educated guess on 2.5 performance on older cpu

[twistking]

Hey,

can someone make an educated guess, if an i7-860 oc'ed to 3,8ghz can run dcs world 2.5?

Maybe someone here is running on a similar processor?

Reason for asking is, that i'm thinking about updating my graphics card and ram for dcs 2.5, but i am unsure if the cpu might bottleneck:

Please note, that 4 cores + HT @ 3,8ghz looks very good on paper, but since the CPU is so old, it really does not compare to newer models, even if those have slightly lower clockspeeds...

(this is also the reasons that i do not rely on the published minimal system recomendations, even though they state much lower clock speeds)

 

thanks

 

current system: i7-860@3,8, 8gb ram, gtx 770

planned update: -> 16gb ram total, gtx 1060 6gb

[BIGNEWY]

Yes should be fine, just have a play around with your settings to find the right balance for your taste

 

Minimum system requirements: OS 64-bit Windows 7/8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i3; RAM: 8 GB; Free hard disk space: 30 GB; Discrete video card: 2 GB RAM (AMD, NVIDIA); requires internet activation.

 

Recommended system requirements: OS 64-bit Windows 7/8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i5+; RAM: 16GB; Hard disk space: 30 GB; Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX780 / ATI R9 290 DirectX11 or better; Joystick; requires internet activation.

[Northstar98]

I'm guessing DCS 2.5 will end my PC

 

(specs in signature)

[twistking]

Yes should be fine, just have a play around with your settings to find the right balance for your taste

 

thanks for the info. so is it, at this point, safe to say, that 2.5, while being somewhat more demanding for the GPU does not put much more strain on the CPU?

I ask, because while 1.5 runs very well on my old i7-860, i do have the feeling that (on 1.5) the cpu already is the limiting factor (performance dropping linear with more AI etc. ...)

[Mr_sukebe]

I've been running 2.5 all day on my ancient i5 2500@4ghz. Runs great.

Note that ED appears to have implemented multi-core support, as mine are all showing as doing things.

[twistking]

I've been running 2.5 all day on my ancient i5 2500@4ghz. Runs great.

Note that ED appears to have implemented multi-core support, as mine are all showing as doing things.

 

That's great news. Multi-core-support would be an absolute blessing for my old 860...

Thanks for the info!

[Arikaj]

Hahahahah I wish I had your problems. I have i5 750 2.67GHZ

[twistking]

can anyone clarify, how multicore-support is enabled in 2.5? how is the workload distributed over the different threads? how many in total?

it's weird that multicore was never stated anywhere for 2.5, which also makes me sceptical a little bit...

 

Hahahahah I wish I had your problems. I have i5 750 2.67GHZ

 

well, my processor is not that different from yours, since the hyperthreading won't be of use for DCS, even if they have added multicore-support.

 

if you know what you are doing, you can probably push yours well beyond 3ghz, like i did. you'll need a decent cooler though.

[Ramsay]

can anyone clarify, how multicore-support is enabled in 2.5? how is the workload distributed over the different threads? how many in total?

it's weird that multicore was never stated anywhere for 2.5, which also makes me sceptical a little bit...

IIRC 2.5 is still mostly limited by a single core, with other tasks/threads running on the cores. My impression is more is being offloaded to the GFX card, so perhaps the Nvidia driver is responsible but I didn't check core/thread distribution, except while waiting for my mission to load.

 

For my spec:

 

i7 860 @2.8GHz , 12GB DDR3 , GTX1050Ti 4GB, 2+4TB HD, MSFFB2 joystick, X52 Pro Thottle, TIR5, Win 10 Pro x64, 1920X1080

 

FPS was 45-60 fps (mostly 55-60) in the Gazelle with a couple of dozen AI ground and air units flying around using 'Medium' settings with AI Traffic=OFF, etc. so I could use a few 'quality of life' High settings, while keeping good fps and avoiding stutters.

 

Mission loading time was about 6 min for the first run and 3-4 minutes for subsequent runs unless I changed seasons (new ground texture load).

 

AF=x2, MSAA=x2, Deferred Shading=ON, Flat Shadows, Grass/Clutter=500, Trees=100%, Pre-load=30000, Cockpit Texture=High, Terrain Texture=Low, Water=High, Gama=2.0

 

AI Traffic=NO, Mirrors=NO, Cockpit Illumination=NO, Vsync=YES

 

It runs pretty well but "Terrain Texture=High" gave an occasional 1-2 second 'lag spike' in SP, so I reverted the setting to Low.

 

I found the Summer trees and terrain a little washed out, so changed the June mission to April (for the Spring texture set) which IMHO looked much better but it's early days and I've a lot more missions/modules to fly before giving a final verdict but the impression so far is very good.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Ramsay

[twistking]

@ramsay. thanks for the info.

 

ok. one last question. would you think updating my gpu and ram would make sense right now, if only for DCS? remember that my cpu is ~10years old, and therefore slower per cycle than more recent designs)

a gtx 1060 and 16gigs of ram would cost around 460€ in germany. (i would need to buy the 16gigs as a new set, since i'm doing the oc by pure clock speed and mixed ram might not work well with that)

 

i'm on a 1920*1200 monitor, so i would not need to push that many pixels, but would expect relatively high settings apart from that... (deferred shading on, global illu on, no serious tree-popup, etc)

 

current system: i7-860@3,8, 8gb ram, gtx 770

planned update: i7-860@3,8, 16gb ram total, gtx 1060 6gb

[xoxen]

Hi,

you could check with MSI Afterburner or similar how huge the load of your actual GPU is. If it is not at 100% and much lower this could be an indication of the CPU to be the bottleneck.

But be careful having a look at the CPU load, 25% in total could be 100% on one core only at a quad core CPU without HT.

My CPU is at appr. 20% load (quad core with HT, so one core has 12,5% of the total) while my GPU shows 100% at 8960x1440 res.

Maybe some smarter people than I am could confirm my assumption.

Xoxen

[twistking]

@xoxen,

yes, that makes sense. it's just that i don't yet have 2.5.

i wanted to wait until 2.5 stable hits steam and have my rig upgraded till then.

 

so for now, i'll just roam the forums, to check if someone else is running a lynnfield-cpu with an gtx1060 and see how she/he is doing...

Edited February 4, 2018 by twistking