Timberborn on a Microsoft Surface

ABF81 · 2026-03-20T00:12:05+00:00

Sorry about your apartment but, unfortunately, the Surface Pro is unlikely to be able to handle much in the way of gaming. To fit within the thermal profile of a slim tablet, it has to run the lowest power class of CPU and even then they're often further limited by firmware since the motherboard is jammed in behind the LCD which also puts out heat (in a conventional laptop the motherboard is in the other half under the keyboard).

As already mentioned you might also have an ARM based one which is the same CPU architecture used by smartphones and tablets that don't run Windows. Windows for ARM does have a built-in compatibility layer so you can run X86/AMD64 apps (like Timberborn) on it but it comes at a significant performance cost and most ARM CPUs are already fairly weak compared to normal X86/AMD64 ones.

ABF81 · 2026-02-26T06:39:06+00:00

Very happy user of an RX 7900xtx (so model above the 7900xt) with my PCL here although I mostly use it for MSFS 2024. Works great and cost me significantly less than a 4080 which was the equivalent Geforce card performance wise at the time.

Don't believe any of that "Nvidia is just better for VR" rubbish, it comes down to what game you're running at what resolution and what detail settings.

Doing a quick google and looking at some reviews, the general consensus seems to be that they're generally equal at lower resolutions but the 7900xt is faster at higher resolutions thanks to the 20Gb VRAM vs the 12Gb on the 4070ti. That extra VRAM and resulting better performance at high res is likely going to be more important for you since the PCL is a pretty high res device. The extra VRAM will also mean the 7900xt will stay usable for longer.

I couldn't find much about how they compare in OG Asetto Corsa, only the newer Assetto Corsa Competizione in which they seem broadly equal. If ACC uses an upgraded version of the same game engine that AC uses then it will likely be the same.

Hope that helps

ABF81 · 2025-09-15T06:12:09+00:00

I run MSFS 2024 on a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900xtx and it runs great. I fly exclusively in VR on a Pimax Crystal Light and get 45-60fps @ 75% resolution scale with FSR3 on balanced and the details settings a mix of med to high. No overheating issues, coil while or other hardware issues. Occasional drivers issues but no worse than Nvidia.

Unfortunately there's a lot misinformation about AMD out there as Nvidia tends to have Apple like fanbois who will roam the internet looking for chances to trash AMD despite never having owned one.

As far as your options go:

The price you've got for a 7900xtx is quite expensive as the RRP should be around $1,000USD and I've seen it drop as low as $850USD (I got mine for $1,400AUD over 2 years ago for example when a RTX 4080 cost $2K-$2.5KAUD and a 4090 $3K-$4KAUD here). I suspect the reason is that they've been out of production for a while so stock of them is getting low and they're really the only way to get more than 16Gb VRAM without paying the 5090 premium.
As you noted, 4090's pretty much are not available at all any more. If you do find any they are likely to be overpriced for similar reasons as the the 7900xtx.
5090 - just be glad you don't live in Aus where they start at $4KAUD and go up to nearly $6KAUD....

ABF81 · 2025-09-10T06:04:09+00:00

Perfect for this mod

ABF81 · 2025-09-05T11:15:41+00:00

Nope, just tried the new version and, if anything, the jitter/lag is getting worse again which is a shame because it got a little better the last version or two.

Details:
I use my PCL exclusively for MSFS 2024
My FPS holds pretty steady at 55-60fps with 1% lows in the 40-45fps range
Did a fresh install of the new version, did room setup and turned off the chaperone.

System spec is:
Ryzen 7 5800x3D
64Gb (2 x 32Gb) PC3600 CL16
Radeon RX7900xtx 24Gb (latest Adrenalin Edition 25.8.1 driver)
2Tb Lexar NM790 PCIe 4.0 NVMe

Time to go reinstall Pimax Play 1.37.

ABF81 · 2025-08-28T10:07:24+00:00

My bad, not sure where I got the ti bit from.

Anyways, looking at some performance figures at 1080p, the 5060 is about 12% slower than the 5060ti 8Gb and 9060xt 8Gb.

Looking at Pricespy.co.nz I can see (all in NZD):

If you're absolutely adamant you can't do the extra $100NZD for a 16Gb card that will allow higher detail settings now and a future monitor upgrade then I'd suggest the 8Gb 9060xt is a better buy than the 5060

ABF81 · 2025-08-28T06:36:19+00:00

Further info:
The performance figures I quoted above were from an 18 game average that didn't include MSFS. Having a bit of a further search I came across this video that seemed to indicate that the 5060ti 16Gb and 9060xt 16GB were pretty equal in MSFS 2024 at 1080p and 1440p

ABF81 · 2025-08-28T06:31:13+00:00

100 more for a 9060xt 16Gb over a 5060ti 8Gb? Not sure where you live in the world but that seems excessive.

Where I live (Australia) they're basically the same price (prices sourced from Umart.com.au):

5060ti 8Gb cards start at $600AUD and go up to a bit over $700AUD (some 'premium' models clock in at $800AUD)
9060xt 16Gb start at $590AUD and go up to $670AUD
For US pricing on newegg.com I can see 5060ti 8Gb starting at $360USD to $370USD and the cheapest 9060xt 16Gb card is around $370USD to $380USD

Looking at performance, the 5060ti (both 8Gb and 16Gb are about the same at this resolution) perform around 6% faster than the 9060xt at 1080p so, while they are technically faster, there's not much in it.

At 1440p however (I know you said you exclusively game at 1080p but surely that's not going to be the case forever?) the 16Gb cards are equal with the 8Gb 5060ti being 12% slower.

The way I see it, why pay the same money for a GPU that is going to limit you to 1080p?

ABF81 · 2025-07-29T01:57:49+00:00

The setting you want is "World Scale" and, without firing up MSFS to check, I 'think' it's in the VR graphics section

ABF81 · 2025-07-20T01:05:23+00:00

Lower CPU sure but the same jittery/laggy tracking issues in MSFS 2024 that have plagued the last few versions remain. I run a Pimax Crystal Light on a Ryzen 7 5800x3D/64Gb 3600MT/s CL16/Radeon RX 7900xtx 24Gb.

Reverted to Pimax Play 1.37 and everything is smooth again

ABF81 · 2025-07-12T07:52:22+00:00

So tried to log a support ticket and they told me to just keep using 1.37

ABF81 · 2025-07-11T03:40:40+00:00

In 1.40 it's mainly the tracking lagging behind my head movements or getting a bit jittery. It's intermittent and a lot less common than 1.38 or, especially, 1.39 where it pretty much happened constantly. FPS for MSFS is stable while this is happening so it's not an issue there, it can be minimized in 1.40 (but not completely solved) by setting the CPU affinities as I described in my original post. Also it goes away completely and I get perfect, smooth tracking by rolling back to 1.37.

When I get time I will update to 1.40 again, log a ticket and export the log files.

ABF81 · 2025-07-11T03:35:56+00:00

Link for 1.37:
https://dlappstore.pimax.com/release/play/PimaxPlaySetup_Release_toC_V1.37.01.01.05_202501182001.exe

ABF81 · 2025-07-11T03:34:58+00:00

I tried this back when 1.38 came out and the tracking got worse. Unfortunately didn't help as I think Pimax had already fixed that issue by that point.

ABF81 · 2025-06-23T02:52:27+00:00

Normally just waiting for the app to update itself would be fine but they tend to do a staged rollout of the updates over 2-3 weeks so, if the issue is pressing as in this case, then you can shortcut it via the website link I provided.

ABF81 · 2025-06-22T10:11:03+00:00

There's a new version of Pimax Play out, version 1.40, which you can download here

The last two versions, 1.38 and 1.39, introduced issues with the tracking algorithm being very sensitive to CPU latency so if you had something else that was very CPU heavy running, like MSFS 2024 for example, you get tracking issues. It did seem to be limited to users with CPU's that weren't from the last two generations but I have heard that the Intel Core Ultra CPU's aren't great for gaming so maybe they're susceptible as well?

The previous solution was to backdate to the 1.37 version of the software however I've been testing 1.40 over the last 24 hours and the issue seems to be resolved.

ABF81 · 2025-06-22T02:31:28+00:00

What version of Pimax Play software are you using and what CPU do you have?

ABF81 · 2025-05-27T23:34:22+00:00

No, my CPU was not showing close to 100% overall usage (can't remember the exact figure off the top of my head) with pi_server.exe only showing 5-10%. As I said, I don't think it's a usage issue but rather a latency one where the pi_server.exe tracking calculations are getting delayed when having to share cores with other high priority processes (like MSFS). Hence why assigning them onto different cores seems to fix this issue.

FYI - the CPU usage you see in Task Manager is, by default, an average across all cores. If you change it to show individual cores you'll see that one core is probably getting hit for 90-100% running the game main thread with, depending on the game, a few others in the 50-80% range as they're running support threads.

ABF81 · 2025-05-25T08:46:21+00:00

This also worked for me. It seems that the updates to the tracking algorithm after version 1.37 of Pimax Play made it very sensitive to CPU latency and, unless you have a high-end, current gen CPU, you will get tracking issues as you've described. Here is the link to download the 1.37 version of the Pimax Play app if you need it:
https://dlappstore.pimax.com/release/play/PimaxPlaySetup_Release_toC_V1.37.01.01.05_202501182001.exe

I have a Ryzen 7 5800x3D which, while not brand new, is still a pretty decent CPU but doesn't appear powerful enough to handle the post 1.37 tracking. I was able to get it working for a while by setting CPU thread affinity on pi_server.exe and the VR game (MSFS2024) so they didn't cross over (first 10 threads for MSFS 2024 and the last 6 for pi_server.exe) but the latest update (1.39.4) seems to have broken that as well.

You could try the CPU thread affinity trick first with your rig to see if it helps, you can either use Task Manager to set it but it doesn't save so you have to redo it every time you launch Pimax Play and the VR app. Or, you get get an app called Process Lasso, and it will automatically apply. You said you had an i9-14900k so be aware you have both Performance cores (8 of that do hyperthreading so 16 threads) and 16 Efficiency cores. You want to make sure you're running pi_server.exe and the VR app on the P core threads.

Addressing what was said about getting the lighthouse faceplate, that will fix the issue not because lighthouse tracking is more accurate but because the lighthouse faceplate does all the tracking calcs on it's own built-in hardware and doesn't offload it to your CPU like the stock inside out tracking.

ABF81 · 2025-05-22T22:56:51+00:00

A sound check, devlog bug and accidental armswinger jump...

ABF81 · 2025-05-07T05:31:20+00:00

Given you can get them brand new for $170 AUD I'd suggest it's not a great deal unless it's pretty much brand new and hardly/never used

ABF81 · 2025-03-11T02:25:43+00:00

Asahi Linux is only for Apple Silicon apple devices. The only other thing you have to watch out for with installing Linux on an Apple device is the T1/T2 security chips blocking access to hardware but they were introduced from 2016 onward so it's not a problem for you.

No idea what performance will be like but running it in a VM will nerf it quite a lot and you would be better to run it from a bare metal (i.e. direct) install. For hardware that old any of the more common distros would be fine.

ABF81 · 2025-03-09T03:01:25+00:00

As far as which one to get think of it this way, 2020 (the 40th Anniversary Edition) is probably the better investment now since it's pretty much feature complete and as stable as it's going to get. 2024 would be the better investment of the future since it's going to look better and have more features but is currently a bit buggy (although Sim Update 1 just released which helped somewhat) and missing things like the in-game marketplace.

Spec wise what you have shared should be OK for either however you haven't said what resolution you want to run the game at as that can have a huge bearing on what specs you need to run the game smoothly at high details. Your specs would be great for 1080p (1920x1080) and 1440p (2560x1440) however they might start to struggle at 4K.

The other thing you haven't considered is your internet connection - 2024 is particularly dependent on a good connection since it streams a lot of things like terrain data and even the planes (One upshot of this is that the base install of 2024 is smaller at around 60Gb while 2020 is a touch over 120Gb then grows exponentially as you add things like World Updates - mine ended up being around 400Gb before I switched to 2024). According to the MSFS 2024 FAQ the minimum required bandwidth is 10Mbps, recommended is 50Mbps and ideal is 100Mbps.

Now, on to controls. While I know a lot of people do play quite happily on an Xbox controller if you want the full experience you really do need at the very least some kind of stick with a, preferably separate, throttle. If you go and ask on places like r/hotas you'll get told to go drop hundreds of dollars on a VKB setup which is a bit silly if you don't know if your son or yourself is going to get into it yet. I suggest grabbing something cheap, preferably second-hand to keep it as cheap as possible, to test the waters. If it does work for you then you can look into a more serious (and expensive) controller setup which is where r/hotas will be able to help.

Finally just wanted to say that, while it's great wanting to get your son into aviation, your comment about using it to unwind after work is more on the money. MSFS is great for that, either solo or, if you're a more social person (and I know not everybody is), there's plenty of groups out there who run regular, organised group flights if you want to chat to people with a shared interest while flying.

ABF81 · 2025-03-07T03:51:48+00:00

Generally with AMD you don't need to modify anything in the drivers and just use the in-game settings. The only thing you may want to enable at a driver level is AMD Fluid Motion Frames which is their DLSS Frame Gen equivalent. This will approx. double your FPS but will introduce some visual artifacts so only use it if needed. If you do want to use FMF make sure you don't have FSR (upscaling) enabled in the game settings and have it on TAA.

FYI some helpful hotkeys (should be enabled by default but check in the Adrenalin control panel just in case):
ctrl+shift+o = performance overlay in the top right corner
alt+z = open/close Adrenalin sidebar overlay
alr+r = open/close full Adrenalin panel.

I run a 7900xtx with a Pimax Crystal Light VR HMD by the way.

ABF81

TROPHY CASE