The subject says it all...I'm thinking of upgrading my 2700K-based FSX-rig to the new Haswell architecture and my GTX 680 to a GTX 780 or even a Titan and was wondering if anyone who already did a similar upgrade can share their experiences.

 

I have my 2700K clocked @ 4800GHz using a Corsair H100i cooler with good temps and I hope should I go for a 4770K to be able to still use my H100i and clock the new 4770K @ 4.5 GHz or possibly even higher wtih some luck.

 

How big was the performance boost for anyone who already did a similar upgrade and was it worth it...?

 

Thanks a lot in advance for any input!

hello 

as you see in this link : http://forum.avsim.net/topic/412162-cpus-compared-clock-for-clock-fsxmarkcpu/

 

somebody compares the two cpu's and the difference is about 6 frames ( this is a benchmark only ) . me being a ivy bridge user im very pleased with it . but coming from sandy bridge would be a good upgrade especially if your going to overclock of course . 

 

just my 2 cents 

 

btw : i can see that this is you post number 3333 congrats haha  :lol:

OK, thanks - that's a great post you linked!

 

Will read through it but having 6-7 extra FPS sure can make a huge difference flying into a busy airport online on Vatsim so maybe it would be worth the upgrade then.

 

Hmm...always equally hard to decide these kind of things and just thinking of a total reinstall of both Win7 and FSX with all addons makes me sick but what wouldn't you do for your hobby :wink:

Hi

I have gone from 2700k to 3770k and last 4770k

GPU 670 , 680 and Titan .

GPU a should go for the 780 ( i Buy My Titan early)

2700k- 4770k for me its worth it the 2700 to 3770k not.

4770k @ 4.5 outperfomed the 2700k @5.3

OK, thanks - that's a great post you linked!

 

Will read through it but having 6-7 extra FPS sure can make a huge difference flying into a busy airport online on Vatsim so maybe it would be worth the upgrade then.

 

Hmm...always equally hard to decide these kind of things and just thinking of a total reinstall of both Win7 and FSX with all addons makes me sick but what wouldn't you do for your hobby :wink:

thats why i run ccleaner ALL THE TIME and other applications that free memory etc ...  :lol: so  i dont feel guilty that im the reason fsx isnt running to its full potential . 

Regards

4770k @ 4.5 outperfomed the 2700k @5.3

Can u reference that please or is that personal experience?

New mobo and CPU for just a 10% perf boost, I'd say not worth it at all. As for the GPU, only if you want to run better AA

Will read through it but having 6-7 extra FPS sure can make a huge difference flying into a busy airport online on Vatsim so maybe it would be worth the upgrade then.

 

Remember that you need to think in %. You won't get another 6-7FPS where you now have 20FPS.

 

Haswell is a bit over 15% faster than Sandy at the same clockspeed. So instead of 13 FPS you get 15, or instead of 20 FPS you get 23. But factor in slightly lower overclocked speed but possibly faster ram and you probably end up with about a 10% improvement. So what was 10FPS will now be 11. Or what was 20 FPS will now be 22.

 

In general a 10% improvement is when we really start to notice the difference. It would be very close to the performance you'd get out of your current Sandy @ 5.3GHz.

Thanks for all good input so far!

 

As for the performance what I find most important rather than looking at the FPS or percentage boost is the actual "feel" flying and how smooth things are so for that reason it would be really great if those of you who already did an upgrade from a 2700K and maybe also a GTX 680 could comment on how you found the upgrade affected the overall feel and smoothness in FSX.

I went from a GTX670 to the GTX780 and the difference is very noticeable. With TrackIR all movements in the VC are much smoother, I can run at a higher AA setting, and performance in taxing situations (Multiple layers of heavy clouds, complex aircraft, scenery) is better. My benchmarking flight is sitting at FlightBeam KIAD 19C with heavy T-Storms in the NGX, taking off and doing a circuit. I had about an 8-10 increase in FPS in the VC looking at a screen full of could textures. I also am doing this at 4X SSGS AA setting as opposed to 2X in the 670. 

 

EDIT: I am also running at 2560x1080. 

WebMaximus, on 13 Sept 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Will read through it but having 6-7 extra FPS sure can make a huge difference flying into a busy airport online on Vatsim so maybe it would be worth the upgrade then.

This is a meaningless metric until you define EXACTLY where the '6-7 extra FPS' are. If it's going from 30 frames to 36-37 frames, this represents an ~20% increase in the frame rate metric. OTOH for example, let's say you are 100% maxed out for every single setting in FSX, using the most complex AA settings possible in Inspector, defining what monitor resolution and how many monitors, and right on thru to you zoom factor in the VC, cloud bit depth, LOD 6.5, EVERY single factor configurable thru fsx.cfg. You're in FTX PNW scenery on the 34R at KSEA in the NGX, in FSX heavy weather for example, the canned one perhaps it's called Major Storms or something along those lines. In your current box, let's say you are seeing 12 FPS. Adding 6-7 frames is now a 50+% increase in frame performance.

 

When you factor in Haswell ~15% increase in processing power from the changes in microarchitecuture, coupled w/ generally less overclockability for Haswell, you're looking at maybe a 12% increase, and that assumes 1:1linear scaling. If you happen to get a lower end Haswell chip and only get 4.3Ghz, well now you're looking at maybe only 9% improvement. Quite frankly, it's hard to say for sure 1:1 is accurate in all situations. In any case, you get the idea.

 

Hopefully you're considering this upgrade for other reasons besides frame performance because dialing back a hardly significant variable in FSX will likely get you a similar outcome. The issue is that, as you well know, most of the time your 4.8 SB chip delivers just fine. When it's struggling some in the bigger terminals, going from 18fps to 20fps is really hardly worth the trouble & expense, is it? Struggling at 18 fps and now to 20 fps will not meaningful make your experience better, really. However, you may have other reasons for upgrading? I think it's fair to say FPS is only one component of 'performance' with the others including IQ, freedom from stuttering or smoothness, etc. I know my SB-E chip performs fabulously when we take into account all of these components of performance. I'm also glad I have a chip that runs cool at low voltage.

 

Now that I've gone and responded I see SAAB is saying the same thing essentially!

Can u reference that please or is that personal experience?

Just personal experiance, and Did some fsmark11 runs you find them in the fsmak11 tread.

 

Was close to Buy a 4960x but it seems to be a bad overclocker both on air water and subzero. I shall wait and see probaly i Buy one ,

I went from a GTX670 to the GTX780 and the difference is very noticeable. With TrackIR all movements in the VC are much smoother, I can run at a higher AA setting, and performance in taxing situations (Multiple layers of heavy clouds, complex aircraft, scenery) is better. My benchmarking flight is sitting at FlightBeam KIAD 19C with heavy T-Storms in the NGX, taking off and doing a circuit. I had about an 8-10 increase in FPS in the VC looking at a screen full of could textures. I also am doing this at 4X SSGS AA setting as opposed to 2X in the 670. 

 

EDIT: I am also running at 2560x1080. 

 

OK, that's interesting and good news you noticed that performance boost!

 

Not sure though how big the difference is in FSX between the 670 you went from and the 680 I'm having. Did you also upgrade your CPU or only your gfx card and what CPU are you running?

Hi

I have gone from 2700k to 3770k and last 4770k

GPU 670 , 680 and Titan .

GPU a should go for the 780 ( i Buy My Titan early)

2700k- 4770k for me its worth it the 2700 to 3770k not.

4770k @ 4.5 outperfomed the 2700k @5.3

 

That's great numbers!

I just upgraded the GFX card (last weekend actually, it was on sale at my local MicroCenter). I have a 3770k OCed to 4.8. See my PC spec on the left for more info. 

 

I was reading a few of the new NickN guides on SimForums and based on my experience with the 670 and a lot of his info I feel like the system was bottlenecking at the GPU due to the high OC. Also, in my case, the added video memory and overall card design on the 780 is very beneficial for the high resolution I run at. When I initially purchased this rig last July I had a 1600x900 monitor and the 670 was fine in most situations. 

This is a meaningless metric until you define EXACTLY where the '6-7 extra FPS' are. If it's going from 30 frames to 36-37 frames, this represents an ~20% increase in the frame rate metric. OTOH for example, let's say you are 100% maxed out for every single setting in FSX, using the most complex AA settings possible in Inspector, defining what monitor resolution and how many monitors, and right on thru to you zoom factor in the VC, cloud bit depth, LOD 6.5, EVERY single factor configurable thru fsx.cfg. You're in FTX PNW scenery on the 34R at KSEA in the NGX, in FSX heavy weather for example, the canned one perhaps it's called Major Storms or something along those lines. In your current box, let's say you are seeing 12 FPS. Adding 6-7 frames is now a 50+% increase in frame performance.

 

When you factor in Haswell ~15% increase in processing power from the changes in microarchitecuture, coupled w/ generally less overclockability for Haswell, you're looking at maybe a 12% increase, and that assumes 1:1linear scaling. If you happen to get a lower end Haswell chip and only get 4.3Ghz, well now you're looking at maybe only 9% improvement. Quite frankly, it's hard to say for sure 1:1 is accurate in all situations. In any case, you get the idea.

 

Hopefully you're considering this upgrade for other reasons besides frame performance because dialing back a hardly significant variable in FSX will likely get you a similar outcome. The issue is that, as you well know, most of the time your 4.8 SB chip delivers just fine. When it's struggling some in the bigger terminals, going from 18fps to 20fps is really hardly worth the trouble & expense, is it? Struggling at 18 fps and now to 20 fps will not meaningful make your experience better, really. However, you may have other reasons for upgrading? I think it's fair to say FPS is only one component of 'performance' with the others including IQ, freedom from stuttering or smoothness, etc. I know my SB-E chip performs fabulously when we take into account all of these components of performance. I'm also glad I have a chip that runs cool at low voltage.

 

Now that I've gone and responded I see SAAB is saying the same thing essentially!

 

Thanks for your very thorough reply!

 

Lots of good points you have and I'll try to comment.

 

First of all I'm what I'm most interested in is not as I said in a post above my actual FPS or the percentage of improved performance but what I'm interested in is of course to have a smooth experience when flying without any stutters (or at least as few as possible).

 

This is important to me both for what I'll see outside the cockpit window while flying but also when panning around the v/c using TrackIR. What I often see with my current setup is when I approach an airport that is heavy on the FPS flying online and of course this is especially true if there's lots of online traffic and bad weather is that the smoothness panning around the cockpit for instance gets affected quite noticable but also in some regard what I see outside the cockit windows. If I have a look at my FPS when this happens the FPS usually is somewhere between 15-22 or so while it normally is between 25-30 when I find everything smooth.

 

So...what I of course am after here is trying to get the same smoothness also where I'm currently experiencing this stuttering both outside and inside the aircraft. Now is that would be possible by doing this kind of upgrade well that is my main question and that is the only reason I would do an upgrade.

 

Looking at FSX I would dare to say my FSX is very well tuned and I highly doubt I could do much more in that regard. Of course I could start moving the sliders to the left but I don't want to do this since the visual experience is equally important to me as the smoothness. Currently I have all sliders to the far right except for the autogen which I have set to normal and water is set to Low 2.x and last I have all traffic in FSX disabled. I'm running LOD at default (4.5) and I only use 1024 textures. This is the way I like FSX and I will not change that.

 

So again...if performing this kind of upgrade would give me less stuttering both when panning around the cockpit in heavy situations when flying online as well as give me a smoother flight looking outside the cockpit windows I would be fine with investing the money since FSX is my main hobby but then again if the difference would be hardy noticeable obviously I don't want to throw my money away.