CPU advice

[Dustbag]

I currently have a 7800X3D CPU and i am considering upgrading to a 9800X3D. I play DCS in VR on a PCL and would like to know if it is worth upgrading the CPU.

System:

Gigabyte B450 Gaming X AX, 4080 GPU, 32Mb Ddr 6000, 2tb M2 drive

Thanks

 

[Aapje]

The biggest gain would be in fewer microstutters: 

 

 

Note that I would first upgrade to 64 GB.

 

[LucShep]

Honestly, I'd only upgrade the memory, to 64GB (2x 32GB) or 96GB (2x 48GB) leaving the remaining system as is.

Then, after that, maybe wait another year or so for the next generation of CPUs of AMD X3D and Intel 7 K, and decide wether to fully upgrade system or not.  

 

Edited May 18 by LucShep

[Mr_sukebe]

Agreed on the move to at least 64GB.
I got the impression that the 9800x3d is around 10-20% faster.

as we can buy a 9800x3d for around £450 and potentially sell the 7800x3d for £300, is that performance improvement worth £150 to you?

 I’m considering it, but am hoping that AMD might bring out something even faster in the next year.

[Aapje]

2 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I’m considering it, but am hoping that AMD might bring out something even faster in the next year.

The X3D-chips lag behind the regular CPU's, so realistically it will probably be 1.5 years before they release those.

[Dustbag]

Thanks for the replies.

As i dont play multiplayer what benefit do you think i would see by increasing  from 32Gb to 64Gb

 

[LucShep]

17 hours ago, Dustbag said:

Thanks for the replies.

As i dont play multiplayer what benefit do you think i would see by increasing  from 32Gb to 64Gb

 

RAM is short-term volatile storage that temporarily holds information which your PC needs to access.
Depending on the number of assets and scripts in a given DCS mission, more RAM will help with that for sure, resulting in smoother gameplay, less stuttering. 

Another benefit with having more RAM than required is that you can drastically decrease the pagefile size (with 64GB RAM a pagefile of 1024 MB min and 2048 MB max is enough) as the demand for it is vastly reduced, which also frees up the load in the drive where it sits, for gaming and other purposes (faster loading in general).

If you already measured RAM consumption during DCS gameplay, you may have noticed that as far as ~50GB of RAM can be consumed (depending on mission complexity). 
Yes, MP is more intensive, and that will happen more frequently there, but even in SP it can be very demanding.

32GB is considered a bottleneck for DCS today, even if assisted by a large pagefile (32768+ MB) to partially (and badly) mitigate that. 
At this point, and for sometime now, 64GB is the recommended RAM capacity for DCS, and the benefits are quite noticeable.

In addition, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the majority of new higher-end systems for DCS will now start fitting 96GB kits (2x 48GB), aiming at next coming years.
 

Edited May 20 by LucShep

[Mr_sukebe]

+1 on Luc's comments.

If I were building a new PC, I'd most likely to for 96GB.

[Shibbyland]

I recently upgraded my CPU, mobo, RAM and cooling mostly because my old mobo couldn't support windows 10.

I went with i7 14700k but still only have 32gb of RAM, albeit it's DDR5. The performance increase from my old i7 9700k is incredible. I'm not a VR player and I'd love to have 64gb RAM but I just ran out of money and as much as people say RAM is cheap, it's not where I live but I'll add a couple more sticks down the track when I've saved up.

Holding off getting the cold war map until I get 64gb.

[kerlcat]

On 5/18/2025 at 9:19 PM, Dustbag said:

I currently have a 7800X3D CPU and i am considering upgrading to a 9800X3D. I play DCS in VR on a PCL and would like to know if it is worth upgrading the CPU.

Your GPU is 4080, probably not worth to update CPU. I updated from 7800x3D to 9800x3D only to match 5090. And honestly I didn’t have chance to compare the difference.

Edited May 22 by kerlcat

[pegasus1]

I doubt you would notice a difference between a 7800x3d and a 9800x3d unless you also updated the motherboard as well and even then it would be slight at best.

On my AM4 5800x3d i ran 64gb and the system would regularly exceed 40gb, i now run a 9950x3d and 96gb of RAM and see over 60gb of total usage, DCS will use just about all the RAM you can throw at it and also loves the fastest CPUs but at that point the game engine becomes the bottleneck.

The best upgrade is to run DLSS Setting K and if you have the GPU to power it, at Ultra Quality level (70 - 80% resolution).

[Mr_sukebe]

You're nearly making a case for 128GB of RAM...

[BitMaster]

96GB, not even a question.....heck....I started with 16GB in 2015, then 32, now 64.....there is a red line.

[Qcumber]

9 hours ago, pegasus1 said:

I doubt you would notice a difference between a 7800x3d and a 9800x3d unless you also updated the motherboard as well and even then it would be slight at best.

On my AM4 5800x3d i ran 64gb and the system would regularly exceed 40gb, i now run a 9950x3d and 96gb of RAM and see over 60gb of total usage, DCS will use just about all the RAM you can throw at it and also loves the fastest CPUs but at that point the game engine becomes the bottleneck.

The best upgrade is to run DLSS Setting K and if you have the GPU to power it, at Ultra Quality level (70 - 80% resolution).

Is it worth upgrading from 64gb to 128gb RAM for VR? If I did it would be 4 sticks. I've read that 4 sticks of DDR5 RAM can be unstable. 

[pegasus1]

15 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Is it worth upgrading from 64gb to 128gb RAM for VR? If I did it would be 4 sticks. I've read that 4 sticks of DDR5 RAM can be unstable. 

Well four stick places more strain on the system so you might need to make some adjustments in the BIOS as far as timings and voltages go (a Google/AI Search for your specific RAM and MOBO would help). I don't use VR so cant comment but DCS is becoming more and more complex and finally is able to take advantage of better performing hardware so at some point 64gb will be a limiting factor. 

[Hempstead]

I have 4 sticks of DDR5-6400, 128GB, on an Asus X870E Hero, Win11 Pro. It was very unstable... until I burned the newest firmware on the motherboard. It's..... kind of stable now.

Not sure if it helps DCS at all. I have no baseline to compare it with other than I can get 45fps min. < 1,000' agl, and 90fps > 1,000' agl in Germany map, or any map, with a Quest Pro, and a PNY RTX5080 OC.

 

 

[Dragon1-1]

10 hours ago, pegasus1 said:

(a Google/AI Search for your specific RAM and MOBO would help)

Google only (or DDG, or whatever strikes you fancy). Never use AI for such specific advice (or for any technical advice at all). It might just be right... or it might tell you to do something that'll fry your mobo. You can never be sure with AI unless you check a reliable source (at which point, why not start there?). While messing around with BIOS is much safer nowadays than it used to be, you can still end up with an unbootable configuration and have to mess around with jumpers/pull the CMOS battery to make it forget your messed up settings.

[pegasus1]

17 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Google only (or DDG, or whatever strikes you fancy). Never use AI for such specific advice (or for any technical advice at all). It might just be right... or it might tell you to do something that'll fry your mobo. You can never be sure with AI unless you check a reliable source (at which point, why not start there?). While messing around with BIOS is much safer nowadays than it used to be, you can still end up with an unbootable configuration and have to mess around with jumpers/pull the CMOS battery to make it forget your messed up settings.

Google gets its info from a less limited pool than AI, i mean its silly to not conduct due diligence on any advice whether its from AI, a Search Engine , a forum or direct from a person. 

Ive read some absurd advice on here over the years, and on all forums, you only need to read what some people are advising about DLSS to know how far of the mark some people are irrespective of how confidant they seem.

All my RAM settings come via AI and its bang on and getting some great CB24 scores, on a side note i wouldn't use the quick answer setting for an Ai search, for work i use the Research functions and they are bang on for accuracy.

[Dragon1-1]

3 hours ago, pegasus1 said:

Google gets its info from a less limited pool than AI,

You don't get info from Google. All you use it for is to find a link to a site that looks like you can trust it, and use that as an expert, hopefully verified source of information. The thing with AI is, it's right until it suddenly isn't, and even if it does provide you with sources, how can you be sure they have actually been used to generate the answer you got? It's tempting to think that it's so, that's what a human would do, but that's not necessarily what the AI does.

Not everyone knows what they're talking about, indeed, most people don't. That's the problem with AI. It's trained on everything, from experts' opinions to ignorant yapping and deliberate misinformation. It takes everything, puts it in a blender, and spits out... something. Sometimes it's curated and weighed somehow (good luck finding out the criteria), sometimes not. You might have simply lucked out, or maybe the popular opinion is right and it averages out to a correct answer. You'll never know, though, because the model, and what is going on inside it, is a black box. 

[BitMaster]

I would not risc the 4 modules gamble just for DCS when you also aim for low latency and likely 6000MT/s. That's not what 4 modules is for, for now.

If you do math, rendering, AI...yes, then latency and speed is not so important, there, volume counts.

 

I would go 2x 48GB, 6000MT/s and CL30 or lower if I had to buy today.

If I needed it as a true WS, I would buy a Dell with Support...LoL