How fast is your PC?

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janjansen
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How fast is your PC?

Post by janjansen » Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:53 am

Passmark benchmark score is a good way to get a rough idea of performance of a videocard, but I thought it would be useful to have an objective way to compare Condor V2 performance across various CPUs and GPUs using standardized settings to give people (myself included) a better idea where to spend money on to improve performance.

There is no built-in benchmark, so I came up with a rather simple way everyone of us can test and give results we can compare, using the flight school replays.

Using a few different lessons gives us some difference in cloud density and trees/terrain. Prerecorded flights in paused mode may not be representative of performance in flight, especially not online and on third party sceneries, but I found very little difference in frame rates between flying the actual lesson and doing it that way, so it should be useful to compare various cpu/gpu combinations to each other.

To post your results, first, make sure to close any unnecessary apps. In particular, close your browser. Running Chrome can wreck havoc on condor performance. You may even want to check task manager and close any background chrome processes, I found this solves the stuttering in condor I used to have.

Configure graphics settings according to settings I will give below.
Then open flight school, load a specific lesson.
To get reproducible results, you need to let the lesson play for a few seconds, I will give an exact time for each lesson when to press P. You check the time on the clock on your instrument panel.
Then press shift+D to show the frame rate.


Test 1: Low settings 1280 res

Configure it exactly like this:
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Go to flight school, Basic, select lesson 6 "Traffic pattern and landing", view lesson.
Wait until 17:00:30 to press P
press shift D
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Test 2: medium low settings 1920
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Go to flight school, Intermediate, select lesson 1 "Thermal soaring", view lesson.
Wait until 13:00:25 to press P
press shift D
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Test 3: medium high 1920 2xMSAA
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Go to flight school, Intermediate, select lesson 2 "Ridge soaring", view lesson.
Wait until 13:00:55 to press P
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Test 4: high 1920 4xMSAA
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Go to flight school, advanced select lesson "flaps and water", view lesson.
Wait until 13:30:40 to press P
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Optional, test 5 ultra
Same as test 4, but if you have them, using multiple monitors or UWD/2K/4K/native resolution. Results may not be comparable between users but gives us an idea of the performance impact on your particular configuration.
Image
(using multiple screens, you may run in to the same issue as me, the lesson replay controls the FOV and changing FOV doesnt work well yet with condor multiple monitors, this shouldnt invalidate the result though)

Optional, test 6: Cascade Range tree test
This requires you have Cascade Range scenery installed.
Use the same graphics settings as test 4, download the attached zip file
torture2.zip
and unzip it to Documents\Condor\Replays
In condor click view replay and load torture2.rpy
Its very short, wait for it to end and record the framerate:
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If you are unsure about what cpu you have, you can use this utility:
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

If you are unsure what GPU you have:
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/

If you have a laptop, please make that sure to mention this, as mobile CPUs and GPU's can have very different specs with a near identical name.
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Last edited by janjansen on Tue Jul 31, 2018 9:28 am, edited 5 times in total.

janjansen
Posts: 1087
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2016 9:26 pm

Re: Condor Benchmarking project

Post by janjansen » Mon Jul 30, 2018 11:20 am

Desktop PC
CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 (3.2 GHz base clock)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB (equivalent to RX 570 sold today)

Test 1: 188 FPS
Test 2: 187 FPS
Test 3: 160 FPS
Test 4: 134 FPS
Test 5: 44 FPS using triple screen 4720x1080
Test 6: 81.3 FPS

Laptop ezbook 3 (200 euro chinese laptop)
CPU: Intel Celeron N3450 (1.1GHz)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 500

Test 1: 23 FPS
Test 2: 12 FPS
I stopped there.
Last edited by janjansen on Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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timbaeyens
Posts: 256
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Re: Condor Benchmarking project

Post by timbaeyens » Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:40 pm

Desktop PC
CPU: Intel Core i5 4670 (3.4 GHz base clock)
GPU: Geforce GTX 970 4GB


Test 1: 188FPS
Test 2: 187FPS
Test 3: 187FPS
Test 4: 160FPS
Test 5: 81 FPS using single screen 3440x1440
TT

DanD
Posts: 214
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2007 11:58 pm
Location: Kanata(Ottawa), Canada

Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Sat Jan 26, 2019 8:58 pm

Laptop PC - HP Envy x360 15m
CPU: Ryzen 5 2500u with 16 GB RAM 2.00 GB Base clock,
GPU: Vega 8 integrated graphics with 2 GB system RAM dedicated (1879 3D Mark score). DDR4 2400 (I have 2666 but can't get it to go up. Efforts continue - if I'm successful, I'll come and update. Faster RAM does help Ryzen). Update March 2019: Condor version, Radeon driver version, date
Condor 2.0.5.-----Condor 2.0.6----- Condor 2.0.6.
Radeon 17.7-----Radeon 17.7------Radeon 19.2.3
January 2019-- --March 2019-----March 2019

Test 1: 99 FPS------113.9 FPS-------204FPS
Test 2: 71 FPS-------69.7 FPS--------105FPS
Test 3: 52 FPS-------51.8 FPS----------69FPS
Test 4: 35 FPS-------31.0 FPS----------46FPS

First test was with laptop on table, second and ongoing with laptop stand with fan at 2/3. With the improvements in C2.0.6. and the performance uptick in AMD Radeon 19.2.3., the cheap refurbished NEWEGG laptop does a nice job at medium-high settings. The non-mobile Ryzen APUs - 2200G and 2400G - will be better, and overclockable (which the HP Envy isn't). They would make an inexpensive system for Condor2.
Last edited by DanD on Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:09 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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DanD
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:19 pm

Desktop PC
CPU: i7-7700k not overclocked, 4.2 Ghz base, 4.5 turbo. 16 GB DDR4 2400
GPU: GTX-1060 3 GB (8947 3DMark score)
Condor 2.0.5 with CoTASA, TrackIR 4, Teamspeak running.

Test 1: 1045 FPS
Test 2: 467 FPS
Test 3: 344 FPS
Test 4: 235 FPS
Image

janjansen
Posts: 1087
Joined: Wed Feb 24, 2016 9:26 pm

Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by janjansen » Sat Jan 26, 2019 11:04 pm

Please note the first tests where done on an older version of condor which had much lower framerates, so these are not comparable. Still interesting to see Vega 8 results :)

DanD
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Location: Kanata(Ottawa), Canada

Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:26 am

Yes, it runs well - not like the i7-7700k, though! I wish I could undervolt the CPU and overclock the GPU, and overclock the RAM to 2666 or 2933. But, out of the box, the Envy works ok when I'm on the road. I use roughly medium settings to get about 60 FPS.
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janjansen
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by janjansen » Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:14 am

Redid my tests on 2.0.5 and on my new PC
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X (3.6/4.2GHz)
GPU: nvidia GTX 1070
16GB DDR4 2400

1 450 FPS
2 350 FPS
3 300 FPS
4 315 FPS
6 227 FPS

Interesting to see that your CPU could be as much as 2x faster for condor than mine, even though in practice, that hardly matters as condor generally isnt CPU limited (400 or 1000FPS is irrelevant). As you crank up the settings, the bottleneck shifts towards the gpu.

Its also worth noting that in online races on certain maps, my FPS can still dip below 60, when the maps has an overuse of high poly trees, and its often in the 100-150 FPS range when there are many other pilots and/or thick clouds.

DanD
Posts: 214
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Location: Kanata(Ottawa), Canada

Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:23 pm

I would have expected a 1070 to beat me. I guess the single thread turbo on the 7700k is the answer - must love frequency. I will redo the test. Doesn't really matter with a 60 Hz monitor. I'd be interested to see what a Ryzen 2400G with integrated graphics does. I don't really watch framerates that much.
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janjansen
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by janjansen » Mon Jan 28, 2019 9:50 am

Benchmarking condor is a little weird. I have been doing some tests earlier by underclocking my CPU down to 1 GHz and getting results that are sometimes completely opposite of what you'd expect, like an increase in frame rates and a reduction in CPU load from 95% to 5%. I have also seen extreme variations in framerates with the same test sometimes yielding 2-3x higher FPS initially. All this only seems to apply when the overall frame rates are so high that no one cares though. Before 2.0.5 frame rates where dramatically lower and the above tests yielded some meaningful numbers, but Im not sure they still do.

Right now, I think there are 2 or 3 meaningful bottlenecks:
- Cloud rendering (not always though, but sometimes this has a huge impact, I havent yet figured out how to reproduce this reliably)
- Multiplayer. I dont know why, but online framerates can be dramatically lower even when no other planes are in sight
- scenery issues. Some sceneries like France Sud where hundreds or thousands of high poly trees are (ab)used:
https://youtu.be/iFppy07ellk?t=720

For the clouds Uros has confirmed its purely a GPU fill rate bottleneck. That may be improved in the future, but right now, a GPU with high fill rate is what matters there.

The multiplayer performance hit is still unconfirmed/unexplained and not easily reproduced.

The over-use of high poly count objects is something that could (and should) be avoided, but it would still be interesting to see if the performance hit is mostly CPU or GPU bound. I will upload a replay later today, if you have France Sud installed, comparing our results could tell us a lot, as you have a CPU thats apparently a lot faster in condor, and GPU that has significantly lower fill rate.

DanD
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Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2007 11:58 pm
Location: Kanata(Ottawa), Canada

Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Tue Jan 29, 2019 2:22 am

I don't have France Sud but I can download it. Mother Nature is gifting Eastern Canada with another 20 cms of snow overnight so that may give me a chance. My 575 GB SSD is getting very full. OXO's post that Arc Alpin 2 is 50 GB is sobering...

I flew offline today in demo CW-A and was seeing 240ish FPS which seems reasonable - pretty well max settings.
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DanD
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by DanD » Wed Oct 23, 2019 3:15 pm

I just updated my Ryzen 2500u laptop with the latest AMD drivers and got a Passmark 3D score of 1938. Works well with med settings, with some high.
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Crakob
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by Crakob » Wed Oct 23, 2019 3:47 pm

Maybe a stupid question,

what type of monitors do you own that are capable of over 200Hz

My understanding is, that you don´t have a benefit of having your graphic-card supply 300fps to a Monitor which is only capable of 100 or 144 ?
Last edited by Crakob on Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
CRAKOB = CRA

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wickid
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by wickid » Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:40 pm

Crakob wrote:
Wed Oct 23, 2019 3:47 pm
Maybe a stupid question,

what type of monitors do you that are capable of over 200Hz

My understanding is, that you don´t have a benefit having your graphic-card suply 300fps to a Monitor which is only capable of 100 or 144 ?
Correct. If the FPS is higher than the refresh rate of the monitor you see no difference. One more thing to note. Even if your monitor is capable of 144 Hz, it may not display that if you don't use the appropriate cable (some HDMI connections are limited to 60 Hz). So even if you have a FPS of 300 you may be looking at 60 FPS on your screen because you use the wrong cable :lol: . So use up any FPS above the refresh rate of your screen to make the game look prettier (anti-aliasing, draw distance etc...)

If you use Vertical-sync in the graphics settings your GPU will output at the refresh rate of your monitor.
PH-1504, KOE

philster57
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Re: How fast is your PC?

Post by philster57 » Sat Dec 21, 2019 5:13 am

Desktop PC
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770k @ 3.5 GHz. 16 GB DDR3-2400
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7950 3 GB (approx. 4700 3DMark score)
Radeon Software 19.11.2

Condor 2.0.9 with TrackIR 5 and Radeon overlay running. Note: I did a quick test with TrackIR and overlay off and difference is none to very mininal.

First monitor used is a 32" Acer 16:9 "2k" 2560x1440

Test 1: 563 fps
Test 2: 325 fps
Test 3: 246 fps
Test 4: 170 fps
Test 5: 115 fps Max resolution of Acer "2k" monitor (2560x1440)
Test 6: 107 fps
Test 6b: 79 fps Max resolution of Acer "2k" monitor (2560x1440)

Additional information from Radeon overlay for tests 6 and 6b.
GPU UTIL: 98% GPU Temp: 55c CPU Utilization: approx 10% GPU VRAM Util: 0.57 GB RAM: approx. 5GB


Second monitor used is a 34" Asus ultra wide 21:9 3440x1440

Assumed results of most tests are the same. So only repeated tests with the higher (wider) resolution capabilities.

Test 5: 91 fps Max resolution of ultrawide 21:9 "2k" monitor (3440x1440)
Test 6b: 63 fps Max resolution of ultrawide 21:9 "2k" monitor (3440x1440)

Additional information from Radeon overlay for tests 6 and 6b.

GPU UTIL: 98% GPU Temp: 55c CPU Utilization: approx 10% GPU VRAM Util: 0.63 GB RAM: approx. 5GB


Observations/Conclusions
As per this topic and others on the forum, a modest CPU is sufficient for most. As long as it does not bottleneck the GPU. GPU is more important. A mid-range GPU (i.e. benchmark approx. 4000) with 2GB of VRAM will be more good enough for most users most of the time.

I ran Condor 2 on my laptop with i5 and built-in Intel UHD 620 graphics (benchmark 800 to 1000) and this is probably acceptable for many people but I hesitate to recommend this config in case it is not enough for some situations. But if you have something like that you can certainly start there. Just be careful that the laptop does not overheat as the CPU will be working at or near maximum.
Last edited by philster57 on Tue Oct 26, 2021 3:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

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