I mentioned I did not have FSX so you would know I could not test with the default FSX 747.
Not that this makes any difference. It was just as a reference to you but, of course, the most relevant test here was the DIFFERENCE in fps between the PDMG *Exterior* and the PMDG *VC*. Such difference doesn't exists in a default airplane, because the VC is far less detailed.
The undeniable fact here is: the PMDG VC eats up half of YOUR fps and it also eats up half of MY fps. Nothing else is different, the scenery is the same, the settings are the same, the only difference is that half of my fps is still very usable, while half of your fps is bad.
8GB of VRAM is minimum for full resolution KORDv2. Ok I did not previously know that.
It's not that we are hiding that. Page 10 of the KORD V2 manual:
We suggest using a video card with at least 8GB of VRAM, and if you use the airport with lots of AI airplanes, surrounding photoreal scenery and airplane with high resolution textures, even 8GB might not be enough, especially if you set the Maximum Texture size to 4096x4096. Lowering this setting to 2048x2048 will surely help.
With your card, I'd go as low as 1024x1024, but now that you posted your specs, I'm not even sure that would help much, the GT960 was a mid-range card in early 2015 when it came out, and P3D4.4 (the 1st PBR version), came out in late 2018, so it simply too weak for P3D4 PBR.
See how it compares against a 1080Ti:
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1080-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-960/3918vs3165Check the fps results, they are at least doubled in almost all games tested.
*** What is full resolution? I will then check and see what I am set up for now.
Most of the scenery textures are 2K each and some are 4K. If you lower the Max texture size in the sim, you can reduce the overall video memory usage.
When I looked at the VRAM graph I seen what looks like I had not used all of the 4GB on my card. *** Is that how you read it?
That you results are even worse because of that. I cannot possibly know why but, if not all your VRAM is used, your card is working even worse than it should. Obviously, VRAM allocation is done entirely outside our control, by the video driver and the OS and DirectX itself.
I just did a test in the default F22 (to get away from PMDG).
I did a screenshot of the resulting FPS 17.7 and graphs.
*** what do you think?
That you must lower your settings, because your video card is too weak for KORD V2.
Note: My test with KJFKv2, which does not have an 8GB minimum" had low FPS also.
New York is known to be very fps intensive and KJFK V2 is not a P3D4 native scenery. How's your fps at default JFK, for example ?
GEForce GT 960 4GB Video card
That's is your weak link, and it's a seriously underpowered card for your CPU and for P3D4 in general. I have the same 4 years old CPU you have, but I have a 1080Ti with 11GB, and that makes all the difference.
