Anyone else having performance boost?

[vr-pilot 11]

Hello FSX community!

 

Since I've installed the up to date Nvidia "game ready" driver (WHQL 331.82) I am obviously experiencing a  kind of sudden "afterburner" in my graphics pipeline.

Nvidia mentions in its release notes (pdf):

 

(quote:)

Performance Boost

Increases performance by up to 19% for GeForce 400/500/600/700 Series GPUs in several PC games when compared to the GeForce 327.23 WHQL drivers.

(quote end)

 

I am actually very grateful for this enhancement (hidden bottle neck removal?!), because it lowers my "need for speed" (and the therefore required step towards sim and hardware change) a lot...

 

Probably you have noticed something similar?

 

Greetings,

Claus

 

BTW: Other possible reason or contributing factors could derive from last week's two major WIN7 64bit update campaigns resulting in some kind of "internal workflow lubrication"? Do you have any idea?

[fakeflyer737 991]

I have 331.65 installed I think which was the latest until last week. I'm going to try the new one and update windows as well. Are you using win7

[vr-pilot 11]

I used 331.65 the last week and this was the actual version on which I discovered the apparent boost. Today the new driver 331.82 came out and it is still as good (which is not always the case after a driver update...) So I decided to discuss the very latest driver as of today...

So if YOU did not experience a boost with 331.65 (which was one of the/the first "game ready driver/s" ) it is possibly something else that lets my sim run smooth like silk for the time being.

Although here in middle/west Europe we just have long dusk/dawn phases, heavy rain and complex cloud layers with CUs+CBs in OVC arrangements, my sim never ran smoother.

 

In addition to the epic windows 7 updates I just recall one "major" change to my fsx config, which never produced such significant change in performance in earlier runs: I changed TBM value from 120 to 80. As I said, like many times before between 80 and 120 and 80 etc., but never with such positiv impact...

 

But perhaps exactly this medium value TBM80 fits the "game ready" drivers very well?!

[Johnny19 344]

These posts just confirmed what I thought is just should I say placebo. I also saw smoother sim after the NVIDIA driver update.

 

 

 

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Tapatalk

[David Vega 348]

Clauss,

 

What is TBM?  

[BIGSKY 316]

I see an improvement also.

[JesC 88]

Clauss,

 

What is TBM?  

 

Texture bandwidth multiplier.

 

It is an entry in the [Display] section of the FSX.cfg as Texture_Bandwidth_Mult=x.

 

A forum search will yield far better information and opinions than I could begin to explain.

[RWFeldman 159]

No difference here.

[David Vega 348]

Jesse,

 

Thank you.  Know about the Texture Bandwidth Multiplier, just couldn't make a connection with TBM... guess a "senior moment."  

 

Regards

[Wothan 173]

Performance exactly the same as before my old 314.xx driver.

 

What happened initially, and what caused an increase, was that my antialiasing behaviourflag in Nvidia Inspector ahd changed so that antialiasing went off.

Resetting it back and I was back to same performance level.

 

Maybe it works different in DX10.

 

FinnJ

[fakeflyer737 991]

What does TBM do for FSX ?

[vr-pilot 11]

What does TBM do for FSX ?

TBM is an (unofficial) abbreviation for TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT.

 

And this is my (even unofficial but extracted from the forums) explanation:

 

It is a value (fixed) to be set in the configuration file of FSX (fsx.cfg).

Default is 40 which fits performance of PCs of the year 2006.

Meanwhile (with better PC performance) higher values can be chosen in order to send a higher workload to the GPU. For GPU workload FSX calculates a "maximum bytes per frame" value using the formula: TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD x 100 x TBM (where TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD is the global texture resolution)

E.g. taking the 2006 standard values 1024x100x40=4096000 Bytes. This means 4096kB per frame may be used. When running on 30 frames per second you get 122880 kB per second which is 122.88 MB/s. Info: 2013 GPUs (e.g. GTX 760) kann run 750MB/s (6 Gb/s) which is more than six times faster/more.

A full HD screen of today produces 1920x1080 pixels per frame at 32bit (24bit for color RGB=8+8+8 and an additional 8 bit for transparencies (alpha channel)). This produces an uncompressed size of 1920x1080x32=66355200 bits wich equals 8294.4 kB (8.3MB) per Frame.

AND THIS IS LEADS TO THE POINT:

The 2006 standard values for "maximum bytes per frame" leading to 4096kB is just enough for 1280x768 screen resolutions (4:3 screen=3932kB per frame).

Using the 2006 values for today's 1920x1080x32 screens will throttle the bit supply to half the required amount (only 4MB instead of 8MB). This should cause the artefacts discussed as "blurries".

 

This in return means, that running high resolution bitmaps (e.g. 4096x4096 instead of 1024x1024 pixels) while pushing the TBM to e.g. 120 will result in (more than Full-HD-) sufficient "maximum bytes per frame" values of 49.2 MB per Frame BUT ALSO PUSHES the data rate to 1476 MB/s which is 200% of a GTX 760 pipeline capacity. This should produce the discussed "stutters".

 

For a GTX 760 displaying at 1920x1080x32 this would mean:

A TBM of 80 with 4096 textures will produce 32.8 MB/frame and 983MB/s @30fps = stutters

A TBM of 40 with 4096 textures will produce 16.4 MB/frame and 492MB/s @30fps = no stutters

A TBM of 80 with 2048 textures will produce 16.4 MB/frame and 492MB/s @30fps = no stutters

A TBM of 80 with 1024 textures will produce 8.2 MB/frame and 246MB/s @30fps = no stutters but on the edge of blurries

 

If you take into account that most users have 1920x1200 screens @32bit, the required "maximum bytes per frame" value increases from 8.3MB to 9.3 MB.

 

CONCLUSION: TBM offers the user a tool (a value) to optimize the interaction between screen resolution, texture resolution and frame rates suitable for the installed GPU(s)...

 

Greetings,

Claus

 

Find more interesting details here:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/422154-interesting-performance-find-vas-and-fps/#entry2811657

 

and here:

 

http://#####.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide