MSFS in VR Pc Upgrade Advice

[MarcusF]

I’m really enjoying MSFSim in VR however my PC specs are probably quite well below what is required. As result I have pretty poor frames rates (28fps) on quite low in game settings.

I’m considering upgrading my system probably starting with a GPU initially. My PC specs are;

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Graphics Card

Processor: Intel Core i5-8600K Coffee Lake CPU, 6 Cores, 3.6 - 4.3GHz

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z370 HD3

Ram: 28Gb
3x 4Gb DDR4 - 2400
1x Vengeance LPX DDR4

PSU Corsair CX650

I have been looking at RTX 3070 or AMD equivalent so budget wise at the time of £620. 00 ($770)

Would this be a good use of my money or are there other system components I would be better changing as well or instead of?

 

[MarcusF]

Well you’re probably best getting a 3080 as the extra VRAM really helps.

Your ram is running in single channel though so that won’t help your performance.

Thanks for the response JooyJ, what do you mean by running in single channel, unfortunately as you can probably tell I’m not very tec savvy!

 

[MarcusF]

If you upgrade just the gpu then you will still get very similar fps but you will be able to use much higher graphical settings so it will look prettier. 3070 is not a bad choice at that price bracket, is pretty even scaling with £/performance in the mid range.

MSFS in VR is a very particular game so you will have to look at benchmarks specifically for that game. If hope you are running the game from an SSD and if you are not then thats a good use of your money.

P.s. You do not say what your actual cpu is ?

Thanks for your help with this, sorry I’ve added my cpu spec now, it’s an Intel Core i5-8600K Coffee Lake CPU, 6 Cores, 3.6 - 4.3GHz

 

[MarcusF]

It should have uhm..

channel a: 4+4
channel b: 4+16

so 16GB dual channel, 12GB single channel. 2400 is pretty slow mind, nowadays.

That's very helpful, I’ll have a look into this

 

[MarcusF]

Intel option (add the RAM above or keep your current setup)

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x MSI Pro B660M-A DDR4 - Intel B660 DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-36K-MS) = £139.99
• 1 x Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.70GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69Y-IN) = £259.99

Total: £410.48 (includes delivery: £10.50)​

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That’s really helpful many thanks

 

[MarcusF]

Intel system is a bad choice for the long term for MSFS and VR, you want to aim for an AM4 platform and eventually target the 5800X3D it's the best CPU for this use case .

GPU first which is going to be really held back by your current CPU, but if you can afford both at least you'll get some benefit now.

Thanks for your input. I’m beginning to wonder if a new PC is going to be a better long term option. By the time I’ve spent £550 on a gpu, £200+ on a motherboard, £350 on a cpu it’s looking not so appealing! Not to mention trying to put it all together, not something I’ve done before decisions decisions!

It would be useful to see if just adding a better gpu to my system will give satisfactory performance/visuals. Even using VR with my current system I can’t see me returning to using a monitor, I find it so immersive and enjoyable- but a little blurry!!

 

[MarcusF]

I suggest you look at recent media before giving up. Advances in openxr, increased performance with fixed and dynamic foveated rendering to come in the near future. The path to performance in parity with desktop is open, if not already here in performance terms.

That's about as hard on the system as it comes, ultra settings over the big city on a G2. Absolutely throw money on hardware, but at least seeing examples like this you'll know it's not a wasted effort.

Yes the OpenXR toolkit has made a huge difference, I use a G2 also with and MSFS. My current card a 1070ti is only just good enough for MSFS and Vr so definitely improvement needed with my GPU.