RTX 3060 Upgrade

Introduction

Hi all and thank you for stopping by another one of my blog posts!
As like most of my posts, this was a quick decision that ended up both solving a problem and serving as one hell of an upgrade to my Flight Simulator setup.

Problem

So as some of you might know from previous posts. I run a AMD Radion R9 390 8GB graphics card in my PC and this has been an awesome card overall and has served me well. It runs Microsoft Flight Simulator on medium to high settings quite well. But I always had a nagging problem with it.

Since I rebuilt my PC with my good friend Lee. I have had an issue with my GPU driver crashing. Because graphics drivers still run in the same memory space as the NT kernel. It was also crashing that too. In short, the entire PC was effectively going into a comer. The lights where on, the fans where spinning but that was about it.

I managed to keep this problem under control by slightly under clocking the card, but it never went away. A few days before this post. It started happening continuously. When the PC booted and it got to the login screen. Black.

I could not go on like this.

Solution

So my solution was that I had to replace the card. But what with? Well I have been following both 320simpilot and easyjetsimpilot on YouTube and they both where rocking RTX cards on ultra settings. I loved the intense graphics on their videos, so I decided to go with an RTX card. Mainly because I was now put off AMD GPUs for life. I have always been an Nvidia guy, dating back to my GT640 and GTX750SC cards back in the day.

I had narrowed my search down to ether a RTX 3060 or RTX 3080 card. The answer was very simple. I could not afford the 3080. So I picked up a RTX 3060 (12GB) locally on Facebook marketplace fairly cheaply.

Conclusion

Since installing my new RTX card. It has made a massive difference to my experience. I run most settings inside MSFS on Ultra now (within reason). I do lower some render qualities and vehicle densities to save some FPS because I do use FSLTL and GSX Pro. These add extra aircraft traffic and ground support vehicles. I make good use of the RTX DLSS, this dramatically increases my resolution and realism without using dropping anymore FPS.

This has dependently been a massive upgrade to the system and has made such a difference. I have gone from an older 8GB card to a shockingly modern 12GB card. Defiantly watch this space for more screenshots and maybe the occasional live stream.

2060, FPS, Geforce, MSFS, Nvidia, PC, RXT

Flight Sim, Hardware, Tech

April 19, 2023