will require ?

Notes: I am not using Alt + Tab or anything when this issue occurs, as mentioned as possible culprit in other posts answers. I have the latest NVidia driver (and tried older versions). I have windows with all of the latest updates as of now.

Thank you

Comments

I second that same very issue. I upgraded to 10.51.r1 and seeing FPS drop from 60ish to 1-2! This happens random from what I could determine thus far, it happened in the air with different aircraft on same rendering settings. Turning off plugins and lowering rendering settings did not restore frames. I am running i7-5820 with GTX970 / 4GB Vram with latest drivers and 32GB DDR4 RAM. CPU load is 10% max. Vram load has not exceeded 1GB based on XP data. Stock scenery. Something is not right.  

Cheers

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GTX 970 is a pretty good / recent card. Did you try to run GPU-Z right before you loaded x-plane and tried to replicate the issue? and go to the sensors tab (I am using TechPowerUp GPU-Z - not sure if their version is much different) and then go to the memory used, and select the 'show highest rating' ? I wonder if your output exceeds 4gb ? That would be pretty hard to believe. I don't think that my video card has ever exceeded a GPU load of 73 %. Maybe it is a problem with X-Plane then.

I see others with the same problems as us. Hopefully a senior technical resource on here can help us get to the bottom of this

Answer 1

I have not tried those. Thnx, I will get them installed and ready.
I rolled back Nvidia drivers to previous version just now. Hopefully will help. I really do not feel like "arguing" with MS KBs as others mentioned on here could be causing issues.

Cheers

Comments

That would really help. At least we could eliminate possibly that one (vram) if so. I don't feel comfortable either holding microsoft patches. Everything is in such real time today, that even a week of holding backups could cause serious vulnerabilities (in my opinion). I also tried reverting the nvidia driver (and deleting the additional nvidia audio and 3d plugins to avoid potential conflicts there) based on the other thread I saw you commented on, and had the same issue.

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OK. Installed GPUZ.
The issue tonight happened somewhere between CYYZ and CYOW, about 20 minutes into the flight. After restarting XP, installing and running GPUZ while at CYYZ on the ground I was at 3500ish MB VRAM. This seemed too high for stock scenery. I switched to payware EIDW to check my theory. Same plane/rendering settings/etc and I was at 2500ish MB VRAM. That is a 1GB of VRAM usage drop on account of scenery? I did roll back drivers to 368.81. Let's hope this helps.

Cheers

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I guess it's high. Id like for the developers to hopefully comment on it. But it sounds plausible that you are running out of vram, right ? If you are on the ground at 3500, then once you take off with that scenary, it should degrade further ? You want to leave GPU-Z up, and set it to record the highest rating, and then when it crashes, if it's over 4gb, then you know it's vram i think. I know that they made a lot of changes to airport scenary, so maybe it is just very costly. I think that I reverted to that version, and it didn't help. Keep me posted. Thanks.

You saw this thread, right ? I still have a hard time understanding why that would be the problem, especially whenever they said after they uninstalled it, they then reinstalled and no issue. It would have been the same software microsoft kb, right ?

http://questions.x-plane.com/3400/frame-rate-issue

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Yeah, 3500 is high. When you add GTX970 having issues if reaching over 3500 into the mix perhaps it did not help. Somehow I doubt it was the main factor though. Seeing how many people are having issues with quite powerful cards and builds something tells me there are other underlying causes. I would think that when flying away from airport vram usage should drop. I should be able to do the same flight some time this week. Will post back with results. Thnx for your feedback, much appreciate it. Stay tuned for test flight results.

Cheers

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I'll look forward to your update. My vram usage actually seemed to go up right after takeoff, and if I was climbing fast to say FL300. I haven't looked at the data a whole lot. Thank you as well. I guess worst case scenario I will revert back to 10.42 or whatever it was. They clearly put a lot of work into this update, but, yeah, something not right. Or maybe it just takes a lot of VRAM now, though. It does just seem that if you bought version 10 (not that I am complaining about the massive updates they have put into the release) it shouldn't be required for users to possibly upgrade their moderate / high end video cards for the same general release. Nice to know (I guess) that many others experiencing similiar problem.

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Test flight. Settings were the same as last time. No drop to single digits in frames during this flight. GPU on the ground was high at 3400-3500. In flight levelled off at 3000-3200. Highest usage was 3662. Suppose in my case it was the Nvidia drivers that caused the frames to drop. I noticed there is a new driver just out. Will try it out sometime this weekend I think. Cheers.

Answer 2

Not to answer my own question, but once i updated the driver i am no longer having issues. Still 20's framerates on high settings on the ground at a busier airport. The gtx 770 is getting dated so i will look to update with xplane 11 when i buy it.

Thanks for you guys time looking into the issue.