Need some opinions on hard update

[Joni]

Hi guys,

 

Im experiencing low FPS on DCS especially when there are lots of units no matter how far from me they are.

 

CPU: AMD FX 6100 BE 6 Cores @ 3300 MHz - 3900 MHz Turbo Mode

MB: ASUS M5A88-V EVO

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) AMD EE DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 1.5V

GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5

DISPLAY: Samsung SyncMaster 943 NWX 19" LCD

RESOLUTION: 1440x900@60hz

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 3.0 6GB/s

PSU: Sentey ERP650-SS 650W

 

 

I'm thinking about buying an AMD FX-8370 but I am not sure if it will be much better than my 6100 in gaming.

 

The money will be a sacrifice so please dont suggest me buying an Intel when I clearly need to buy a new mobo as well.

 

I also wanted to buy a Track IR 5, so if the 8370 will not give me at least 30% better gaming performance perhaps I should keep my 6100 and just get the trackir.

 

 

I know it's a lot of info, lol... but if anyone can help me here I will be very appreciated.

 

 

 

THANKS!

[jcbak]

When you say low FPS....what numbers are you getting?

[Joni]

with few units 25/30 and with a lot of units 10/15

[blkspade]

While the piledriver CPUs are a bit better performing than the bulldozers (IPC), its not that substantial. The only way to get appreciable performance out of DCS with either is with a steep overclock. Now that in itself is only going to happen if you buy a decent aftermarket cooling solution. That comes in the form of the top Noctua cooler for air, or a closed loop liquid cooler all in the $100+ price range.

 

Single player campaign crushes the AMD CPUs at stock settings in DCS. Considering you need ~4.8GHZ+ to get maybe in the 20s, it may not even be possible with your motherboard, not with an 8 core anyway. My FX8350 with an R9-290 GPU, would get something like 16FPS stock in the F-15 campaign. I could OC the hell out of it on water to the point my motherboard VRMs would get too hot and throttle anyway. I had a higher end board than what you're using.

[Gladman]

The current version of DCS is not using multi-core so its not going to help you today, maybe tomorrow.

If I was you, I'd buy a new board and an intel i5 for budget or i7 4790K if you want high end and OC ability.

DCS also works best with Nvidia cards. You can get a GTX970 for less than 400 dollars. A 1GB card is going to be tough to work with.

The SATA drive will have you running slower. More so on the loading times. If you can, get a SSD.

 

Dale

[blkspade]

The current version of DCS is not using multi-core so its not going to help you today, maybe tomorrow.

If I was you, I'd buy a new board and an intel i5 for budget or i7 4790K if you want high end and OC ability.

DCS also works best with Nvidia cards. You can get a GTX970 for less than 400 dollars. A 1GB card is going to be tough to work with.

The SATA drive will have you running slower. More so on the loading times. If you can, get a SSD.

 

Dale

 

As you may have missed, he's clearly operating in a budget of about $200 max. A GTX970 offers him next to nothing on his current hardware and monitor resolution. Moving to Intel would limit him to the maybe highest clocked i3 with the lowest end motherboard. That becomes a wash, since that i3 is only a quantifiable improvement in the generally poorly coded simulation genre. It would only be good if DCS is literally the only concern period. That budget leaves him between a rock and a hard place.

 

Looking further into making the best out of that motherboard, would start with an aftermarket cooler and an overclock. The max typical OC for that chip is 4.5ghz. That wouldn't offer as much as the newer vishera at the same speed, plus the potential of actually reaching 4.8ghz. The catch is using a 6 core vishera for both reduced cost and lower load on the MB VRM. The 4 core would be better with respect to temp and vrm handling, but that steps deeper into side-grade territory like shifting to the i3.

[Gladman]

I think the truth is that the current setup isn't really going to cut it.

 

With that, I would suggest that spending money on OC tech is a waste.

 

Save your money and look to the future.

[blkspade]

Well aftermarket coolers are generally universally supported on all current platforms, so can be moved across builds. If dealing with the pain of current DCS performance is an option anyhow, holding off other upgrades until DCS 2.0 might be the most economic approach.

[Joni]

Thanks everyoone for your responses.

 

I dont particularly know or plan on doing OC. So what I took from all your posts is that the 8370/8350 is not going to improve much, right? Should I stay with what I have and get Intel once I save some money in the future (not near)?

 

Do you recommend getting the trackir?

[DracoLlasa]

the TrackIR is worth every penny, while it wont help with your FPS obviously it will give you a whole new world in the simulator. all else aside i feel you should go for this.

 

That said, as others have noted, changing CPUs likely isn't going to make a huge difference. I run with the 8 core 8350. i have a water cooler but to be honest i usually run with my speed stepped down a bit to around 3.7Ghz. I actually cap it off 1.4 or 2.1 when im not gaming just to save power, the CCC for the AMD boards lets you make these changes on the fly.

 

I think your best step would be a GPU upgrade. Going with a newer AMD or Nvidia card will likely give you the largest improvement of any other single change. My XFX R9 280X can be had at a decent price, and for me it works well. I have never run an Nvidia card so i cant speak to them. I rarely have FPS issues but to be honest im not a freak about it. i only even look at the FPS counter if things don't look smooth. and it usually ends up being a result of something else running in the background.

 

The SSD is always a good thing, i have one for my system volume, but i have most of my games including DCS isntalled on a separate SATAIII drive. it makes load times a bit longer, but i dont think it will affect FPS too much.. however i could be wrong on this point.

 

So in short, def go with the TrackIR

And for hardware upgrade, start watching for deals on newer AMD/Nvidia cards (slickdeals.net is a great place to start, you can setup deal alerts to get emails when there are deals for what your wanting)

 

But as noted by blkspade, if your willing to wait a bit we may find that DCS World 2.0 and/or EDGE could actually give you an improvement. At least at that point if you still need an upgrade you can see what people are reporting works best with the new engine. Knowing that is be said to come out this year it depends on how fast you want to fix the issue.

[Joni]

thanks guys, really appreciated.

 

one last question: is the track ir woth it if i have just one monitor?

[Gladman]

Sure is. TrackIR is a significant game changer. Only problem may be that it could lower your fps even further.

 

Dale

[Joni]

OMG! Really??? :S

 

How much are we talking about? Im so sad now....

[Gladman]

Not sure to be honest. I don't really recall a hit but it will be specific to your hardware. I am fortunate enough that it was not significant.

I wish I could be more exact.

[Joni]

no prob, thanks anyway!

[DracoLlasa]

unless you are moving you head all over a lot when there are a lot ob objects being rendered you shouldn't notice any significant hit. your hardware isn't that "bad". Even still, it is such a game changer in the way you interact with the sim, its worth it from any perspective (IMO)

[Joni]

i see, thanks!

[Svend_Dellepude]

Forget about AMD and DCS. From what i've heard ppl are getting much better frames from Nvidia.

My Intel + Nvidia machine is 7 years old now and back then it wasn't even new, and still able to run DCS in MP. (not for much longer though)

 

There are some different threads around the forum about AMD and DCS if you dig around.

[Joni]

i just came with this, but... if i am experiencing fps issues, is the trackir going to move the view smooth or is it just going to make my sim experience less realistic?

[DracoLlasa]

i just came with this, but... if i am experiencing fps issues, is the trackir going to move the view smooth or is it just going to make my sim experience less realistic?

 

not sure if i exactly understand the question, but while i don't usually have too many FPS issues, when i do the trackIR doesn't seem to be directly impacted...

so for example, if the fps starts to drop, the view change/head movement doesn't generally get all choppy. The view will still move smoothly but the whats being shown will get a bit choppy with fps drop... same as if the view didnt change.

hope that makes sense and answered your question

[Godzila]

 

You could try Intel G3258 with b85m motherboard. It is Haswell based and can run at 4.2-4.3 ghz on stock cooler. Pair it with Nvidia graphic card and sell your leftover hardware. I know it is a big upgrade, but you could change only those 3 components and keep everything else. I don't know for what else you use your computer, but for DCS it will be an upgrade for probably no extra money.