Impressed with 2.5 performance, question about bottlenecks ?

[Loaded_Dice]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm thinking whether it's time to upgrade my 9 year old mobo\ cpu platform given the lackluster and unsatisfactory performance of new CPU's coming out both from Intel and AMD.

 

So, I decided to max out all the settings both in DCS and in NVIDIA drivers and did this test in order to determine where is the bottleneck:

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised that I'm getting such 'high' frame rates on such an old machine :-)

 

Not sure if the developers implemented multi threading in the latest 2.5 upgrade but it seems it is now using all the cores with CPU usage sometimes going up to 100%.

Or maybe the Vulcan API got implemented in the meantime !?

 

Do you think it is time to buy a new Z370\i3-8350k or i5-8600k combo given that the current CPU and GPU are showing weird behavior and not being utilized 100% all the time even now ?

 

One think is clear, 16GB RAM is needed since the page file gets 18GB large but due to a fast SSD I don't have any problems with that :-), However DDR2 modules are only available in 2GB so no chance to upgrade to 16GB even though the mobo ( Gigabyte EP-45 DS3) supports that.

 

I'm still not convinced whether to spend money on a bad quality product such as the latest CPU offerings or wait for some next generation. That is not the problem but I would expect a new CPU to be at least twice as fast than my current Xeon E5450 @3,8 in all tasks.

 

Any opinions would be appreciated.

[Cibit]

I upgraded from am i7 920 to a i5 4000 series and now an 8600k and I notice a huge difference. Especially in VR

[Aluminum Donkey]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm thinking whether it's time to upgrade my 9 year old mobo\ cpu platform given the lackluster and unsatisfactory performance of new CPU's coming out both from Intel and AMD.

 

Any opinions would be appreciated.

 

Loaded_Dice, are you kidding me? The 6th, 7th and 8th gen Intel stuff kicks @ss. If you're building a new PC for gaming, forget the expensive stuff and get yourself a decently priced Z370 mobo, an Intel i3-8350k CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 (16GB is plenty, btw.)

 

Use your existing video card for now, and try to get a decent deal on a used GTX 1070 or maybe 1080 sometime in the future.

 

That'll run DCS at excellent framerates but won't break the bank. The i3-8350K is quite cheap, but defaults to 4.0 GHz, has 8MB of L3 cache, and runs 4 threads on 4 cores--which means it's awesome for DCS--and you probably won't even have to overclock it! But, the option is there. It requires a Z370 motherboard.

 

And as we all know, if a PC can run DCS World, it'll easily chew through anything else you can throw at it :)

 

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[Loaded_Dice]

Loaded_Dice, are you kidding me? The 6th, 7th and 8th gen Intel stuff kicks @ss. If you're building a new PC for gaming, forget the expensive stuff and get yourself a decently priced Z370 mobo, an Intel i3-8350k CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 (16GB is plenty, btw.)

 

Use your existing video card for now, and try to get a decent deal on a used GTX 1070 or maybe 1080 sometime in the future.

 

That'll run DCS at excellent framerates but won't break the bank. The i3-8350K is quite cheap, but defaults to 4.0 GHz, has 8MB of L3 cache, and runs 4 threads on 4 cores--which means it's awesome for DCS--and you probably won't even have to overclock it! But, the option is there. It requires a Z370 motherboard.

 

And as we all know, if a PC can run DCS World, it'll easily chew through anything else you can throw at it :)

 

AD

That's exactly what I'm going to do. I will be getting the above combo and OC the CPU to 5GHz which should give some meaningfull increase in performance. While HD framerate even now is satisfactory I tried the 1060 with a VR headset and an 8600k but did not got a great boost ( maybe 30-50%) compared to the current Xeon setup so obviously the 1060 is the bottleneck here.

Do you think is worth it getting the i5- 8600k instead of the i-3 8350k for DCS ?

Essentially they are the same chip with the 8600 having two extra cores which can prove to be a a disadvantage in obtaining the maximum possible single thread speed with OC due to the higher thermal loading from the extra cores.

Can anyone confirm that DCS has gone multithreaded or still limited to 2 cores only ?

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[BitMaster]

Bahh,

 

get at least the 8600k, you will regret the other one the latest when Vulkan arrives. If you can, grab even higher and get the 8700k.

 

4 Cores are great for now and were even greater yesterday but tomorrow, you would regret it.

 

They OC just the same, the limit is the silicon lottery and not the cores tbh. They almost all oc to 5G, some higher, depending on cooling with air or water, delidded or not, the better cooling the higher you get. Delidding solves all your cooling problems btw, very good results.

 

DCS uses 2 cores, DX11 uses the other core(s), plus..ther eis TS, SRS, TACVIEW, MSI Afterburner, etc etc. etc.. all those apps still run and you dont want them to share cores more than needed.

 

Count your tasks and threads, likely 100+ tasks and even more threads at any one time while 10 is running. Tho many are sleeping or idling, having more cores is no shame but an advantage.

[aleader]

Bahh,

 

get at least the 8600k, you will regret the other one the latest when Vulkan arrives. If you can, grab even higher and get the 8700k.

 

4 Cores are great for now and were even greater yesterday but tomorrow, you would regret it.

 

They OC just the same, the limit is the silicon lottery and not the cores tbh. They almost all oc to 5G, some higher, depending on cooling with air or water, delidded or not, the better cooling the higher you get. Delidding solves all your cooling problems btw, very good results.

 

DCS uses 2 cores, DX11 uses the other core(s), plus..ther eis TS, SRS, TACVIEW, MSI Afterburner, etc etc. etc.. all those apps still run and you dont want them to share cores more than needed.

 

Count your tasks and threads, likely 100+ tasks and even more threads at any one time while 10 is running. Tho many are sleeping or idling, having more cores is no shame but an advantage.

 

There's also no shame in being smart with your cash. Unless you can show some evidence that paying 62% more for a CPU and quadruple the price for the 300 MB gives an equivalent boost to performance, I don't know why you wouldn't just go with an i3. Do you work for Intel or something?;)

Edited March 24, 2018 by aleader

[sslechta]

Core Stats..... Speaking of overkill, my new box is used mostly for video production. I have two 16-core Xeon Platinum processors with hyper threading enabled for a grand total of 64 cores. When I run DCS, only 1 core is maxed to 100% and another runs close to 50%. The other 62 just sit there running idle. The whole CPU in total averages 4% or less.

[BitMaster]

There's also no shame in being smart with your cash. Unless you can show some evidence that paying 62% more for a CPU and quadruple the price for the 300 MB gives an equivalent boost to performance, I don't know why you wouldn't just go with an i3. Do you work for Intel or something?;)

 

No, I dont work for Intel but I monitor my rig when I use it and my graphs tell me that my 8700k uses all 6 real cores at times to a high percentage. My CPU load is often north of 50%.

 

I can underline my findings with screenshots and I wonder how an i3/4c/4t will achieve the same

when I run 6c/12t at 5.2G.

 

You can't cheat math

 

 

As a note, many in here cry that their rigs stutter, crash, what not else, many have underpowered rigs, some have up-to-task machines that also not work...all normal. Misconfigured etc..

 

What I have NEVER seen, is a hardware that is too weak but still does the job as a top-tier 5G-1080Ti rig. There is no golden move or setting to achieve this, you get what you buy and as fast as your wallet goes...if you then know how to cook it together. Yes, you can still ruin a 5G 1080Ti NVMe setup, done in 10 seconds. But you will never fix a lame duck with a few clicks.

 

Is it so hard to understand DCS + "THE REST of YOUR PC" need at least 2 + x cores. Let the X get as big as your wallet goes while not sacrificing MHz.

 

Nothing else would be fait to say and true. If you cant afford it, you have to settle with less. If you dont know how things work, even the best hadrware is doomed to fail.

 

My findings after fixing hundreds of PC's for all sorts of folks.

Edited March 25, 2018 by BitMaster

[BitMaster]

Core Stats..... Speaking of overkill, my new box is used mostly for video production. I have two 16-core Xeon Platinum processors with hyper threading enabled for a grand total of 64 cores. When I run DCS, only 1 core is maxed to 100% and another runs close to 50%. The other 62 just sit there running idle. The whole CPU in total averages 4% or less.

 

You could have 256 cores and it wouldnt get better, they are waayyy too slow, way to slow.

 

You would need to trade core-count for MHz, you are far off to the wrong side.