Sandy Bridge

[Konovalov]

Edit: Oh, and one point you are also missing: overclocking is fun on it's own. It's not necessarily done only for performance gains - for example there are few things you can do with a computer that are as effective at teaching you how a computer works. It's a bit like how configging and compiling your own Linux install from scratch is the best thing a layman can do to learn how an OS really works.

Well said. So many things can be learn't by building, tweaking and overclocking ones system. And it can be fun in doing so and for many is a bit of a hobby.

[Rusty_M]

a bit like the old days of learning how to use config.sys and autoexec.bat?

[JaseGill]

All,

Track has been recorded in FRAPS and yes indeed, surprise surprise the FPS drops when the cannon is fired, did I notice it with the naked eye? No. Did it drop, yes. By how much, about 1 to 2 fps whilst firing.

 

As I was due negative Rep for saying I didn't notice a drop I guess I should be due some positive rep maybe now as I said no noticeable drop. I wont hold my breath.

Link:

J.

[Konovalov]

That's an excellent result with just a minuscule drop in FPS of 1 or 2. Congrats on your build which should see you well placed for DCS.

[Steel Jaw]

a bit like the old days of learning how to use config.sys and autoexec.bat?

 

Oh Gawd you're giving me DOS flashbacks: nights spent trying to squeeze enough lower conventional RAM to get the sound in Falcon3 to play...621KB, need 624...damn...!

 

Arrrgggggghhhhhhhh !!

[Kuky]

On that video I think I saw FPS counter go to 20 at one stage (definitely saw 22 and 27 digit also) so instead of posting youtube video where lot of quality is lost just post FRAPS benchmark numbers... also that fps of 30 is capped by FRAPS recording, so hardly 1-2 fps loss

 

This is what I got from short recording (mission: "Free Flight - Black Sea - Runway Start") I took off turned back to base and straffed a truck on the base with full gun burst.

 

With Multimonitor Setup

Resolution: 1920x1800 (windowed mode)

Min 8

Max 30 (limited by FRAPS recording)

Avg 28.752

 

With Single Monitor Setup

Resolution: 1920x1200 (full screen mode)

Min 7

Max 30 (limited by FRAPS recording)

Avg 29.372

 

In game settings:

Textures: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

Scenes: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

CivTraffic: OFF LOW MEDIUM HIGH

Water: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

VisRange: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

HeatBlur: OFF ON

Shadows: LOW MEDIUM HIGH

ResOfCockpitDisplays: 256 512 512EF 1024 1024EF

MSAA: OFF 2X 4X 8X 16X 8XQ 16XQ

HDR: OFF ON

TSSAA: OFF ON

Clutter/Bushes: 0 ... 250m ... 500m

 

Main PC components: i7 950 @ 4GHz / ATI HD5870 / 12GB 1600MHz DDR3

Edited January 11, 2011 by Kuky

[Kuky]

JaseGill, I did another quick test and firing 2 shorter burst (about 1sec each) min FPS is little better (FRAPS shows 10fps min in this case). I'd like to eliminate possibility in difference in settings so can you tell me what are your graphics and ingame setting so I can match them.

[bumfire]

I dunno, but to me that youtube video does show very minimal fps lose/stutter when firing the gau.

 

I would be happy with that ingame, as it doesnt look to be causing any stutter or pauses when fired.

[Kuky]

I dunno, but to me that youtube video does show very minimal fps lose/stutter when firing the gau.

 

I would be happy with that ingame, as it doesnt look to be causing any stutter or pauses when fired.

 

That could be because SandyBridge CPU is better then i7 even when overclocked, so I want to see if this is the case... but for that ideally we'd need same video card and graphics settings and in game settings.

 

What few here are misunderstanding by me saying there has to be a slowdown is because what I meant is that game itself is currently working like this so no matter what CPU you have the effects in game take hit on the CPU, so unless that CPU has so much overhead it should be seen, but again I don't know exact settings JaseGill used. I too am eager to find out if SandyBridge is actually lot better for DCS so I'm not having a go at anyone, I am purely asking to some proof, sadly from video I can't see FPS numbers clearly and again I don't know the settings used in game...

[Kuky]

Alright, I give up... I tried lowering most of the settings and I still get FPS dip when gun rounds start hitting the ground... best I could get is about 15fps minimum so judging from that video there are at least 20fps minimum for the same situation which makes me believe SandyBridge is better then i7 950 I have even when it's overclocked to 4GHz

[JaseGill]

All,

Just so everyone knows my settings.

 

Graphics 1920 x 1080 full screen.

Everything on High.

All the ones on the bottom right (HDR, FSAA and the other one I can never remember) ticked.

No mirrors as I completely forgot to put them on (didn't used them with the e6750) but Im keen to try them when I get back home on Friday no that I have remembered them.

 

I'll repeat what I have said so many times and seems to have got lost in all this apart from a couple of posters noticing it: I saw no noticeable pause in game-play on firing the GAU8.

Yes there is an FPS drop but read back to my 1st post, I said I had only had chance to do a couple of missions and I had not noticed the pause some had reported.

As an aside there are FPS drops in busy areas and sometimes I notice them, but having played properly now for at least 4 or 5 hours I can honestly say its very very smooth. Without FRAPS limiting it to 30 FPS I have seem upper 70s in the cruise and 40's over the battlefield when looking at the inbuilt FPS Counter. Once its fully optimised and no longer Beta I reckon on Sandy Bridge this is going to be very smooth, as it is for 1st gen i7 users and some i5 and AMD too I'm sure.

 

If I had been 1st gen i7 would I have upgraded? Probably not for at least a year, but for most here who don't have what were 1000 GBP processors and 300 GBP motherboards I'd say an effectively 375 GBP upgrade makes one hell of a difference and is a bargain. Thats what I was trying to say in my 1st post (badly I'm sure) that for the price differential Sandy Bridge is one hell of an upgrade. On Overclcockers UK where I buy all my gear the i7 950 is still 500 GBP more than the i5 2500K, add the motherboard plus the need for triple channel DDR3 and the price pumps up even more.

 

Whilst were on the subject has anyone else seen the reviews coming out? Some are saying the i5 2500K is up there with the 1st gen 980X in some cases, a 500 GBP price differential. Im not sure I believe them, though I do believe what I see when I play now.

J.

[Kuky]

20 fps minimal for all settings on HIGH is pretty good as seems for my system which is still pretty good I get dips to 10fps in this situation but I can't improve this much even if I lower in game settings... granted I have bit higher resolution but for me when I try running the game in 1920x1080 I just get black screen so I have to stick to 1920x1200 (aldo don't know what if any difference would make lowering the resolution... I'm gonna try one more time to run 1920x1080 see if it crashes again)

[bumfire]

That could be because SandyBridge CPU is better then i7 even when overclocked, so I want to see if this is the case... but for that ideally we'd need same video card and graphics settings and in game settings.

 

What few here are misunderstanding by me saying there has to be a slowdown is because what I meant is that game itself is currently working like this so no matter what CPU you have the effects in game take hit on the CPU, so unless that CPU has so much overhead it should be seen, but again I don't know exact settings JaseGill used. I too am eager to find out if SandyBridge is actually lot better for DCS so I'm not having a go at anyone, I am purely asking to some proof, sadly from video I can't see FPS numbers clearly and again I don't know the settings used in game...

 

It's cool Kukster ;)

 

I was just going by the video, I havent read practically any of this thread save for the last page or so and I dont have a clue whats going on.

 

I just read 1 or 2 posts from the last page, saw the link and watched it as I am interested in SB cpu's, and for me personally the video looks smooth, but I am a retard who thinks that 12fps in cod is smooth.

 

Yea, I did look at the video fps, I could hardly read them, but I think if I recall, when firing it didnt drop past 30 ? but then later it did drop to low 20s if I saw it correctly.

 

Also, if the beta is plagued by stutters and pauses due to not being optimised as of yet, then yea I also agree with ya that no matter what cpu one has, their will always be stutters/pauses/hiccups until its been optimised to run smoothly.

 

I hadnt read anything in this thread before page 6, and in one of your posts on page 6, I think this is what you are meaning when you say " the game is currently workign like this" and what some people are not picking up on, i.e the game is stuttering/pausing in places due to not being optimised, when people just think its because they need a more powerful pc to get the game to be smooth, I could be wrong though ?

 

It's all good though kuky monster :thumbup:

Edited January 11, 2011 by bumfire

[Kuky]

it's all good :)

 

I just tried disabling all secondary monitors and set desktop and game resolution to 1600x1200 as this matches best 1920x1080 in terms of pixels (seems my monitor does not suport 1920x1080 which is why I get black screen if I try to run the game at 1920x1080... I'm sure it can do it but if I connect the monitor via HDMI interface but I couldn't be bothered)

 

Point is even when lowering resolution to 1600x1200 I don't get any improvement in this scenario... it's not the firing of the gun that makes the FPS hit, its when those rounds hit the ground... so it has to be some effect coding... and very likely these SandyBridge CPU's handle this much better to i7 CPU's because they have different arhitecture and new features... if I remember corectly they are much better in floating points calculations so maybe this is why they work better...

 

PS: in the end JaseGill did get positive REP from me... it was deserved and me proven wrong :P

[Konovalov]

On Overclcockers UK where I buy all my gear the i7 950 is still 500 GBP more than the i5 2500K, add the motherboard plus the need for triple channel DDR3 and the price pumps up even more.

Is that a typo in the price difference?

 

Back in October I paid the following for my upgrade (current price at Overclockers in brackets):

 

i7-950 GBP 210 (GBP 234)

Asus P6X58D-E GBP 155 (GBP 150)

6GB Tri-chan RAM GBP 100 (GBP 75)

Total GBP 460 / (GBP 459)

 

Current prices for i5 Sandybridge similar to your shiny new rig at Overclockers:

 

i5-2500k GBP 192

Asus P8P67 Pro GBP 148

Patriot Viper 2 Sector 5 dual-chan 4GB GBP 66 or 8GB GBP 132

Total GBP 406 (4GB RAM) or GBP 472 with 8GB RAM

 

Not quite the massive price difference between the Sandybridge and older i7.

[JaseGill]

Konolov,

Yeah sorry its a typo, I didnt look hard enough before I compared i7 980's with the i5 2500K. I just looked at the fastest other CPU and saw a massive difference. Doh!

 

Yeah not a massive difference in price when you compare like with like (ish). Im just happy that I got cheaper for faster if you can believe all of the online reviews, which Im always going to take with a pinch of salt.

J.

 

p.s. Kuky, thanks for the rep. It takes a bigger man than most to get involved with some sort of discussion and not stick to their ideas without backing down. To be honest I think were both right, FPS still drops on cannon hits but not so noticeably and I have to agree on the reason you gave. I have also read that floating point has improved, I don't know how A10c is coded but it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.

 

p.p.s Rep reciprocated by the way, you've been here longer than me and seen more of this than most it seems and your comments have always been fair and without prejudice.

Edited January 11, 2011 by JaseGill
added p.s & p.ps

[Konovalov]

Jase,

If I was in your position replacing an old Core 2 Duo based system then I would have gone with the i 52500k in a blink. Best bang for buck and really there would be no need to consider an i7 unless you desperately needed features such as hyperthreading. So really for flight sims and CPU dependent games Sandybridge looks the first and best choice. :thumbup:

[Konovalov]

Sandybridge doesn't suck juice

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the other great thing about Sandybridge is it's gentle sipping of power. Compared to my i7 950, the i5 2500k uses at least a quarter less juice while running at a higher frequency. No wonder these things reach such high OC's of 4.8-5Ghz and on air no less! Impressive.

Edited January 11, 2011 by Konovalov

[Funkyjazz]

Hopefullly A-10 isnt going to be a "FSX" story. (FSX will run on a I13 -3476 22 cores CPU running stock at 32 GHZ with 128 GB mem and a GTX 1390 in 4 SLI with 64 GB mem)...or something like that we will encounter in the far future...

[metalnwood]

I have been looking around the reviews, checking out the benchmarks etc and how they are relating to games.

 

Most of the reviews I see have the FPS for many games and compare the new i7 2600k's against lots of others including my i7-920.

 

I haven't seen any increases that I would not expect due to the higher clock speeds. I.e. the new 2600k runs about 22% faster clock and the FPS they get are roughly that. So I guess they are not doing a lot more per clock cycle that seems to be helping out games.

 

I am interested because with my eyefinity setup I could do with as much cpu as I can get (and gpu to be fair).

 

So if my 920 runs at 3.8 it looks like the sandy bridge benefit is I could get 4.6, something like a 17% increase in speed.

 

If there was also a 100% correlation in clock speed to FPS improvement, which I am sure there is not, then I might go from 30fps avg to 35avg because I could get a higher clock.

 

What am I missing? The game related benchmarks around the net dont seem to say this is a really super chip based on the figures..

 

It doesnt seem like its worth the upgrade if your already on an i7 with a good clock.

 

Am I missing something?

[RSharpe]

No for you, Sandy Bridge is a mostly diagonal-grade. It might be slightly up, but it's mostly sideways... for a lot of money in replacement cost. It's a worthy upgrade from someone coming from a Core 2 Duo.

[metalnwood]

Yes, thats what I was thinking but I had hoped for confirmation - or a miracle that it would be twice as fast :)

[Sticky]

What am I missing?

 

Only that not everyone in the world is on a i7 or i5 system ;) Some of us need an upgrade really badly, and this is perfect for us.

 

I ordered a 2500K and a MSi motherboard and a cpu cooler yesterday, and since my current system has old DDR2 memories I had to order new RAM aswell, and the ones I wanted (I took cheaper 1333 Mhz ones) were not in stock :( So I dont know when my order will arrive.

 

One good thing if you are going to upgrade and have an 1156 system is that you dont need to buy new memory or cpu heatsink, just the motherboard and CPU, so this might make some people upgrade even though they really dont need to.

 

(Edited bad english, hopefully..)

Edited January 12, 2011 by Sticky

[Cali]

Looks like if I build me a new computer in a few months I'll be going Sandy. With them being around $300 that is a good deal. We'll see what the price is in March, but I'm liking the benchmarks I'm seeing!

[Konovalov]

I would go Sandy if it wasn't for the fact that I only upgraded to a i7 950 back in late October. It will be interesting to see AMD's Bulldozer and if it can provide an alternative to Intels offering. I'm just hoping that 2011 brings a shakeup in the SSD market that brings better value for money along with higher capacity.

Edited January 13, 2011 by Konovalov