Upgrading from i9900K to AMD 7700X: Thoughts?

[trevoC]

Personally I'd wait for the x3D versions. They're right around the corner.

[Hoirtel]

On 1/17/2023 at 7:32 AM, trevoC said:

Personally I'd wait for the x3D versions. They're right around the corner.

I am, but not sure if they are going to be better than 13th gen. I have been waiting to buy either since the 13th gen was announced. So impatient now! 

There have been a few possible red flags raised with these new chips so we will see. Why no release dates??

[BitMaster]

February 14th iirc

[Hoirtel]

On 1/18/2023 at 5:54 PM, BitMaster said:

February 14th iirc

No they have retracted that now.

[Thinder]

The 3D Ryzen some are thinking about are Ryzen 4, so this demands a new motherboard and DDR5, which right now isn't the smartest move to make if one want bang for bucks and tested, certified solutions.

Let's be realistic. Those are unproven technologies so far, people will pay the premium as always for manufacturers to finance their R&D, taking the risk of hitting the walls of incompatibility, mediocre drivers, bugs etc, not to mention the fact that the Ryzen are still designed for lower latencies and that the RAM manufacturers are lagging well behind because right now, they do not have a viable replacement for B.die and have to increase their RAM frequency just to keep their chips stable.

Higher frequency is all very good for Intel which CPU strive on them, but not so much for the Ryzen architecture and AMD have been going through a lot of effort to increase the size of their caches on all 3D CPUs, Ryzen 3 or 4 alike, it's not for no reason, they are expecting the RAM industry to keep up but perhaps they looked too far forward.

I'm not gonna pretend that I'm smarter or more experienced but having built PCs since the PII, I'm sure of one thing by now, unless you have money to waste, you'll wait a couple of years before jumping in the bandwagon of the next gen sockets and DDR 5, I have no doubt someone will come up with a new die which will be the equivalent of B.die for DDR5 in the future but this was precisely the reason why I chose to upgrade my PC with Ryzen3 and B.die Cl14 RAM, the only technology risk I took is my GPU, and I'm lucky, it worked.

AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Specs, Release Date, Benchmarks, Price Listings Nov 2022.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Thinder

[Hoirtel]

23 hours ago, Thinder said:

The 3D Ryzen some are thinking about are Ryzen 4, so this demands a new motherboard and DDR5, which right now isn't the smartest move to make if one want bang for bucks and tested, certified solutions.

Let's be realistic. Those are unproven technologies so far, people will pay the premium as always for manufacturers to finance their R&D, taking the risk of hitting the walls of incompatibility, mediocre drivers, bugs etc, not to mention the fact that the Ryzen are still designed for lower latencies and that the RAM manufacturers are lagging well behind because right now, they do not have a viable replacement for B.die and have to increase their RAM frequency just to keep their chips stable.

Higher frequency is all very good for Intel which CPU strive on them, but not so much for the Ryzen architecture and AMD have been going through a lot of effort to increase the size of their caches on all 3D CPUs, Ryzen 3 or 4 alike, it's not for no reason, they are expecting the RAM industry to keep up but perhaps they looked too far forward.

I'm not gonna pretend that I'm smarter or more experienced but having built PCs since the PII, I'm sure of one thing by now, unless you have money to waste, you'll wait a couple of years before jumping in the bandwagon of the next gen sockets and DDR 5, I have no doubt someone will come up with a new die which will be the equivalent of B.die for DDR5 in the future but this was precisely the reason why I chose to upgrade my PC with Ryzen3 and B.die Cl14 RAM, the only technology risk I took is my GPU, and I'm lucky, it worked.

AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Specs, Release Date, Benchmarks, Price Listings Nov 2022.

 

So I mostly agree, but I'm in the position of needing a new board whatever I do so 13th gen and AM5 are both expensive. Yes 13th gen could do an older board I suppose. As for RAM I really am trying to learn as much as I can, but it seems that although DDR5 isn't hands down quicker yet RAM speed for gaming at high resolutions isn't that much of a difference. You don't wanna go too slow but the bottlenecks are elsewhere so as long as you get something decent, it should all roughly be the same, for DCS. Not for benching. Ryzen is early days but the new X3Ds could be really good for DCS and thats all I care about so if its good (IF!) it doesn't make sense to wait any longer. As you say DDR5 speed isn't that important here anyway. If I decide to go with 13700K which will be a similar price I can just stick with my DDR4 64Gb kit and that will be cheaper. It all depends on how good the 3XD is. It might be really good for DCS.

Why is high quality RAM die's important for DCS? especially in VR with ultra high pixel counts. Would you prioritise quality die (and presumably latency/speed) over capacity?

[Thinder]

1 hour ago, Hoirtel said:

As you say DDR5 speed isn't that important here anyway. If I decide to go with 13700K which will be a similar price I can just stick with my DDR4 64Gb kit and that will be cheaper. It all depends on how good the 3XD is. It might be really good for DCS.

It's not that frequencies aren't important, it is that the Ryzen architecture is optimized for lower latencies and that right now, there isn't a die in the market to really give an edge to Ryzen 4 CPUs while Intel CPUs are a lot happier coping with higher frequencies (or so I presume).

This is what stopped me to go all the way to the new technology, I knew what the Cl14 B.die RAM could do for my 5600X, and I made a bet that it would be even better with the 3D, plus, going for a brand new GPU was enough of a risk for me, I'd rather wait until those new gear are proven bullet proof before spending my money on it and I got the GPU to deal with it.

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Why is high quality RAM die's important for DCS? especially in VR with ultra high pixel counts. Would you prioritise quality die (and presumably latency/speed) over capacity?

It's not only DCS, it's overall performances and more to the point making sure you eliminate the CPU/RAM bottleneck, because for every application there is a point where the load will be greater than what your CPU controller can manage with a non-B.die RAM, while a Cl14 kit will give you a headroom a high street kit can't.

I was already pleased with the improvement from the Crucial 3200 to the GSkill Cl14 with my 5600X, now I can't believe anyone would hesitate when you see the difference it makes with the 3D... Here the difference between the 5600X and 32Gb of 3200 Mhz Cl14 and the 7 5800X 3D with 3600Mhz Cl14, remember that the 5600X clocks faster.

I'll take those improvement any time, considering it's tested back to back with 3DMark pro at 4K MSAA X2, precisely when under load when the controllers would throttle back without a B.die kit.

To justify my choice now Bottleneck Calculator  give me a 13.5% bottleneck for my 5800X 3D and RX 7900 XTX, the Cl14 kit allows me to gain 18.91% at full load in Graphics, that's 5.41% more than the bottleneck would result on with a non B.die kit, and Physics Score (CPU) improved also by more, that's what going for a B.die allows me to do.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Thinder

[Hoirtel]

44 minutes ago, Thinder said:

It's not that frequencies aren't important, it is that the Ryzen architecture is optimized for lower latencies and that right now, there isn't a die in the market to really give an edge to Ryzen 4 CPUs while Intel CPUs are a lot happier coping with higher frequencies (or so I presume).

This is what stopped me to go all the way to the new technology, I knew what the Cl14 B.die RAM could do for my 5600X, and I made a bet that it would be even better with the 3D, plus, going for a brand new GPU was enough of a risk for me, I'd rather wait until those new gear are proven bullet proof before spending my money on it and I got the GPU to deal with it.

It's not only DCS, it's overall performances and more to the point making sure you eliminate the CPU/RAM bottleneck, because for every application there is a point where the load will be greater than what your CPU controller can manage with a non-B.die RAM, while a Cl14 kit will give you a headroom a high street kit can't.

I was already pleased with the improvement from the Crucial 3200 to the GSkill Cl14 with my 5600X, now I can't believe anyone would hesitate when you see the difference it makes with the 3D... Here the difference between the 5600X and 32Gb of 3200 Mhz Cl14 and the 7 5800X 3D with 3600Mhz Cl14, remember that the 5600X clocks faster.

I'll take those improvement any time, considering it's tested back to back with 3DMark pro at 4K MSAA X2, precisely when under load when the controllers would throttle back without a B.die kit.

To justify my choice now Bottleneck Calculator  give me a 13.5% bottleneck for my 5800X 3D and RX 7900 XTX, the Cl14 kit allows me to gain 18.91% at full load in Graphics, that's 5.41% more than the bottleneck would result on with a non B.die kit, and Physics Score (CPU) improved also by more, that's what going for a B.die allows me to do.

 

Hmm. Not sure TBH. I mean it is only DCS that I am bothered about... I was under the impression that B.die overclocked better rather than performed better at the same clocks.

The uplift shows the uplift between two CPUs. Do you have DCS details of the 5600X with both RAM kits?

Not sure about the bottleneck calculator... I mean where is all that data coming from, there are too many variables to take these things literally. There will always be a bottle neck in your system otherwise you would have unlimited FPS.

Also you talk about taking technology "risks" ...that's the game with buying new stuff. You can reduce it a bit by waiting for a few reviews or reduce it more by waiting for lots of user feedback, then you can reduce it more by waiting longer and then you have to wait again as the new stuff is coming out. If you want the new things you gotta do it and just be as informed as you can be. Glad your AMD GPU is working out. It didn't for some.....

[Thinder]

2 hours ago, Hoirtel said:

Hmm. Not sure TBH. I mean it is only DCS that I am bothered about... I was under the impression that B.die overclocked better rather than performed better at the same clocks.

It was used by both AMD and Intel users when their CPUs couldn't manage faster RAM, it is easy to overclock but it is not its only strength.

It is very stable and can offer a much wider range of timing, reason why you can O.C a 3200MHz kit to 3600Mhz, mine is 3600MHz from stock.

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The uplift shows the uplift between two CPUs. Do you have DCS details of the 5600X with both RAM kits?

Not sure about the bottleneck calculator... I mean where is all that data coming from, there are too many variables to take these things literally. There will always be a bottle neck in your system otherwise you would have unlimited FPS.

I do, I posted it several times over in different topics to inform people.

The other kit was a Crucial Gaming 3200MHz Cl16, both 32GB capacity. as you can see, at 4K the physics score is much higher, Graphics Score not so and it was with an EVGA 1080Ti.

This combo allowed me to play DCS at quite higher settings because it wouldn't throttle down under load, which is what matters most especially in this game.

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Not sure about the bottleneck calculator... I mean where is all that data coming from, there are too many variables to take these things literally. There will always be a bottle neck in your system otherwise you would have unlimited FPS.

It's easy to compare bandwidth, and when you know about the limits of those CPUs it is logical that any CPU of this range of frequency will struggle dealing with the bandwidth coming from a GPU like this one, that's load, so if your controller limits aren't kept high, it will throttle down and reduce that GPU channel bandwidth.

As my tests shows, I have a good headroom for my CPU to keep all channels open under load and I obtained very good results with this combo CPU/GPU too, but it is only possible because of the Cl14 RAM kit.

Here, fist 2 tests after fitting the RX 7900 XTX, this is compared to the same combo, same settings with the 1080Ti.

Quote

Also you talk about taking technology "risks" ...that's the game with buying new stuff. You can reduce it a bit by waiting for a few reviews or reduce it more by waiting for lots of user feedback, then you can reduce it more by waiting longer and then you have to wait again as the new stuff is coming out. If you want the new things you gotta do it and just be as informed as you can be.

There is a reason why people are paying a premium which percentage have been going sky high for the last two decades, manufacturers needs to finance their R&D but the problem is that people's peggybanks didn't follow the same inflation, so they have to compete by rushing out for production products which haven't been fully tested as Nvidia and AMD demonstrated lately.

And also, they don't all work at the same rate, there still are years to go before someone come up with the equivalent of B.die for the DDR5...

So it's better to wait for all this technology to be proven, I'm not the US government with a Congress approving for a few more billions to pay for a program gone crazy with development costs, I need to be sure of what I do and I've been researching the subject with inquiries to tech supports.

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Glad your AMD GPU is working out. It didn't for some.....

No risks for that, I've done my home work for my GPU as well, at full load it doesn't go over 72°C and I'm already improving my cooling.

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/25723-usefull-hardware-software-links/?do=findComment&comment=5136237

Edited January 23, 2023 by Thinder

[Lurker]

So....the backplate finally arrived yesterday and I installed the new board and CPU. Obviously I had to reinstall windows, graphics drivers etc. Everything went pretty smoothly, I even used MSI afterburner and finally undervolted my graphics card. 

I didn't really do any proper testing but I tried out three games, DCS World, Snowrunner and WH40K: Darktide. The gains were noticable, in Darktide in particular they were huge. I was finally able to turn on RTX (at 1080p) and the game chugged along like it was nothing. Not a single frame drop or slowdown, while with the old i9-9900k I couldn't run RTX on smoothly and could only get over 60FPS when I turned off raytracing. That game's engine is really optimized for multicore support and it shows. The i5-13600k has 14 physical cores. 

As for DCS World there was a noticable improvement in VR, but with how the game runs these days that's not saying much. This is with shadows turned off and textures on medium Syria, Mi24p freerange mission. I think I was consistently hitting 45ASW with no framedrops and I didn't notice the slowdown I had before once the numbers of wrecked and smoking tanks and vehicles started going up. 

In VR i think Ill be sticking with fixed wing planes for the forseeable future anyway, they are much less demanding and I can turn up the eyecandy. 

Anyway I'm pretty happy with the upgrade, I don't think the performance is there quite there yet with DCS World as it seems to be still very much a single threaded bound game, but once ED implements multicore I think the chip will perform admirably (based on the performance of Darktide)

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Lurker