What rig for P3D v2?

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Hi all,

 

I'm flying P3D v2 almost all the time now. Works pretty good, but I'm wondering if a system upgrade will help my frames/smoothness/ability to use lots of addons.

 

I fly with: photoscenery very frequently (usually very hi-res homemade stuff), Orbx with lots of autogen other times. I like lots of AI traffic, REX 4 clouds, OPUS and complex airports on occasion.

 

Currently using an OC'd i7 950 @4000MHz that was built specifically for FSX with the best components I could find 3 years ago. I updated the video card last Christmas with an EVGA 680 FTW with 4 gig of memory.

 

Three questions:

 

Do you think I'd see much improvement with a Haswell (or Ivy Bridge) build? I figure on a bit more processing power and probably better bandwidth with the GPU (PCI-E 3), SSDs and memory. But P3D v2 is of course less CPU-bound.

 

Would an upgrade to a 780 Ti make enough difference to make me happy?

 

How much and which sort of memory would you choose for the above build given my planned usage?

 

Any suggestions before I spend my $$$ would be greatly appreciated!

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

[Mickeyj 35]

Hi Rob,

 

i fly v2 now nearly 99% of the time. Check my PC settings in my profile. I upgraded from 660ti to 780ti. Made a difference in terms of smoothnes and some FPS. The secret to P3D2 is its configuration. 

[-Stark- 3]

With your current set up what type of FPS are you getting?  My current computer is solid with the lowest component being the older GTX570 video card.  I currently run at around 40 FPS with high to ultra settings, nominal traffic and 1 scenery addon (Mega earth).

 

I'm newish to Flight Sims so just getting spun up on what I think I need to have.  Bought a Yoke and Pedals a few weeks ago... got Megaearth for my state and a few planes last week.  Now looking into some additional scenery addons but wasn't sure if I need to update my video card to make it worth it.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Hey Bob, I'm not sure quoting FPS is very useful as it really depends on where my sliders are! Let's say 20-30 FPS, more when the install was new (with no addons), less now with MyTraffic X, Rex 4, OPUS, FSDT/FLyTampa/Orbx AU SP4 etc.

 

Although I like all types of flying my number one wish is perfect photoscenery performance.

 

Done a  little bit of reading in the last few hours since posting, am thinking at the moment of:

• Haswell i7 4770K
• ASUS Z87 Mobo ?Which
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro - saw 2400MHz recommended in another thread but my (big, online) computer store doesn't seem to have faster than 2133MHz as a stocked item - is 2400MHz new, and is it necessary?
• Keep my current Noctua NH-D14, Antec case and 850W power supply, various HDDs, optical drives etc
• Get a new 500gig/1Tb SSD so I don't keep running out of room on the P3D drive (once Orbx start releasing more P3D v2 installers)
• Stick with Win 7 64 bit

 

Comments?

[Bill Maher 1]

Rob,

 

I just did a build with the 4770K and the ASUS Z87-Plus.  They are good choices.  

 

As far as which Z87 model you pick, it really depends on what bonus features you want.  Newegg did a good video with JJ (the guy from Asus who is all over the internet) going over the features of all of their mainstream Z87 Mobos.  I chose the Z87-Plus because it provided all the standard features, including Crossfire support for my 2 cards, but I did not need on-board WiFi which is the major feature added to the next step up (Z87-Pro).  Watch the video I referenced, though, and I think it will help you.

 

For memory I used Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866 MHz.  Personally, I doubt that you'd see a difference at 2400 MHz vs 2133 that would justify the expense, but I'm sure there are benchmarks out there to confirm that.

[Mickeyj 35]

i7 4770k is a good choice and the mobo too. One thing to add ons. i do have some add ons instlled but i switched nearly all off that are not 100% compatible to P3D2 like FSDT and Flightbeam stuff they do hav the installer but have some performance issues due to some old FS9 code or so.

 

I used Ultimate Traffic 2 for quite some time with P3D2 and had less than 3-4 FPS loss but now i switched it off. I fly mostly choppers low and slow and/or carrier ops so no need for heavy traffic. Good about UT2 it just places traffic around the user plane.

[-Stark- 3]

I'm used to judging everything by FPS... much like how people try to judge fitness with bench press weight.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

OK, so at the moment I'm planning on a pretty standard modern FSX build. It's always interesting to come back for a flightsim computer update (for me, it happens about every three years) and try and work out what's changed.

 

i7 4770K with noctua NH-D14

Asus Z87 Pro mobo

Memory: probably Corsair Vengeance Pro (which should fit under the NH-D14), thinking of the 2133MHz frequency version, planning on 16 gig

New SSD: will be the Samsung EVO (rather than the Pro) - for P3D and X-plane install - probably need 512Gig

New HDD: Western Digital 4TB Black - for photoscenery etc

OS: Still planning on Windows 7 64 bit but toying with the idea of a Windows 8 install

Graphics: keep the 680 GTX and upgrade to the fabled 790 GTX when it is released

PSU: keep my old 850W non-Haswell compatible PSU and just desibale the C6/C7 power management stuff in the bios (if I've got that right)

 

Two questions:

 

1. Any comments on the revised parts list?

 

and, more importantly...

 

2. Does anyone have any comments on how a P3D v2 build differes from an optimal FSX build? As far as I can see, apart from having a really good graphics card the principles are pretty similar. But I'm wondering about the relative importance of memory CAS/frequency, things like that.

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

[Bill Maher 1]

I would stick with Windows 7.  The latest news/rumors are having Windows 9 come out next year, with key features returned to the desktop version (e.g. a true Start menu).  Given the poor upgrade percentage and overall sales for Windows 8, it might go the way of Windows Me and other Microsoft "in-between good releases" OSes.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

I would stick with Windows 7.  The latest news/rumors are having Windows 9 come out next year, with key features returned to the desktop version (e.g. a true Start menu).  Given the poor upgrade percentage and overall sales for Windows 8, it might go the way of Windows Me and other Microsoft "in-between good releases" OSes.

 

Probably sensible.

 

I hear talk of Win 8 being the only way to get future DirectX 11.x updates. And I think the disappearing joysticks etc will get worked out. But seems P3D v2 is programmed with Win 7 64 bit i mind (as far as I can tell).

 

Win 8 also has better SSD performance, I believe - that was the other thing I was thinking of as I'm planning to put P3D on a SSD (I currently run the OS and flightsim on two separate SSDs, 128gig each. Just going to upgrade to 256gig and 512gig, and change from Ocz to Samsung EVO).

[Bill Maher 1]

Yeah, there are certainly some advantages to 8 over 7 in the performance realm. I contemplated putting 8 on my recent build, but I'm gonna stick with 7 for the foreseeable future. The recent news about 9 (if it proves accurate) makes me happy that I made that call.