Video card blues

Good morning FS’ers!

My disappointment and aggravation level with my video card is reaching critical mass. I’m hoping someone out there has had similar issues and ultimately, found a solution. Simply put, my graphic performance is poor. The smoothness is not there, it tends to be very jerky and the frame rates drop dramatically as scenery is building or while making turns etc. I recently installed Orbx Global base and vector, I was expecting a little reduction in performance but to my surprise it wasn’t any worse than it was before the install. I’ve played with the settings a bit but to no avail. I’ve seen YouTube vids where guys are using cards that don’t have the RAM that my card has and the performance looks great. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Here are my system specs.

Asus Z97A MB

Intel i7 4790 4.0GHz

32GB Crucial PC-3 12800 RAM

2 Barracuda HD’s

Radeon 280X 3GB DDR5 Video

Win 7 pro 64bit

Many Thanks!

You don't give any clue about your settings in P3D. Cloud settings can have a strong effect on performance, as can which shadows you have turned on (just turning off vegetation cast shadows can, at certain times, have a major effect). You also don't mention whether you're in a rural area, a big city, or what. AI traffic (and road traffic) can also affect your performance. And do you have frame rates at a limited setting (if so, what) or unlimited?

I mention the above because they all have an effect on your machine's performance. There's not a machine made that can have everything maxed in a big city area (or other high scenery density area) with heavy weather and get smooth performance. I actually have several preset display settings, one for remote areas, one for places like Denver, another for Chicago, LA, etc.

So while I don't know for sure, you may have your expectations set too high and/or your display settings too high.