Multicore support

Question

Hello,

my specs:

Windows 8.1 Pro
Intel i7 4770K @ 4.2GHz
8GB DDR3 2166MHz
Geforce GTX 770

I've read the CPU/GPU tuning section of official XP11 guide: http://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/#settingtherenderingoptionsforbestperformance
but even i set GPU game settings (on the left side of menu) to lowest and CPU settings (on the right side of menu) to max, i never seen my CPU Load over 26%.... Never! Only during loading... It's normal? Maybe X-Plane 11 64bit in the 2017 can use 100% of CPU?

Please see screenshot here: http://pasteboard.co/lV9WOEXt.png

Thanks you so much,
Regards,

Remoz

Comments

Your RAM memory seems a bit low. That might limit the cpu a bit. I have a i7 4770K, GTX 1070 and 32GB RAM memory at 1600MHZ. I have overclocked the cpu turbo to 4.2GHZ. Non turbo is still at 3.5GHZ. At LOWI airport I am getting about 30fps. So there is room for improvement even with your current cpu. I will give my settings here.

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Thanks for your reply xplaner, i've tried with your settings, and i take this in-game screenshot:

http://pasteboard.co/nsUwavUE.png

With:

Flight model @ 2 (default)
Flight time 1.00 P.M. hour
LOWI airport runway 8
3d default cockpit view with FOV of 75 degrees

Yes, my RAM amout is low, and raising it maybe a little bit better, but i think the low ram amount cause stuttering when loading lot of textures (in ex. when fast rotate a external view for a 360 degrees) i plan to upgrade RAM to 16GB in a few.

If i took 30fps like you in this situation i think we are surely CPU Limited, because you get my same fps with GTX 1070 vs GTX 770..
 

Thanks,

bye,

Remoz

Answer 1

The % CPU power is because of mutli-core. If you have a 4 core machine and we max out two of ’em the system reports 50%. We are always working to make x-plane faster, but let’s be very clear: our goal is to improve your framerate, not to make sure the little graphs on your monitor tools indicate ‘maxed out’.

Comments

Ok, i understand this, but... if i put CPU settings to lowest and i see my cpu at 25% of load with 40fps, then i increase CPU settings to medium level and i see my cpu at 25% of load with 20fps, i think my cpu is not used at the maximum.. I've made the same tests with GPU, and from lowest to highest settings (with CPU at min) 40fps goes to 36fps then in think my system is more CPU limited than GPU limited (relatively to x plane 11 obviously).

Then my question is, my CPU is used at maximum possible? if i change to a new i7 7700k system i have a increase of fps before the GPU will become the new limit?

Anyway, thanks for your work man, this always still valid!

Remoz

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Hello Remoz

The same CPU/GPU usage is seen here. This is primarily due to the OpenGL API - essentially, only one CPU core (thread) handles all the communication with the GPU. With OpenGL, this is the bottleneck. DirectX 12 (Win 10) and the new Vulkan API (cross platform) handle multiple cores and PCIE lanes. Until X-Plane is coded to use one of these API's, there'll continue to be an FPS issue. This coding isn't straight forward either - as of now, there are only a handful of games that use one of these two multi-core API's.

There's a thread back on Mar 22 about this.  Will multi-core CPU's be supported in the future.

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Yes I agree. Its taking too long for programmers to use multicore CPU's. Its as if things are either too complicated for human and we need something like Genetic Algorithms to help us or something not currently available in AI to help. There have been genetic algorithms for quite some time. I'm not really a programmer so have never tried them myself but technology and human beings are up against a wall. I think a lot of fear of change even among young programmers about AI, perhaps rubbed of from where they learn, stops this. Also genetic algorithms (other name evolutionary algorithms) has connotations of Darwins theory, even though being from the 1800's, is still controversial. Will we ever get over it?