Considering upgrade, some advice?

[Werlin12]

Hi all,

I use my PC almost exclusivly for DCS VR (presently with Quest 3)

Current setup is:
ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F
AMD Ryzen 7 5700x
HyperX Fury DDR4 2666MHz 32GB
Nvidia RTX4080 SUPER
Samsung SSD990PRO 4 TB

Always CPU throttled in DCS.
Would I get a significant performance increase if I upgraded MB and CPU (plus perhaps ram) or would any upgrade be marginal? Trying to decide if I should bite the bullet and to more upgrades or wait a year or two..

Cinebench:
GPU: 24698
CPU Multi: 856
CPU Single: 94
MP ratio 9.12

[Aapje]

The big upside of AM5 is that you might be able to get a large upgrade later on by merely getting a new CPU at the end of the AM5-lifecycle. Your current memory is very slow for a non-X3D CPU, so you are probably getting bottlenecked there a lot too.

I'd suggest moving up to a 7800X3D with a PCIe 5 motherboard and DDR5-6000. It's such a shame to have a 4080 Super getting bottlenecked.

[xoxen]

You could do 2 things, depending on your budget:

a) Follow the recommendation above and switch over to an AM5 system. This will give you a very good improvement CPU and RAM wise. Additionally you have the chance to upgrade to coming CPU generations. Actually I would hold on and wait fpr the 9xxx AMD CPU series, which should be launched shortly.

b) You try to get the best out of your actual system by upgrading to a 5800X3D and maybe put hand on faster and more RAM (should be available 2nd hand for a good price).

 

I did option b) and the only place being CPU bottlenecked are busy MP server, where the GPU isn´t utilized 100%, more 70%. If your budget is fine I would recommend option a), otherwise option b) is reasonable and easy to achieve.

Maybe my video helps a little to get an idea of an AM4 CPU upgrade: Link to video

[Aapje]

While the new CPUs should be announced in just over a week, the X3D parts always lag behind half a year or so. Basically, the regular CPUs have to be fully validated first, before they can start validating the addition of the X3D-cache. This takes about half a year. In the meantime, the 7800X3D is probably still king for gaming.

The prices of the old generation might go down a bit after the announcement, though. Or one could wait half a year and then either get the new part, or a 2nd hand 7800X3D from someone who upgraded to the 9800X3D.

And I decided against suggesting a 5800X3D since he already has a 5700X, so the 5800X3D might not be a good enough boost if he experiences significant bottlenecking now. Perhaps he constantly play on busy MP servers or has a different configuration that loads the CPU more.

He also has a lower end AM4-board and slow memory, so all in all I would just replace it all and be done until the end of the AM5 generation, when he can just toss the last X3D-chip for the AM5 generation on there and get a huge boost, assuming things go similar to how it went with AM4.

[xoxen]

I´m fully with you, only wanted to highlight the other options. The 3D CPU´s are quite good for VR, so the 5800X3D ist actually his cheapest choice, definately not the fastest one.

[Werlin12]

On 5/24/2024 at 10:46 PM, Aapje said:

The big upside of AM5 is that you might be able to get a large upgrade later on by merely getting a new CPU at the end of the AM5-lifecycle. Your current memory is very slow for a non-X3D CPU, so you are probably getting bottlenecked there a lot too.

I'd suggest moving up to a 7800X3D with a PCIe 5 motherboard and DDR5-6000. It's such a shame to have a 4080 Super getting bottlenecked.

Thanks a lot for your advice, and sorry for the late reply. 
So you think the 4080 super is held back  by the rest of the system and I will notice a significant performance increase with a MB, RAM and CPU upgrade?

Am I right in thinking that if I get a those, plus a new PSU, my setup will probably be future-proofed to a certain extent as well?

On 5/27/2024 at 8:46 AM, xoxen said:

You could do 2 things, depending on your budget:

a) Follow the recommendation above and switch over to an AM5 system. This will give you a very good improvement CPU and RAM wise. Additionally you have the chance to upgrade to coming CPU generations. Actually I would hold on and wait fpr the 9xxx AMD CPU series, which should be launched shortly.

b) You try to get the best out of your actual system by upgrading to a 5800X3D and maybe put hand on faster and more RAM (should be available 2nd hand for a good price).

 

I did option b) and the only place being CPU bottlenecked are busy MP server, where the GPU isn´t utilized 100%, more 70%. If your budget is fine I would recommend option a), otherwise option b) is reasonable and easy to achieve.

Maybe my video helps a little to get an idea of an AM4 CPU upgrade: Link to video

Thanks a lot! This was very informative.
I won't say my budget is too big, but if I'm going to spend money I would prefer to future-proof my rig and get a new MB as well. So I'll probably go for option A.

That beeing said, its not terrible now, so I might wait for a summer sale or even black week.

Thanks again to all of you, appreciated!

[Aapje]

14 hours ago, Werlin12 said:

So you think the 4080 super is held back by the rest of the system and I will notice a significant performance increase with a MB, RAM and CPU upgrade?

Flight simming, especially in VR, is typically quite taxing on the CPU. As you note yourself, you are CPU-limited, which is not great, since being CPU-limited is more likely to result in stuttering or getting halved frame rates.

14 hours ago, Werlin12 said:

Am I right in thinking that if I get a those, plus a new PSU, my setup will probably be future-proofed to a certain extent as well?

AM5 should last to at least late 2026, so you should be able to do an upgrade to the 2026-generation of X3D-chips and perhaps a later gen, depending on when AMD moves to AM6. We've seen with the 5800X3D and 5700X3D that they gradually lowered prices, especially once the new platform is out, so if you upgrade (some time) after the release of AM6, in 2027 or so, you can probably get a pretty cheap upgrade to get a decent boost.

Of course, this is all speculative based on the past and things that have been announced (like the DDR6 release date, which should be the basis for AM6, although there tends to be a decent delay between the two).

In any case, I would wait at least a week to see what Computex brings. The new AMD motherboards may bring PCIe 5 to a lower price point. The upcoming B850 boards seem to have a optimal feature set compared to the expected price, when taking longevity into account. The older B650E-boards are mostly the same and are thus also a good choice. Just look at what the prices do for both.

Basically, I would look for a board with PCIe 5 for the GPU slot, which should future proof you for future video cards with PCIe 6 on them, because we typically see that the cards have so much PCIe headroom, that it is absolutely no problem to put the GPU in a slot that only support the previous PCIe generation.

14 hours ago, Werlin12 said:

That beeing said, its not terrible now, so I might wait for a summer sale or even black week.

Yeah, you already have a decently fast computer. The slower the computer is, the easier it is to justify an upgrade right away.

[Werlin12]

Thanks again, really helpful.
I think I'll plan for a 850 and a suitable CPU and ram sometime in the autumn. Perhaps I'll wait until black week as well.

Much of these issues arose when the G2s broke and I had to change and chose the Quest 3 - the stupidest hardware decision I've ever made...
Regardless I think the conclution based on your advice is to update with new MB, CPU and RAM (plus perhaps a PSU) to future proof the setup.

Edit: And whats the verdict on Intel vs. AMD? I used to prefer Intel, but been very pleased with AMD in this setup.
AMD vs. Intel comes down to performance in DCS - I don't use my PC to anything else that not even the most modest laptop could manage.

Edited June 9, 2024 by Werlin12

[Aapje]

You can always resell the Quest 3 and get a Pimax Crystal Light or such.

And right now, AMD has the upper hand when it comes to CPUs, in particular for games. The X3D-chips are pretty much optimal for most gaming needs, while Intel lacks an option for having a huge 3D-cache and makes you pay for more cores to get higher on-chip cache and higher clock speeds. However, games rarely benefit (enough) from a huge number of cores to justify the expense. Basically, you need to pay much more to get an equivalent level of performance if you go Intel. They are also inefficient right now and currently have major degradation issues.

Intel are working hard on improving and in a few years they may be much better, but for gaming, AMD is generally the best right now.