efanton

The best series of tutorials I have seen are from a Scottish guy on Youtube Doofer911 He goes through literally everything you will every need to know about flying a light aircraft from actually taking off and flying a circuit to instruments and how to use them, navigation and using navigational aids such as VOR's, as well as using autopilots and planning routes. Explained simply but in detail, in fairly short and concise videos. Its an absolute gem for anyone starting out in flight sims.

You are absolutely right Bugdozer. People will have different CPU's, different chipsets on the motherboards, and different graphics cards. Each possible configuration would have to be evaluated individually. this is why I stated the best place to start is using TASK MANAGER to see if the OP can identify a bottleneck. No doubt adding 16GB of RAM would improve his systems performance, but without identifying the bottleneck first its just as likely that it will not address his particular problem of stutter or short freezes. If you have money to burn throw in the extra RAM hoping it will fix the problem but be prepared to spend more money addressing the real issue if that doesn't fix it. If you haven't got money to burn maybe trying to identifying the problem with the free tools provided with windows might be more sensible.

Start with the basics. Before you can fix a problem you need to understand what the problem is. Windows believe or not has the solution to this. Start up windows with nothing else running and then open up TASK MANAGER (right click your task bar and you will see it there). It will start up on the Processes tab and this will show you how much CPU, Memory, disk read/write, network, and GPU is being used be each program. What you are looking to do here is get a feel for how much of you PC's resources windows uses before you launch any other program. You can sort processes based on a particular resource usage to make it easier to identify what is chewing up the CPU, memory etc (you will see a down arrow above CPU, memory, disk etc.) Now click the PERFORMANCE tab and you will see the total usage for your different resources. Click back to you performance tab before going on to the next step Now launch FS 2020 and again look at you task manager. Again look to see what is using most CPU, memory disk or network. Now click the performance tab to see to total amounts of each resource being used. Now leave the task manager open and fly FS 2020 and as soon as you encounter a freeze or low performance switch to you task manager and look to see what is chewing up you resources. Dont forget to switch to your performance tab and look there too. It should be obvious what you problem is from what you can see in task manager. If your CPU is maxing out then additional ram is not going to help. What might help is closing programs that run in the background such as email, skype, discord or even you antivirus If your memory is above 85% then you do need additional memory.

I think I can safely say that you are not going to be able to run FS 2020 at that resolution (5120x1440) with ultra settings. Toms Hardware did a thorough benchmarking test of lots of video cards at various different video resolutions. A RTX 2080ti was totally and utterly crushed trying to run FS 2020 at 4k (3840x2160) with ultra settings peaking at only 35 fps and only giving a consistent 28 FPS. This is the only game that so far has managed to crush a RTX 2080ti at this resolution At 2560x1440 resolution with ultra settings the RTX 2080ti was getting 49 fps. You are proposing to run a resolution somewhere between these two, and suffice to say that unless you are using a 2080, 2080 super, or 2080 ti you are going to have to compromise and not run in ultra detail unless you are prepared to accept occasional stutter or low frame rates. To be honest its going to be hard for you to tell the difference between running FS 2020 at high detail and ultra detail because all images will be 'moving', so I dont think dropping down to high detail will result in a dramatic drop in image quality. The good new is running at high detail in 1080p every card equivalent or better than a RTX 2060 that was tested will give close to or above 50 FPS with many closer to 60 fps than the 50fps. Extrapolating from that then it would be reasonable to assume that these same cards will be giving at least 35 fps to 40fps at the 5120x1440 resolution you wish to use. This is more than adequate for FS 2020, its not a first person shooter. Read the full article here and it will give you an idea of what to expect. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/microsoft-flight-simulator-benchmarks-performance-system-requirements I agree with the above poster, I personally am waiting for the release of the new RTX30xx GPU's. I am looking to get a RTX 2070 super or its equivalent from the new range of cards when they are released. The rumour mill and leaks suggest that the RTX 30xx series will be released at these prices. 3060 card will retail at $400 (probably not release until January) 3070 " " " " $600 (leaks suggest this and all cards below will be released sometime in September) 3080 " " " " $800 3090 " " " " $1400 If those prices turn out to be true the its almost certain that existing stocks of RTX 20xx cards will be dramatically discounted. If they do release at those prices then I will grab a RTX 3070 at much the same price as you will currently pay for a 2070 super. .

Why even compromise? Seriously RAM is so cheap these days. A 16GB SODIMM memory module is going to cost you £50 to £75 extra. I am absolutely certain whoever you buy that laptop from will happily install the additional 16GB of RAM. Personally I would buy the laptop with the better processor and just upgrade the memory. Remember that FS 2020 is video intensive. What most people forget is that a GPU is useless without an equally matched CPU. The CPU draws the wire frame that the GPU then fills out. If you had a GTX 2080ti graphics card and a pentium processor the likelihood is that your video performance and experience would be abysmal even though the RTX 2080ti is the best video card that money can buy at the moment Think of it like drawing a picture. you have to draw the image first with a pencil (the CPU does this) and them colour it in or shade it with paints or colouring pens (the GPU does this). The GPU is totally incapable of drawing the outline or wire-frame. If drawing the picture takes forever then it really doesnt matter how good your video card is. Also bear in mind that with a laptop you are likely to be using the onboard GPU built into the CPU. Generally the better the CPU the better the onboard GPU in that processor will be. Putting 32GB of ram in a laptop for FS2020 is not going to make it any better if the CPU and GPU cant generate the video output fast enough. Extra RAM will not have any effect on this problem. Seriously think about this. Dont fall into the trap in thinking extra RAM is going to fix a PC or laptop that simply is not capable of handling the graphics demands of a game like FS 2020. If you cant afford the additional RAM now then just make sure when buying a laptop it has a free memory module slot available for an upgrade later. Buying the laptop with the better processor is my advice.

Thanks very much for responding stempski. Thats a awful lot of land area for only 11GB of cache. I did a calculation based on Ireland having a land area of about 85,000 km2 and the land surface of the entire world being about 150 million km2. Ireland is about 0.05% of the worlds land surface. If we are to believe MS use 2 petatbyte (2, million GB) to store the worlds entire land surface, then a simple calculation of 0.05% of 2 million would give me an approximations of how much storage I would need for all of Ireland. That works out to 100GB. But from what you are saying its likely that I will need less than the 100GB. I assume that that's probably down to cities and airports needing much more data to construct views than open countryside and the smaller towns and cities that Ireland has. This is great news. I was anticipating buying an additional 1 TB SSD to use solely as FS 2020 cache so that I could also cache UK and European routes. Looks like I might actually be able to reduce that considerably, possibly a 500GB drive instead.

I had anticipated this when designing the spec for my new PC. Unfortunately I was supplied a duff motherboard (Aorus Master) so will have to wait for the entire RMA process, which might take a few weeks, so no flying for me yet :( the Anyhow one of the first things I will do after installing window is MOVE my profile folder (C:USERS\username) to the second SSD before I install anything. That way all my documents, downloads, program data etc will not be clogging up my boot drive but instead go directly to the secondary SSD. Apparently you can alter the size of the cache that FS 2020 uses. With less than stellar broadband here in Ireland I was hoping to cache the map for the areas I fly most often in, and was guessing that 100GB would be appropriate. Out of curiosity stempki could you give us some indication of how much of the world map you have flown to use up 11GB of cache? Maybe the 100GB I was planning on reserving for FS 2020 cache is too excessive, or maybe I need to increase that amount.

All depends on the damage model that has been talked about I no doubt will fly all of them at some point. The real question is how many will I actually land :p But seriously, I would be interested in flying the Pipistrel Virus SW 121. I have promised myself if I ever win the lotto there are two things on my list. A small light aircraft, and a brand new fully loaded FJR1300 motorcycle. I have often looked at the Pipistrel Virus SW 121 and the Europa's thinking what would it be like to actually fly them. FS 2020 gives me the chance to actually fly one without having to win the lotto first. https://www.pipistrel-aircraft.com/aircraft/cruising/virus-sw-121/

On paper it all looks good. They include a 512mb cache which a lot of the cheaper SSD's skimp on, 3D NAND technology, and if their claims of total writes are true then theses SSD's will last a long time. I find it very hard to believe that they could even come close to the performance of Samsung EVO SSD's for the very simply reason that Samsung SSD's come with a huge cache in comparison. 12 GB for 250 GB model, 22 GB for 500 GB model, 42 GB for 1 TB model and 78 GB for 2/4 TB. Compare the paltry 512mb offered by Addlink to the truly massive 42GB offered by Samsung and you can clearly see what Samsung EVO's are considered the best that money can buy, but obviously at a much more hefty cost. The flip side to that is how often will you be writing more than 512mb of data to your drive at any one time? Very rarely, except for the occasional software install. Having said that there are only two manufactures of the actual memory chips used by all SSD's on the market, Samsung and Hynix , both proven to be very reliable. The difference between the different brands of SSD's really comes down to three things, the amount of onboard cache, whether they are 3D NAND or not (3D NAND being better, cheaper budget SSD do not use it), and the level of support provided after sale. My reluctance to endorse the Addlink SSD would simply be down to after sales support, and the fact that they are a 'new kid on the block' and to a large extent an unknown quantity. Personally I had never heard of them before your post and I have been in the IT industry for decades. If their after sales is good then they look like a company that will do well with the performance they are offering. Personally I would go with a Sabrent Rocket SSD which I think you will find is cheaper both in the UK and US, has equal or better performance. has great after sales support, are a known brand that has been tried and tested and are a favourite of PC builder enthusiasts https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07LGF54XR?tag=pcp0f-21&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1 But given the specs of the SSD you posted a link for, you will not be disappointed by the performance of that SSD if you buy it.

I agree. A half decent processor is going to be just fine. What is more important is that you have a SSD, a decent graphics card, and a decent amount of RAM, 16GB I would say should be minimum with 32GB recommended. The good news is that the RAM and SSD are relatively cheap. The GPU though will be the most expensive component in your PC. If you can wait a month or two before upgrading a GPU I would do so. With NVIDIA about to release their RTX3000 series of cards, and AMD closely following behind with their Big NAVI cards its likely that graphic cards that are currently on the market will drop in price. If there ever was a chance of NVIDIA getting into a price war this is likely to be it.

Be careful with any specs issued by any software developer. Their minimum specs are literally for their software only, and they really are bare minimums, it does not include the operating system, or any other software that you might have running in the background (email client, discord/teamspeak, antivirus software, web browser etc etc). all these background tasks along with the Windows operating system could easily swallow up 10GB of your RAM before you even launch your flight sim software. At the present time having any Windows 10 PC with less than 16GB RAM is simply looking for trouble and poor performance especially when using a software package such as a flight sim that is processor and data intensive. The good new is the cost of RAM in the last year or so has dropped dramatically. I recently bought 32GB RAM that will run at 3600 mhz (probably the fastest you can get) with RGB lighting and it only cost me £180. you can pickup up RAM far cheaper than that. Currently Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2x16GB DIMMs) can be bought on Amazon for £110. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0196QNBU4?tag=pcp0f-21&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1 At that price you would have to be totally mad to skimp on memory.

To be honest not familiar with the Addlink brand. Samsung EVO are without doubt the best performing SSD out there at the moment but they come with a hefty price. I personally put a 250 GB Samsung EVO Plus in my build as a boot drive reserved for windows only and then added a Sabrent Rocket 1 TB SSD to install my other software. 1 TB should be more than enough storage unless you are going to be installing absolutely loads of games. Sabrent is my personal SSD of choice, recognised as top quality, great prices, and great performance too. Personally I usually go with the reviews on Partpicker https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ All the reviews there are by ordinary customers who have actually bought and used these parts and are not being sponsored or making any money out of persuading you to buy a particular brand. If a part gets 4 or 5 stars you know you are buying a quality part. It is also a great website for finding deals. You simply go to create your custom PC select the parts you are looking for and it will give you best available prices for what you want. If you want to change which country it searches simply change the flag on the right in the options at top of the page. Something to be aware of. If your system board allows installation of a NVME SSD then use one of them. Far faster than a normal SSD that would connect to a normal SATA connections at not much more cost.

Do not buy a Hard Drive. Buy a SSD instead. 1 TB is more than enough. SSD's are far faster and FS 2020 will be downloading and writing to your drive as you fly. A normal hard drive might become a bottleneck and reduce your flight sim performance. You can buy a decent quality 1 TB SSD for about £100.

With a budget of £1800 you should be able to build an absolute monster of a PC Here is my build. Its totally over the top just for FS 2020 and does not have a graphics card yet, but it includes a keyboard, TWO SSD's, RGB components and case, so you could easily shave at least £150 of the cost which currently £1482.03. This PC will be easily capable of running FS 2020 at high settings and probably any game you can mention at reasonable high frame rates, even at 1440p. Add in a decent RTX 2070 graphics card remove one of the SSD's and the keyboard and you would be around or below you £1800 budget. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/efanton/saved/#view=m9Vnt6 CPU Intel Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor £429.99 CPU Cooler Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240R RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler £99.99 Thermal Compound Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 1g 1 g Thermal Paste £5.57 Motherboard Gigabyte Z390 AORUS MASTER ATX LGA1151 Motherboard £239.99 Memory Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory £192.66 Storage Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive £65.98 (boot drive reserved for Windows only) Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive £129.88 Case Cooler Master MasterBox MB530P ATX Mid Tower Case £109.99 Power Supply SeaSonic FOCUS PX 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply £169.99 Keyboard Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard TOTAL COST FOR ABOVE £1482.03 I have not bought the graphics card yet as the RTX 3000 series will be released in September. Its likely that either NVIDIA will be in a price war with AMD or the current RTX 20XX cards will drop in price once they are released. I am looking to get a RTX 2070 Super or its RTX3000 series equivalent and that is likely to cost no more than £500. Your £1800 will build an absolute monster if you are prepared to build a PC yourself. All the parts I selected above are absolutely top quality so it is a PC that is likely to last years before requiring an upgrade.

I would agree about the waiting if the new RTX series was being release for early next year, as it is it appears these will be released in September. Got to be worth the 6 week wait if you are looking to buy a mid range to high end graphics card at the moment. Also with NVIDIA and AMD releasing their new graphic cards at more or less the same time and going head to head, if there ever was a time when NVIDIA would get into a price war this is it. Until now NVIDIA have always charged top price for their cards because they simply could. Big Navi potentially could change that if the card is as good as the leaked reports suggest. It might not compete with the replacement for the RTX 2080 TI but it definitely sounds as if it will be competing in the same space as the RTX2060 Super, RTX 2070 or the 2070 Super. You would be a fool not to wait the 6 weeks if you can, to see exactly what the prices are on release for these new cards and what impact they will have on the price of older stock.