Did upgrading your CPU make a noticeable difference in performance?

[CybrSlydr]

With AMD's new Ryzen 7000 around the corner, I'm seriously tempted to upgrade my 8700k w/32GB DDR4 to a 7700x w/32 or 64GB DDR5.

I'm mostly considering the 64GB RAM because the Syria theater currently uses a TON of RAM with Liberation (part of why I gave up on 3D is the performance and FoV just wasn't quite where I wanted it with that and it seems to be the best way to play the Apache), so I figured I'd plan on 64GB whenever I upgraded next.

I have a 6800XT GPU right now, and since I don't play VR anymore (sent the G2 Reverb back), I get great framerates.  But VR just... it was a really, really great way to play that head tracking alone just doesn't quite match (I have the Delan Clip and while great, it's just not VR).

So, with AMD coming out with their new AM5 chips and 7000 GPUs (I doubt I need the GPU since I hope the 6800XT is good enough), I'm really ready to drop the cash on a new CPU/Mobo/RAM.  Just want to make sure it'll have the desired effect of helping improve performance with DCS.

Thanks folks. 

[BitMaster]

No one for sure can know the details that you need.

Wait for multiple reviews, cross read, and decide then.

[draconus]

Yes, replacing 5 year old CPU with the new powerful one, plus new mobo and memory will give you performance boost wherever the cpu was the bottleneck. Usually in complex missions, MP and high object count scenes.

[Exorcet]

I tend to upgrade everything at once, but I can say that my current i5-9600KF and 2080Ti show no signs of struggling with DCS at 1440p resolution. This was a definite improvement over my last PC (also in my signature below), but how much was CPU vs GPU I'm not sure. Your GPU is roughly on par with mine so I'd think there is no need to upgrade it as well.

[Thinder]

21% at 4K in 3DMark Pro, from a Ryzen 5 3600X even before upgrading my RAM to G Skill B.die sticks. Now running a Ryzen 5 5600X since Sept 2020, I'm not gonna upgrade before a few years, then do some serious researche on Zen 4, motherboard, bounding RAM-CPU etc.

I haven't played DCS since my VR Headset packed up, IF I can afford a new one together with a new GPU looking for a 3080 TI, I'll come back to DCS and get myself a Mirage F1, and relearn to fly my 2000.

While my G2 was still working I didn't find much limitations at high res with my curent PC, the 5600X and GTX 1080Ti proved enough in most cases since I don't play multi-players maps, so the load was still limited. The most gain obtained after the CPU was the RAM, the G Skill kit proved really the best possible bound for this processor and blown the bottleneck away.

Now the CPU controller doesn't throttle down at full load, but to achieve this you'll need no more than 1 rank per stick, 4 X sticks for interleaving, maximum frequency of 3200 MH

Before upgrading to Zen 4 and DDR5, I'd advise a very carefull and thorough research work, including asking for advise to AMD support, you need to know the limitations of your CPU controller and make sure you stay within its limits in terms of rank number and frequencies. Then B.Die is recommanded for the RAM.

If you already have a Zen 3 PC but want more performances but have only a limited budget, consider this: A B.die kit offers MORE performances gain than a CPU water cooling solution while still retaining your CPU manufacturer warranty, the average gain for O.C is below 5%, I gained 6.04% by only getting better RAM.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Thinder

[draconus]

27 minutes ago, Thinder said:

I gained 6.04% by only getting better RAM.

Even if it was for free I wouldn't open the case for 6%.

[xoxen]

I would say this highly depends on the resolution you are going to play. I´m running a triple screen setup with 3x 1440p. With this I didn´t even get one single frame better than before when upgrading from a i7 4790K to a Ryzen 7 5800X. Even when upgrading from a GTX 1080Ti (which was in my system at the CPU upgrade) to a RX 6800 XT, it was only 10 percent gain. Only when switching to a RTX 3080 I got the expected benefit by having appr. 50% higher frames.

So please take the resolution into consideration. My experience is, everything equal or higher than 4K resolution needs a Nvidia GPU, at least for now.

Edit: Use MSI Afterburner to have a look, if the CPU or GPU is limiting. If the GPU is running at 99-100% most of the time, it is definitely limiting and a CPU upgrade might be a waste of money, like mine was in the first instance.

Edited September 25, 2022 by xoxen

[BitMaster]

So, after flying over the first view reviews, it looks like the "old" 5800X3D is still the best gaming CPU. It here and there only sits in 2nd or 3rd place but overall it leads the pack.

Together with the ATX3.0 issues this makes it not so tasty to buy into the brand new stuff, slower and flawed...WTF is going on ??

Edited September 26, 2022 by BitMaster

[Mars Exulte]

57 minutes ago, BitMaster said:

WTF is going on ??

  The same teething issues that occur with the first generation of literally every new product line since the dawn of time. Being ''first'' always has a cost.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Mars Exulte

[BitMaster]

vor 4 Minuten schrieb Mars Exulte:

  The same teething issues that occur with the first generation of literally every new product line since the dawn of time. Being ''first'' always has a cost.

 

If it shows anything it's "keep Data close to the Core, L1-L2-L3 Cache, the closer the better.

Screw the MHz Race when the cost is 150+Watt on top of what's needed when more Cache can deliver better results with less energy consumption on top of it.

Considering the much lower MHz of the 5800X3D, it beats them all by FPS per Watt and FPS per MHz.

 

[Mars Exulte]

Based on the other thread, that seems to be the case only in specific usages. But in general, yeah, it seems they would be more greatly benefited by expanding the average cache, alongside whatever else they do.

[BitMaster]

vor 13 Stunden schrieb Mars Exulte:

Based on the other thread, that seems to be the case only in specific usages. But in general, yeah, it seems they would be more greatly benefited by expanding the average cache, alongside whatever else they do.

It seems odd that it does lack some power in many Desktop and Synthetic Benchmarks but when you look at the real deal, FPS in real games, it just can play it'S cards better than any other CPU out there yet. Maybe 13thgen or AMD's own next 3D-Cache CPU, till then I think the best gaming CPU is the one with the most Cache.

[draconus]

4 minutes ago, BitMaster said:

Maybe 13thgen or AMD's own next 3D-Cache CPU, till then I think the best gaming CPU is the one with the most Cache.

Have you seen any CPU test in DCS including I12th and 5800x3d?

[BitMaster]

There are statements in this forum, one even from today or yesterday regarding the 5800X3D.

My resume from this is very positive. Same goes to Guru3D, they say the 5800X3D is likely the better deal for now.

[Obic]

For me going W/3090

3800x to 5800x was a bit of a let down

5800x to 5800x3D was a A shock

To be fair I now have 0 reason to upgrade the cpu until they actually release more 3D v-cache product.

Post scriptum 144fps

squad 144fps 

DCS reverb g2, open xr is 70+ fps to 91 fps

The thing actually work on <profanity> optimized game with a lot of cpu overhead.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Obic

[BitMaster]

When you look at other CPU's for other segments of the market you can see this is a decade old tool or strategy to give more IPC to a lower clocked core.

Server CPU's usually run at lower MHz but have a massive Cache compared to Desktop CPU's to partly compensate for the lack of speed.

Same for some Laptop CPU variants. To give them more oomps at say 1.8GHz they get more L3-Cache, 6MB instead of 3 for example, cheapest way to remedy some of it.

 

I am really looking forward to those 7000 series X3D CPUs. I hope they offer more than one SKU.

 

[Harlikwin]

I went from a 9700k at 5ghz to a 12900k at 5ghz and saw a pretty big performance boost (both with a 3090). 20-30% more frames IIRC

 

[Thinder]

On 9/25/2022 at 4:00 PM, xoxen said:

I would say this highly depends on the resolution you are going to play.

I only do my testing at 4K, this way if there is a bottleneck I'm more likely to identify it and there can be a few, my whole point was to remove the RAM-to-CPU bottleneck and gain in performance without resorting to watercooling and OC even before upgrading my GPU, the GTX 1080Ti is good but has its limits for a game like DCS.

If you use Bottleneck Calculator you'll figure that as it is my system would still not see a RAM or CPU bottleneck at 4K with a GTX 3080 Ti especially under load because the controller won't throttle back, so in reality, a gain of 6.04% is rather significant compared to a non-B.Die system like I had before RAM upgrade.

To put this into perspective, a Ryzen 5 7600X runs at 4.7GHz/Up to 5.3GHz with boost, at low resolutions you won't notice but under load with standard RAM, it will throttle back and lose those 6.04%, down to below 4.98GHz, that makes my 5600X running at 4.6GHz a lot closer for a fraction of the price.

Last but not least, those sticks are designed to be OCed, Intel techies uses them for their tests. How to Overclock RAM This means that they can be used for equaly good results for both AMD and Intel CPUs.

So I reiterate, I don't really care if you're into Intel or AMD, the most important thing is to make sure you have a good bounding between RAM, CPU and GPU, then you'll be able to squeeze real performance from what you have. B-Die Finder

 

[BitMaster]

Am 29.9.2022 um 17:34 schrieb nukeproof:

That's why amazon just raised it price to 440€!

Also some boards for AM4 went through the roof in pricing.

My board from last year sells for 600+€ now at mindfactory, thats 50% + to last year when I got it...LoL

 

*edit: today that board is back to ~400ish€, what a freaking shock that was.

Edited October 1, 2022 by BitMaster

[jaguara5]

Have currently an i7 4790K + 32 gb ddr3  + 3060ti. I play only at 4K .  Wouldn't a new build (with 5800x3d, 7700x or 13700K + the respective ddr 4/5 ram) improve the FPS at 4K with the same gpu?

Edited October 2, 2022 by jaguara5

[LucShep]

21 hours ago, jaguara5 said:

Have currently an i7 4790K + 32 gb ddr3  + 3060ti. I play only at 4K .  Wouldn't a new build (with 5800x3d, 7700x or 13700K + the respective ddr 4/5 ram) improve the FPS at 4K with the same gpu?

 

DCS at 4K? 
Yeah, the CPU and RAM upgrade would help, but not to the extent that it would make the RTX3060Ti "good for 4K".

You'd see a big boost in minimum FPS (very low altitude, over dense tree and/or city areas, etc) but the RTX3060Ti would keep on being fully utilised, constantly, both in GPU usage and also in its video memory (8GB only, which the game easily consumes it whole).
That's mostly due to how utterly bad DCS is unoptimized, but partially also because this GPU was never meant for high-end 4K (at least not with sim/games of this caliber).

As someone that is using an RTX3060Ti on a 4K screen (see system specs in my sig), I have to say that it's not really capable of rendering DCS at 4K, unless of course you compromise severely some of the game's video settings (too keep smooth performance).
An RTX3080 or better is strongly advised.

Edited October 3, 2022 by LucShep

[HansPeter1981]

Hello,

I was running a 2700  Ryzen 7 overclocked at 4000 mhz smt off watercoold with 32GB 3333 mhz ram cl14 paired with a Radeon 6800XT

Reason for upgrading was I had often moments in DCS where my Framrate would deviate from  the capped 60(59) downwards, sometimes down to 40 with the gpu dropping in utilization. I Figured I need a more powerful CPU.

I  run 4k.

I updated from B350M to B550M MSI Mortar and from Ryzen 2700 to 5800x3d

I ran a few quick Tests (DCS compare framerate in missions right at start) but didnt have time to actually fly on a server or play a full mission. I aseembled the system no 12 hours before flying out of town.

Here are the results.

I tried Harrier, K50 and Su25 quick missions turned on their 'targeting pods' and took a screeenshot at the same time:

5% increase of static FPS

Ghost Recon Benchmark Vulkan

5% increase AVG FPS

The Division 2 DX12 Benchmark

0% increase AVG FPS

Firestrike 1080p Benchmark (couldnt do 4k because of demo version)

I went from 28582 to 39587 points. (The physics part almost doubled)

 

So if your GPU was already maxed out with your current CPU at 4k you wont see any magical gains in FPS by upgrading  from an already half decent CPU.

I strongly hope that  DCS will have less framrate drops & overall more stable fps which should result in smoother picture quality the next time I get a chance to play online.

Once I am back from shift I will report.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by HansPeter1981

[draconus]

2 hours ago, HansPeter1981 said:

Reason for upgrading was I had often moments in DCS where my Framrate would deviate from  the capped 60(59) downwards, sometimes down to 40 with the gpu dropping in utilization. I Figured I need a more powerful CPU.

You didn't tell us if the cpu change fixed that.

Your test at some mission start will not show you much difference indeed. As I said already the CPU power in DCS is mostly needed for complex missions (AI), MP and high object count scenes.

[Bob_Bushman]

Going from an 8700k to a 12700k was like unlocking 40% of my 3090, so yea big potential for a gain, of course depending on the rest of the system.

DCS is still DCS so no it won't magically fix all the other things that are wrong.

[jaguara5]

On 10/2/2022 at 6:46 PM, LucShep said:

DCS at 4K? 
Yeah, the CPU and RAM upgrade would help, but not to the extent that it would make the RTX3060Ti "good for 4K".

You'd see a big boost in minimum FPS (very low altitude, over dense tree and/or city areas, etc) but the RTX3060Ti would keep on being fully utilised, constantly, both in GPU usage and also in its video memory (8GB only, which the game easily consumes it whole).
That's mostly due to how utterly bad DCS is unoptimized, but partially also because this GPU was never meant for high-end 4K (at least not with sim/games of this caliber).

As someone that is using an RTX3060Ti on a 4K screen (see system specs in my sig), I have to say that it's not really capable of rendering DCS at 4K, unless of course you compromise severely some of the game's video settings (too keep smooth performance).
An RTX3080 or better is strongly advised.

 

Thx for your comment! The thing is that i play mostly 1v1's on dogfight servers or host simple 1 vs 1 missions with a friend. So no heavy Ai missions with dozens of units. I play only on 4K (due to monitor). Currently, mostly i'm on the 40 - 50's frames, but i see drops to 30's or lower sometimes to 20's, which gets it on my nerves. Could a most powerful gpu (like the upcoming 4070 / 4080 + my current 4790K) solves this you think? Or a new build is mandatory? And in that case would you  suggest a 5800x3d, which is more cheap  than a ddr5 build? And about the future proof factor,   wouldn't   this cpu be enough for playing in the next few years, considering the fact that i play only at 4K and can anyway upgrade later the gpu?

Edited October 8, 2022 by jaguara5