Why did I wait so long to upgrade?!

[KLR Rico]

After running an old workstation (2x xeon E5420's @ 2.5) for so long, I had gotten pretty used to 15-20 FPS in any mission with a fair amount of action, and dips to 10 FPS were pretty normal. It didn't seem to make much difference what the sliders were set to either... The smaller missions were usually pretty playable, 30-40 FPS was typical.

 

Finally, I put together a somewhat decent rig, and I couldn't be happier. I chose an i5-4670k on an asus Z87-A, paired up with 8gb of Kingston Hyper X, pulling data from a 240GB crucial M500 SSD. I reused my GTX560 for the graphics, since it's never seemed to be the bottleneck on the games I play.

 

I got the OC stable at 4.5 GHz on 1.275V. A coolermaster 212 evo keeps it in mid 70's C on stress testing, but I usually see upper 60's on the games.

 

I was hoping that I'd get decent results from the upgrade, but I'm actually quite overwhelmed with the improvement. I'm managing 40-60 FPS no matter what's going on in the mission. I have no idea how I thought the game was even playable before....

 

So, to anyone else out there thinking about upgrading, DO IT! I built this rig for about $600, and it was easily worth every penny. :thumbup:

[gavagai]

I think you made a good choice in getting a quality cpu and waiting on the gpu. All of the biggest performance gains I've had were after upgrading the cpu. One exception might be when I went from a 1gb to a 3gb card because Cliffs of Dover needs at least 2gb to run adequately.

 

Glad you're enjoying your new machine!

[Maximus_Lazarus]

After running an old workstation (2x xeon E5420's @ 2.5) for so long, I had gotten pretty used to 15-20 FPS in any mission with a fair amount of action, and dips to 10 FPS were pretty normal. It didn't seem to make much difference what the sliders were set to either... The smaller missions were usually pretty playable, 30-40 FPS was typical.

 

Finally, I put together a somewhat decent rig, and I couldn't be happier. I chose an i5-4670k on an asus Z87-A, paired up with 8gb of Kingston Hyper X, pulling data from a 240GB crucial M500 SSD. I reused my GTX560 for the graphics, since it's never seemed to be the bottleneck on the games I play.

 

I got the OC stable at 4.5 GHz on 1.275V. A coolermaster 212 evo keeps it in mid 70's C on stress testing, but I usually see upper 60's on the games.

 

I was hoping that I'd get decent results from the upgrade, but I'm actually quite overwhelmed with the improvement. I'm managing 40-60 FPS no matter what's going on in the mission. I have no idea how I thought the game was even playable before....

 

So, to anyone else out there thinking about upgrading, DO IT! I built this rig for about $600, and it was easily worth every penny. :thumbup:

 

And you're not itching to update that slow graphics card as well ?? :music_whistling:

 

Just saying, 60 fps at low settings, or 60 fps at high settings :smilewink:

[Tone71]

I think you made a good choice in getting a quality cpu and waiting on the gpu. All of the biggest performance gains I've had were after upgrading the cpu.

 

Agree. Graphics cards are easier to upgrade; I'd always spend money on a decent CPU and upgrade the GPU when finances allow.

[KLR Rico]

^^ That's my route so far.

 

I honestly don't see the point of upgrading the GPU right now. I have textures, visible range, and scenes on high. Normal HDR, 8x AA, and cockpit shadows. I played around with the settings a bit and I'm as far as I can tell I'm still pretty much CPU capped as far as the framerate goes. I only use this computer for flight sims, I don't play any FPS's or anything GPU heavy. I also just use one display at 1080p.

 

I'm kind of hoping EDGE mixes it up and makes me GPU bottlenecked so I have an excuse to upgrade. :D

[blackbelter]

Can a slightly OC-ed GTX680 handle DCS on high settings when EDGE is released? I've been desperately wondering about this question...

[gavagai]

Can a slightly OC-ed GTX680 handle DCS on high settings when EDGE is released? I've been desperately wondering about this question...

 

It can already handle it. For dcs the cpu is almost always the bottleneck because it only uses one cpu core for everything except sound. Leave your gpu alone and overclock your cpu with a good aftermarket cooler.

[cichlidfan]

Can a slightly OC-ed GTX680 handle DCS on high settings when EDGE is released? I've been desperately wondering about this question...

 

Nobody outside of ED can answer that question and they aren't going to tell us anything until it is installed on out machines.