Thanks for this, especially in DCS. Either would be way faster than my current rig so the ‘other details’ you provide are really helpful (heat, noise, quality, drivers, etc). Thanks again.
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None of the cards has gone beyond 8 GB of usage, yet. So this is not a factor at all, actually I completely ignore RAM size. It’s just a number that does not tell me anything.
I did not test DCS yet, though. I’ve heard Syria is RAM-intense.
I have been running “instant replay” on with both cards. They both just don’t care. That’s good, as I can capture the last 8 minutes of gameplay in 1440p 60Hz 50Mbit/s on the push of a button at all times. Old feature, I know. But still awesome. 
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Ordered another SSD to clone my OS to and later populate my second PC. So for a few days I’ll be able to hop back and forth between 3080 and 6800xt. I need to send one card back in ~7 days. Will be building into a new case Wednesday to Friday, so the Weekend is Benchmark time.
What do you want to see?
My plan:
-
MSFS High preset (enough Ultra out there)
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KSFO(?) with c172 on the runway (glass or old school?) with scattered clouds preset at 3 pm.
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The above but drone cam in X feet height
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Both of the above in Pancake 1440p and VR in renderscale x (TBD).
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DCS some quick mission with frame counter and then just record 5 minutes of flying straight or something. Ideas needed. Can anybody record a good track using most recent stable which ticks all boxes or something?
I will have to reduce runs by not going into OC vs silent Bios vs SAM on/off and the like. The test system will have one state.
I’ll preface this with: I’m not an expert…and I only fly in VR (when not testing missions)
I’ve noticed that DCS - on my configuration (see below) - works better when I keep the reported VRAM below the GPU’s 8GB capacity. And it’s easy to get it over 8GB, especially on Syria (takes work on this map keeping it under 8GB).
In Syria I run it at low settings to keep it smooth. Even then the VRAM hovers slightly above 8GB (8175 Mb’s, +/- 150). What I don’t know exactly is the relationship between the settings. I’m assuming it mostly boils down to how efficiently the GPU can push pixels; the fewer pixels the better the speed, the level of geometry being equal.
When I push my VR SS in SteamVR, or pixel density up by even 15%, changing nothing else, the performance goes too far below 45FPS (motion vector ON). This makes sense of course.
My first thought is: this could be a hassle for you - lot of work. But, if you did it I’d say one of the pre-packaged missions with ‘High/Ultra’ settings. We’ll have to extrapolate from there but it’s a start.
I almost never play them so I’m not going to be much help suggesting one; I’m not sure what’s even in there.
Thanks for you time and effort BTW.
i7 6700K @ 4.5 Mhz, 32 GB RAM, nVidia 1080 (non-Ti) w/8GB VRAM, DCS running on an SSD, Odyssey Plus VR with SteamVR SS = 1.5
For VR I figured out that running Steam SS at 160% will basically equal a 4K resolution, while running at 180% will resemble the amount of pixels of a native Reverb G2 resolution.
I also found that DCS is very cumbersome to test with, as you always have to restart the whole game. MSFS can do it all on the fly, which is a real blessing.
For testing DCS I could start the A10 Syria Free Fly mission and then loiter at 2500 feet above the village using the autopilot. That’s not a lot of action, but at least it’s reprodicible and comparable.
Using the Virtual Superresolution feature of AMD I can run a 4K pancake resolution on my 1440p screen. Maybe Nvidia can do this, too.
So much for preparing.
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I picked up the RTX 3070 today and have been to tired to do anything more than having a fast look into the box and closing it up again.
And the table I am going to work on is filled with tools and 3D print drier box parts. I will finish that first.
Happy Simming
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@Poneybirdscan you run both test using Gryz’s Benchmark missions??
Two missions used for benchmarking DCS graphics settings. Press “A” for autopilot once mission starts and then activate your benchmarking software when the in-mission message tells you to. Deactivate when stop message appears.
Two missions; one has high CPU overhead, the other low.
do you have fpsVR ?
you can get average fps and frametime!
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Awesome, yes! I’ll fiddle around with that today.
Case is here and I moved my PC into it yesterday evening. SSD arrives today. All is going according to plan.
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That Gryz mission is on Caucasus and I don’t feel like investing too much time. I decided to rather test with the F/A18 mission in Syria, which starts on the carrier and then there is a demo flight with the blue angels and a turkish demo team over the city. I think this is more what most people want to see the GPU to pull off.
Will post some numbers soon.
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I am happy to say that I am up and running again with my new I7 7700K CPU and RTX 3070.
I am very happy that I didn’t get a larger card as this one barely fits. I had to slightly wedge it to allow the mount thingie (Where you put in the 2 screws) to get inside.
After some swapping around and fideling with my IDE/SATA board, I had to bend the 2 HD LED plugs slightly to be able to fit in the RTX 3070. In the other position I tried for it, a screw on it made it impossible to get the GTX 1070 into the secondary PCI-E slot.
Now I will upgrade the drivers and go to bed.
Tomorrow I will do a thorough cleanup of the cable jungle behind the desk, before I decide on exactly how I am going to plug in all of my screens, plug em in and then I hope I will install and test the HP Reverb G2.
Happy Simming
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is made on Caucasus on purpose!
that’s the only map that everybody have and can be a common reference!
many users complain the lack of a benchmark i think as a community we should support this bench…
@SkateZilla any way to install the mission and have it run at some sort of default settings from your utility collection???
there are 2 versions
cpu heavy
and cpu light (wich should unleash the gpu power and give high fps)
pls if you have time try it!
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I see the point, but the mission is not very demanding. It does not tell me much if it just flatlines at 90 fps.
If you go buy a GPU for 1000 quid, you want to know how it performs when under load. You want to know if the stutters are gone and how high the resolution can be. It’s not that much about a global ranking of GPUs. I don’t think we can pull that off without a standard benchmark created by the devs.
So I decided to use carrier ops and glass cockpit and Syria and compare 3080 vs 6800 xt.
DCS streams from the HD when you’re flying as well. It’s not just your CPU, RAM, and GPU, because if you have those settings cranked up with a complex mission and a slow HD you will see a performance hit.
The problem is many of these go hand-in-hand and it’s really difficult to make a benchmark that can say “the reason your performance is poor is X” when most often it’s a combination. That’s why you can upgrade one thing and see little overall improvement because all you did was clear one of a number of bottlenecks.
For instance, faster RAM will always help, but only by a small amount and it’s almost never the cause of bad performance. Conversely, more RAM will help if you’re hitting the limit of what you have, but if you’re not then it’s wasted.
Going from 16GB to 32GB will almost always help in DCS, but 32 to 64? Probably negligible.
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Here ya’ go.
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Alrighty, as promised. This is kinda pointless, but I had to know
TEST SETUP
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x
- RAM: DDR4-3200 32 GB
- Mainboard: ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PLUS
- SSD: NVMe Samsung 970 EVO plus
- Case: BeQuiet Silent Base 802 (in high airflow configuration)
- VR Headset Samsung Odyssey+ (1600x1440 per eye)
THE CONTENDERS
- GPU 1: Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC
- GPU 2: XFX Merc 319 RX 6800 XT OC
THE GOAL
I want to see which card is better for running MSFS 2020 and DCS in high resolution and VR.
The numbers will be all about max FPS, so all case fans are at maximum speed for testing. Frequencies are stock.
Software versions are whatever is current right now. SAM is enabled in UEFI. Drivers are stock, except sharpening is set to 0.
The final verdict will be which card I will keep for my own system. This decision will not be based performance alone, seeing that the two cards are different in how they are cooled.
DISCLAIMER: Obviously this test is a snapshot that just compares two video cards, today. It will be useless as soon as software optimisations or other changes happen. Don’t use this to compare the two chipsets, as other models might perform better or worse.
TESTING METHODOLOGY
I tried to test in a reproducible manner. For this, I came up with my own procedures described below.
While testing there is still a small but noticable variation in FPS. I estimate the variation to be around 3 percent.
So if you see 60, think of it as 58 to 62.
MSFS 2020
- Cessna 172 (gauges cockpit)
- KSFO rwy 28R (the default rwy)
- Time 15:00
- Weather preset “Scattered Clouds”
- after loading in or switching views, allow the game to settle and get to a stable FPS number
- Developer mode is used to retrieve FPS numbers. The limiting factor is always the GPU, so I’ll skip frametimes.
- Always check the resolution, not the percentage of supersampling. I’ve seen different numbers for the same percentage.
For testing I am interested in two numbers:
- FPS while sitting in the start position, basically do not move a thing
- FPS with the drone camera up in the air. For this I press INS to switch to drone, then R to fly the drone upwards.
When the center of the first taxiway crossing the runway is exactly on the bottom border of my screen, I stop.
I usually increase drone speed from 4% to 20% so it does not take too long to do that. - For testing VR I do the exact same thing with the headset resting on my table. So after loading in I press CTRL-TAB followed by SPACE.
DCS
This is a little bit harder to achieve. I use FpsVR to record the FPS and frametimes and I manually start and stop the recording.
Basically I run two missions and do the steps below. For pancake the HIGH graphic preset is used, for VR the VR preset. Labels off.
Version is DCS stable 2.5.6.59625.
Mission: Waltz (F/A-18 in Syria, starting on a carrier)
- 3 seconds after loading in, start the FPS recording by pressing CTRL-F11.
- 60 seconds later press F4 6 times to switch to the red planes
- wait 60 seconds then stop recording by pressing CTRL-F11
- Open fpsVR History Viewer to get the numbers (see folder Documents/fpsVR)
Mission: Cryz benchmark mission (the one with action, not the empty one)
- Press a for enabling autopilot. It will fly straight and at a defined altitude
- Start FPS recording when the message on the screen appears
- Stop FPS recording when the message on the screen appears
- Open fpsVR History Viewer to get the numbers (see folder Documents/fpsVR)
THE NUMBERS
MSFS 2020, XFX Merc 319 RX 6800 XT, FPS results. VRAM usage was around 10 GB.
MODE COCKPIT DRONE
Pancake 1440p HIGH 63 75
Pancake 1440p ULTRA 53 63
Pancake 4K HIGH 50 50
Pancake 4K ULTRA 37 39
VR 1651x2064 45 45
VR 2064x2580 44 44
VR 2270x2838 40 38
VR 2476x3096 35 35
VR 2683x3353 31 31
MSFS 2020, Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC, FPS results. VRAM usage was around 5 GB.
MODE COCKPIT DRONE
Pancake 1440p HIGH 72 80
Pancake 1440p ULTRA 60 65
Pancake 4K HIGH 52 56
Pancake 4K ULTRA 42 45
VR 1652x2065 45 55
VR 1817x2271 45 54
VR 2064x2580 41 50
VR 2147x2684 42 50
VR 2476x3096 36 43
VR 2643x3304 35 42
DCS, XFX Merc 319 RX 6800 XT, FPS results.
Pancake 1440p 88 (just sitting on the carrier)
Waltz mission 2 minutes
VR 1768x2212 FPS=69.25, Median=10.6ms, 99th=11.5ms, frametime<11.1=93.1%
VR 1940x2424 FPS=59.78, Median=11.4ms, 99th=12.3ms, frametime<11.1=34.9%
Gryz mission
VR 1768x2212 FPS=86.48, Median=6.9ms, 99th=11.3ms, frametime<11.1=98.5%
VR 1940x2424 FPS=85.61, Median=7.7ms, 99th=11.6ms, frametime<11.1=96.4%
DCS, Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC, FPS results.
Pancake 1440p 105 (just sitting on the carrier)
Waltz mission 2 minutes
VR 1768x2212 FPS=71.25, Median=9.5ms, 99th=12.3ms, frametime<11.1=98.6%
VR 1940x2424 FPS=70.41, Median=10.1ms, 99th=12.3ms, frametime<11.1=95.4%
Gryz mission
VR 1768x2212 FPS=87.05, Median=7.2ms, 99th=12.3ms, frametime<11.1=94.1%
VR 1940x2424 FPS=82.19, Median=7.8ms, 99th=11.7ms, frametime<11.1=95.3%
MY VERDICT
Both cards are fast, both run hot, to a point where it can be annoying. If you’re not into 4K or VR, you might want to go for a 3070 or 6800 for that reason. Nvidia clearly has better FPS and also more headroom in high resolution/details kind of situations. The Waltz mission at SS 180% shows this.
If you are looking to run a flight simulator with maximum FPS, then Nvidia should be the first pick.
That said I really like the XFX card. Its fans run at 1600 RPM when the Gigabyte would do 2800 RPM. The cooler is much larger and so are the fans. Also I have the perception that all games on the Radeon card run smoother. This could be a configuration issue or it could be my monitors freesync capability which works better then the Gsync compatible stuff it uses.
So I’ll decide to keep the Radeon card, even if it means less FPS. It’s a great card and a handful. Plus I can’t stand the whiny noise of the Nvidia card.
The Gigabyte Vision / Eagle / Gaming cards are not exactly the best cards in terms of cooling solution. They just do what is needed. For 1050€ that is not enough. (vs 999€ for the XFX)
My recommendation to VR flight simmers would be to try and get a 3080 with a huge heatsink and huge fans.
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Nice write-up, thanks for doing it.
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Thank You for Posting/Sharing 
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Thanks for the work, it’s appreciated.
Not sure what I was expecting for the VR results; your VR results in DCS are for sure higher than I get. Given what I’m going to have to pay for a 3080 (when available) I’m [secretly] hoping for 2X increase in performance. I might get close.
I’ve held off on purchasing a case & cooling solution til I heard more on this issue so your heat comments are helpful.
ASUS 3080 & 3090 with liquid cooling. No fans…
As I already have a liquid cooling loop, I am interested.
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Nice. Given the price/size/power I still say they need to put Windows 10 on it; SATA & USB ports; a sound chip…and I have a new gaming rig. I’ll call it: AIG(C) - All In GPU.
I’m only half joking. I’d buy one (if you can ever find them in stock).
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