Best CPU upgrade

[CarlosF 1,241]

Get the best CPU and GPU you can get!

 

Getting the best cpu/gpu can be very expensive. Now if you are in a budget like some of us may be, then you would have to wait and see what v2 brings and after a few tests on you current hardware, you can then pinpoint where your bottleneck is.

 

That said and if money is no object, by all means get the best there is.

 

I think that if V2 is really optimized for performance (like LM has stated) then even with my old pc specs I should be fine.

 

Of course if I wanted to fly at max settings then I would have to take into consideration the test results and spend my money on the piece of hardware that's going to make a bigger difference.  

[simmerhead 885]

Getting the best cpu/gpu can be very expensive. Now if you are in a budget like some of us may be, then you would have to wait and see what v2 brings and after a few tests on you current hardware, you can then pinpoint where your bottleneck is.

 

Hence the "you can get" part.

 

I was fine with FSX back in 2006 on a 1400MHz computer. While everybody was whining I was out flying and having fun. The sim is highly configurable and can be made to work on very modest computers, but people doesn't just want to have cake, they want to eat it too.

 

Even if parts of the ESP rendering engine gets rewritten you will still want a CPU and GPU that match eachother. It isn't simply a case of offloading a few processes to the GPU and then not needing a stellar CPU anymore. The biggest theoretical benefit with GPU offloading is the ability to free VAS and have less risk of OOMs with heavy use of the sim. But the current sim allready does that (all graphics in FSX and P3D are rendered with the GPU). What LM might have solved in P3D v2 is the inefficient way the GPU and CPU work together.

[gingerterry 16]

Thanks guys, lots to think about. I will as some suggest just wait till v2 comes out and see what I need from there. thanks.

 

[JimmiG 244]

Too little is known about P3D 2.0 to make an informed decision. We know it will use the GPU more efficiently and demand more from the GPU, but we don't know just how much. Maybe a GTX 660 will still be enough, maybe we'll all have to upgrade to the Titan.

 

Same thing with the CPU - currently, FSX and P3D don't benefit much from having more than 4 cores available. What matters is clock speed and IPC. Most likely, the same will remain true with P3D 2.0, but we just don't know. Right now, your best choice for a CPU is the 4670K or 4770K, depending on your budget. If having 6 cores available is a huge benefit in P3D 2.0, you're better off looking at the Ivy Bridge-E series for socket LGA 2011.

[gandy 18]

I just brought a GTX760 and if i have to upgrade again my wife will kill me :huh:

 

But yeah playing the waiting game now to find out if i need an upgrade or not.

[Akila 39]

 would it be better to go for a higher clock duel core or a lower clock quad?

 

this is the official reply I got from Prepar3D team by email about a month ago asking them the same question.

in my case it was 8 Core at lower GHz or 6 Core at higher GHz (OC) I was interested about.

Prepar3D v2 specifications will be out later this year but it will utilize less cores but higher GHz better.
Thank you for interest and best of luck.

Have a great day,
The Prepar3D Team

I don't know if it is also valid between Dual core and Quad core. shoot them an email and ask them.they will answer you like they answered me.

[cowpatz 243]

Maybe at least an i7 as it looks like it will utilize hyperthreading.

[gingerterry 16]

Having read the latest blog from LM it would appear that we are shifting away from CPU to GPU. My i5 750 runs at about 2900hz and this plays P3D really smoothly with the megasceneryearth v2 USA which is where I predominantly fly these days.

As such, with photo scenery, there is very little autogen until I hit the major airports of which I do own a few. I do have all the GA and airport traffic turned down because the way I see it is that this is a flight sim and not an airport sim, so don't see the point of having loads of stuff going on at an airport while your not there, on the off chance of you dropping into it.

I think instead of looking at a new CPU I will save for a better GPU. I have had my GTX550 ti for a couple of years now so due to upgrade anyway, and save again for a CPU which would probably involve a new MB too. Thanks for the replies . Terry

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

i5 3570k and fx6300 cpu hope the improvments are engough to turnicate fsx someday as it limitations are well known. Do not mind buying planes that are p3d comparable for carendo models i own, and A2A cessna too. If MSE works with p3d im sold right there. Get something that can scale to 2014 software is what really matters to me.

[Domestos 10]

Hallo...

Well here we are 6 months later and P3d V2(.2!) is out.

 

To the OP, what did you end up doing. I ask because I have an i5-750 @4.0Ghz and a gigabyte GTX 760oC. I would say my performance is merely OK. Cloud shadows are a no no.

I was getting 28-30 fps in the air in the AXE over FTX Global last night on approach to UK2000 East Midlands but it dropped quite a bit when taxi-ing to the gate.

 

I'm wondering how much an  i5-4670K would help, anyone know?

 

Jim

[DylanM 1,069]

Hi Jim, out of curiosity, have you tried setting a lower fiber frame time fraction in the CFG (between 0.1 and 0,2)? I've found that helps balance out the terrain paging in 2.2 and frees up the CPU to do more crunching at busy airports (for traffic, custom autogen, etc).

 

Good luck.

[AlphaInfinity 13]

I have a 2500k. Will be waiting for the 8 core broadwell due out later this year. I have seen all of the benchmarks, there is not a processor out there at the moment that justifies upgrading from what I have now. 

[FlyIce 354]

I have a 2500k too and I was lucky to be able to o/c it to 4.9GHz. This is really giving me a hard time for CPU upgrade. As far as I can see, even the latest Intel CPU can hardly pass 4.9GHz on o/c which means they won't give any meaningfully more performance on P3D than my current 2500k@4.9GHz. I'd love to hear otherwise...

[Jetblst 23]

Here we are even FURTHER down the road with P3D off and running in V2.0

 

My two cents not worth even that is that FSX...  I'm tired of the constant adjustments, DX10 fixer patchers, some new song and dance tweak.  I too did the NickN Bible shuffle.  <- WHICH by the way is the best method out there for a novice to medium tech minded person to build their own FSX rig which is the scope of his work.

Quickly - I will add that VIA NickNs bible I never NEVER have any CTD, OOM, or any other faults or problems.  So there is a lot to be said for him.

 

Either way I like many others I am sure, are about done with the no longer supported FSX and ready to move on to another chapter in Flight Sim.

 

So...  Does anyone at all have any stats yet on 1.  What hardware they settled down on using and why.  2.  Good solid results and advice to give to others to follow?

 

Thanks!

[Jim Young 2,356]

Everyone continues tweaking even when they are getting great performance and FPS because every scenario (what is loaded, the flightplan, the time of the day, the weather, etc.) changes and what was great for one situation may not work as well in another situation. I think the best thing you can do is set modest settings (not everything maxed out) and live with them. I use the settings in the AVSIM FSX Configuration Guide and they generally work great for me. Crisp graphics most of the time and high fps. I use no tweaks as I think tweaks are bad (so did NickN when he wrote his Bible). Powerful systems today really do not need any tweak to make fsx work better because it won't work better. I have personally tried all of the tweaks over the past year and none have worked for me. In fact they slowed down my system in many cases and caused stuttering, long pauses, and other anomalies. I do use two tweaks - the LOD Radius has been raised to 6.5 over the default max of 4.5 and I have raised the Texture_Max_Load from the default of 1024 to 4096. The 4096 setting works most of the time but there is really no visible changes I have seen between 2048HD and 4096HD. The difference increases performance but nothing really aw, gee, whiz stuff. I do use Direct X 10 in FSX and, of course, DX11 in P3DV2 (automatically turned on) and, of course, that provides performance gains in FSX.

 

Bottom line - stop tweaking and go fly. There is no holy grail of settings out there and you will never find it with current tweaks and settings. If a new performance tweak ever shows up though, you and everyone else will immediately know about it. I think we have to wait for the next generation of computers and continued software coding of P3D in order for that ability to max everything out and see people on buildings and walking on the streets at a solid 40 fps.

 

Best regards,