CPU upgrade ?

[JasonJ]

Do you think there is some good performance increase to upgrade from i5 8600K @ 4.8ghz to using a i7 9700K

 

I have RTX 2080ti and moving from Rift-S to Reverb.

 

Trying to overclock the 8600K to 5.0ghz, but stability issues and still experimenting with CPU voltages, also I don't think it will improve much.

 

 

 

Current settings:

textures: high

water: med

visible range: high

shadows: off (my shadows have unbearable jaggies and worse fps, so shadows are off)

terrain object shadows: off (my shadows have unbearable jaggies and worse fps, so shadows are off)

trees visibility: 100% (I hate distracting trees pop-up so they're maxed visibility)

pre-load radius: 150000 (max)

clutter/grass: 0%

MSAA: x4 (I hate the jaggies)

AF: x16

SSAA: off

cockpit res: 512

heat blur: low

lens effects: dust+dirt

chimney smoke: off

global cockpit illumination: off

rain droplets: on

HMD PD: 1.0 (any higher tanks my frame rate)

 

 

(MP replay saving:off, windows gaming mode:off, VR low-latency mode:ultra, pre-rendered frames:4, etc etc all the tweaks that I can find and use that work best, hours and hours of testing for best performance)

 

I know it's a lot of money for small boost, but most CPU comparisons say 25% increase in performance between the two CPUs

 

Currently on the Rift-s I can get average 55 - 80+ FPS in Multiplayer (DCS stable release - standalone install - not steam)

>> ASW forced to 40fps is not a bad experience and works well - except some ghosting on fast moving objects

Occasionally I see dips to 35fps with a lot of action in the area and that can cause annoyance, but it's not very often. Usually 30+ players and a lot of ground units and it still goes alright. But I would like to get shadows working for more depth immersion and get the most out of DCS visually.

 

Also upgrading to HP Reverb in 2 weeks - the Reverb has much higher resolution so I might need more horsepower - what do you guys think? Is upgrading to a i7 9700K going to make much of a difference? Up to 25% improvement is possible do you think?

 

Thanks guys for any responses

 

PS: I only use this PC for DCS - not video streaming or encoding.

Edited March 10, 2020 by JasonJ

[tintifaxl]

MSAA: x4 (I hate the jaggies)

 

 

I think this is the reason for the fps you're getting. Disable MSAA and see if your fps are significantly higher - if so, you're GPU restricted and the 9700k will do nothing for you.

[ricktoberfest]

I think this is the reason for the fps you're getting. Disable MSAA and see if your fps are significantly higher - if so, you're GPU restricted and the 9700k will do nothing for you.

 

 

 

Also turn off the lens effects. They have a huge impact on FPS and they’re not realistic anyways. They’re there mainly for making videos and such from what I understand.

[Harlikwin]

Yeah, at best in VR you can run MSAAx2... And get something other than slideshow. Specs below.

[SneakyBastd]

You should do 2 things:

 

First, buy fpsVR and install that. It will give you detailed info on cpu and gpu performance. You can tweak from there and then decide if a new cpu is needed. I think your cpu is fine tbh.

 

Second, run as many system tweaks as you can, if you haven't already. Search "2.5.6 vr optimizations" on youtube. This will likely give you more of a boost than a system upgrade.

[JasonJ]

Thanks guys for your insights. Nice to see helping hands.

 

 

I disabled MSAA from x4 to OFF and GPU utilization went down from 57% to 47%, CPU was at about 57% utilization in both instances.

With MSAA OFF I enabled flat shadows and notice GPU went up from 47% to 67% and CPU increased to 65%.

 

It seems to me the shadows hit my frame rates the most. I prefer seeing smooth lines than seeing shadows so I am willing to sacrifice shadows. Everyone has their own preference to what they want to experience. Don't judge me :P

 

For me, jagged edges (Aliasing) dancing over the screen and trees popping up distract me the most. So during my optimisation process, I turn everything down to nill and just start with a baseline :

- MSAA x4,

- AF x16,

- Visible range high

- Trees at 100%

- Everything else set to OFF or LOWEST

With this I can get a solid frame rate of 65-80+ in MP which translates to a solid 40FPS in VR with Asynchronous Space Warp (ASW) forced to 40hz. ie: the refresh rate is locked at 40FPS. This for me is just fine and acceptable. So then I begin to add the eye candy on top; higher res textures, heat blur, dust+dirt, lens flare and stop when the frame rate begins to suffer.

 

I used a lot of the VR Optimisation guides & spent many hours getting it as optimal as possible. I have a huge checklist of tweaks to re-apply in case I have to re-install a new OS. Last thing I found that helped was disabling Windows Defender, it was causing some judder every 10 seconds or so when FPS was getting in the low 40's. Also a hack to disable MP Track saving helped a bit to.

 

@SneakyBastd

Can't use fpsVR here as I don't use DCS with steam VR. I don't have steam running when playing DCS.

I am using DCS stable version 2.5.5 with Oculus native drivers. Oculus has Oculus Tray Tools (OTT) which has a performance monitoring overlay similar to fpsVR

 

 

 

Wanting to improve it as much as possible from here, I am moving from Rift-S over to Reverb with better resolution. I've tried a Reverb and and wow - very clear image. I thought I should boost my CPU as much as I can hoping it might help more since I will be running a higher res soon. Even if only 10FPS more I think it's worth it for my enjoyment.

 

I see many people running i7 9700K and I was starting to think maybe I am missing out on a little boost since online CPU comparisons show it's a decent increase from my i5 8600K

 

I get a little obsessed with this sort of thing and will probably convince myself to upgrade to a i7 9700K even though I won't get any improvement.... :cry: :doh: *idiot*

But at least you can laugh at me.

[speed-of-heat]

I am now running a 9700k from a 6600k, in practical terms, it has given me a little headroom in cpu frame rates, that allows me to run some additional "pretties" i now run mirrors and shadows on top of my specs below... You won't see that much difference from an 8600k...