Just wanted to post my initial impressions of the new stuff.

 

Friend is not a flight simmer but he's gonna let me come back over with FSX and our NGX and 777 this weekend to try it.

 

Specs of the machine we built:

 

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 922

Motherboard: Asus Z87-A

CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K Haswell

CPU Cooler - CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo

RAM: 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 (2 x 8GB)

GPU: EVGA GTX 770 2GB

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB

Mass Storage HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA

Optical drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST SATA

WiFi card: Asus PCE-N15

OS: Windows 7 Pro x64

Total cost in parts was around $1600 from Newegg.

 

- Physical build went well - bit of advice if you get this mobo: attach the SATA cables to the mobo *before* installing the GPU - they sit right below it and it's a pain to do it once the card is in. Watch the gold heatsinks over the MOSFETs surrounding the CPU socket too - they're very easy to knock loose.

 

- This was my first experience with the new graphical UEFI BIOS thing and it took me a bit to understand it and become comfortable with it compared to the older DOS-like BIOS interfaces. I inadvertently set it to automatically OC the CPU at first and that resulted in some BSODs while trying to install Windows 7 from a USB stick. Figured it out and got it down to stock speeds and everything was solid after that. I suspec the CPU voltage was too low for the speeds it was trying to auto OC to. We didn't attempt any manual overclocking yet - I wanted to read up a bit more on how people are doing this on this platform and what's most successful first before really attempting it.

 

- The GTX 770 is a beast of a GPU. We ran some high end benchmark stuff like Uniengine Valley on it and it was scoring in the high 40 FPS range at 1080p even on the totally maxed out "Extreme HD" setting with the super high AA levels and stuff. Bringing AA down to a reasonable level easily had it over 60 FPS and basically looking just as good. My friend is primarily a strategy gamer and the card completely tore through stuff like the new SimCity game (which looks very cool and unique graphically by the way), StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm and Civilzation V. This is probably going to be my next GPU later this summer.

 

- The Samsung 840 Pro is a great SSD - extremely fast on a board like this that has the native SATA III 6.0 Gbps controller. The system boots in less than 5 seconds from the time the Windows splash animation starts following the POST.

I'll post back with my FSX findings once I get a chance to run it over there. (I'm planning to duplicate my own configuration as far as addons etc so that it's a valid comparison to my current machine) I also want to run a few of the CPU benchmarks that sites like HardOCP and Anand run - I'm very curious to see how this scores compared to a higher clocked Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge. That'll give us a pretty good idea of which route is best for FSX right now. I'm kinda suspecting the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge pushed into the 4.8 GHz range probably beats it even if you can get it up to 4.5 or so.

C'mon, Ryan, that's torture:

 

Just wanted to post my initial impressions of the new stuff.

 

Friend is not a flight simmer but he's gonna let me come back over with FSX and our NGX and 777 this weekend to try it.

 

(...)

 

 

Just wanted to post my initial impressions of the new stuff.

 

Thanks for doing this Ryan... (obviously) many here will like to hear your assessment of how well FSX runs and oc-ability.

 

I have a pair of 830s (840s hadn't been released)... aren't they great?  Just amazing how quick for Windows install.  And the reboot... a restart and I am back in Windows before my older system (skulltrail) even starts to POST.

 

That price is fantastic too... same same for just one cpu for that skulltrail (QX9775).   :fool:

 

I really like how you can update the bios with just a usb key and the push of a button.

My PC boots up from a cold and dark state to Windows in less than 20 seconds. Would never go back to a spinner drive. thanks for posting your initial impressions. I'll be very interested in the overclockability of that chip. Please share in future posts. Regards.

Looking forward to hearing your results. I have been holding off on a PC upgrade waiting for the Haswell chip. I would also like to hear reports from others before I make the leap. I have a very good system now but would like to make the move plus get a larger SSD. Hope all is well Ryan.

Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to go back over there to run FSX yet.

 

I did do a bunch of reading though and I found a guy who's been running identical CPU benchmarks at one of the overclocking forums using SB, IB, and Haswell at different overclocks.

 

His conclusion is basically this:

 

4770K @ 4.5 = 3770K @ 4.8 = 2700K @ 5.0

He got nearly identical scores in standard CPU benchmarks the review sites use like Cinebench when testing with those CPUs at those frequencies. Combine that with the HardOCP review that says approximately 70% of the 4770Ks can hit 4.5 stable out of the box with good cooling (ie no deliding) and it sort of seems like Haswell might be ok here for FSX. I still would like to see actual results though from FSX.

I think I've been reading up on that same guys benchmarks Ryan.

 

Quite a few others indicating the same things too. I think with this Haswell gen it's more the Motherboard features generating sales, i.e. more native Sata 6GB's ports. That's what I'm after for my build.

 

Ideally I'd like to run Ram at 2400Mhz though. From what I'm reading that may be difficult when overclocking.

Very nice. I'm at 4.3 GHz currently with my i7 4770K, but I will try for higher later. 4.3 GHz was completely effortless - just bump the voltage to 1.2V, set the multiplier and you're good to go. I've just run Aida64 stress test overnight and it was stable - temps were jumping between 60 and 65C.

 

With a Carenado plane, at OrbX Anacortes with all options checked and Autogen at Extremely Dense, I'm getting 21-25 FPS, vs ~8 FPS on my old Phenom II X4 @ 3.7 GHz. Even if I don't overclock further, I'm very happy with those results. An additional 200 MHz would only give me about 1 FPS anyway.

Wow yeah, going to a 4770K from a Phenom II is going to be ridiculous. Congrats on the new machine!

My PC boots up from a cold and dark state to Windows in less than 20 seconds. Would never go back to a spinner drive. thanks for posting your initial impressions. I'll be very interested in the overclockability of that chip. Please share in future posts. Regards.

 

I have a gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77

 

It has some intel IRT tech on it that will use a SSD drive ( up to 60GB ) as a cache for your spinning drive.

 

Power on to fully booted in 42 seconds ( win 7 64 bit on 1TB WD Black 7200RPM )

not too shabby for a spinner ...

 

at any rate it was a pretty cheap way to increase performance without the $$$ for a large SSD drive.

 

 

With a Carenado plane, at OrbX Anacortes with all options checked and Autogen at Extremely Dense, I'm getting 21-25 FPS

 

Only 21-25 fps. My expectation from the newest most powerful CPUs were higher. And a Carenado plane isn't hard on fps. Did you have everything maxed out in FSX ? I had hoped for demanding planes like PMDG NGX 737 to stay stable 30 fps.

I did do a bunch of reading though and I found a guy who's been running identical CPU benchmarks at one of the overclocking forums using SB, IB, and Haswell at different overclocks.

 

 

Ryan, I would like to read through this, will you post a link to this guy's thread.

I always use the most severe scenario I can think of when assessing hardware performance in FSX. I'll fly an approach into KJFK using the PMDG NGX with Aerosoft Manhattan scenery and REX weather tweaked up for good measure. My rig will dip into the high teens for a bit but usually stays around 22-25 FPS in that scenario, still perfectly flyable. Properly tweaking the config file and the NVIDIA graphics settings is the key IMO. Going from the native 3.9 GHZ to 4.5 was a sizable improvement during my testing. A 4-5 FPS gain may not sound like much to many people but in the above scenario it makes the difference between a smooth sim and stutters.

Guy !!! here a link to and article that tells a lot about Haswell and Intel doings lately:

 

 

    http://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/Intel-Prevents-Overclocking-non-K-Haswell-Processors-and-Strips-Virtualization-and-T#comments

 

    P.S. It will open your eye about what we can expect from Intel in the future

 

   Happy Flying!!!!!

Ryan,

 

You get a chance to do any comparisons yet?