Creating a poll could of course be interesting but I still think the only way to know for sure is to see the difference with your own eyes and since that is not possible without first spending the money I think I'll stay with my current setup for now but who knows...ask me in a couple of hours again and I might say the opposite :wink:

Creating a poll could of course be interesting but I still think the only way to know for sure is to see the difference with your own eyes and since that is not possible without first spending the money I think I'll stay with my current setup for now but who knows...ask me in a couple of hours again and I might say the opposite :wink:

 

From someone that's made the change from (2600K @ 4.9Ghz/GTX 680/2133Mhz RAM) to a (4770K @ 4.5Ghz/GTX 780/2400Mhz RAM), from my persepctive the change was worth it.

 

I was already getting great performance with my 2600K, but am now getting better FPS and perceptibly more smoothness, at least in my eyes.

 

Bear in mind though the motivation for me to upgrade was that I was moving to a 1440P monitor and I also wanted the Z87 chipset because I have 4 SSD's and wanted to take advantage of the extra native Sata3 ports as well as pcie 3.0.

 

The risk with Haswell is that you may get a chip that can't overclock as high due to the thermal issues you will see plastered about everywhere. I was fairly luck and can run 4.5Ghz stable at 1.225 vcore which from what I've read is a pretty decent chip. Temps are also in check, but if I try to push higher than about 4.6 I would probably need to delid.

 

I also sold off my 2600K system to offset the cost of this new one.

Thanks Anthony, that's great input!

 

To me what you say here confirms what I've been thinking, that I would probably just like you get a more "fluid" ride in FSX despite already having a pretty good rig. My main concern is really exactly what you say...that it's pretty much like a lottery if I would get a good performing chip.

 

In the past it was easier since you could improve your odds quite a bit making sure you got a chip from a good batch but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I did however find some interesting info and at least some "hints" what batches might increase your odds  a bit over at http://hwbot.org/ from guys testing lots of CPUs.

 

Do you by any chance know the batch # of your chip?

 

What I've found so far is that the below batches of the 4770K chips might increase your odds getting a good performing chip a bit.

 

L310B488/489/491

L311B512

L312B515

L315B371

 

 

Do you by any chance know the batch # of your chip?

 

My batch is L307B246.

 

I posted in the FSXMark11 thread about some of my results and in that test I was able to average just over 50FPS.

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/329116-fsxmark11/?p=2779835

 

Mind you my result was slightly limited by the fact I have 2 x GTX 780's in my system, so even with SLI disabled the one card is running at pcie3 x8 and not x16. I haven't tried removing a card to test it at x16 yet but I might have a chance to do this over the weekend.

 

Also, my RAM is 2400Mhz CL10. If I was able to get CL9 (which unfortunately I couldn't source here in Australia), my results would have been a bit better again.

 

Just something to factor in.

Thanks for the info!

 

Checked out the latest activity in the FSXMark11 thread, rather impressing results in there even beating the 60FPS barrier...wow!

 

After this I'm more tempted than ever upgrading my FSX rig :-P

Westman always seems to have impressive results. lol

 

Just keep in mind he is using phase change cooling though so his temps are sub-zero from what I understand. Also his RAM is running insanely fast.

 

Oh just FYI also, my overclock is with HT on currently so I may be able to push higher without the need to delid if I turned HT off.

 

It all seems to come down to how well you do with the chip lottery when you buy your CPU, more seem to be limited by heat as opposed to voltage, although I have seen some people seemingly having to push a lot of voltage for a pretty meagre overclock (somewhere in the vicinity of 1.3v for 4.2Ghz). IMO though this could be down to the user since Haswell is a little more tricky to OC than Sandy/Ivy since there are more variables to change.

Yeah, now that you mention it I was wondering why you have HT enabled because as far as I know fsx won't benefit from it?

 

As for the lottery getting a good chip that is what worries me most, quite an expensive lottery...

Yep you're right, FSX doesn't really take much benefit from having HT enabled if at all as far as I'm aware, but having it enabled also doesn't hurt FSX. However other programs certainly do make use of HT, hence the reason I've left it enabled for now.

 

Also, with Haswell it's overclockability is limited more by heat than voltage, and you will hit the temperature wall before the voltage wall (unless you delid). With my particular chip the difference in temps between HT on or off was pretty minimal if I remember correctly, so I left it on.

 

Aside from that, 4.5Ghz was the minimum I wanted to achieve so I decided to settle on that for a while and fly/play before I go ahead and try pushing higher.