Thinking of a new PC but what would the gains be?

[Nyxx 6,993]

Currently PC is 3.5 years old.

running a 940 overclocked @4.0

FSX is on a old SSD 120gb,200MB/sec read

GTX 480

Win7

6gb of 1333 RAM

 

What Im looking at is a

Haswell @4.4

Gigabyte G1 Sniper Z87

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2133MHz

GTX 780

Samsung SSD 520mb/sec 500GB for FSX

Win7 on a 120gb Samsung SSD 520mb/sec

 

Question is how big a jump is this in terms of lets say FPS within FSX. What gain do you think I will see. Or should I wait till the nex gen broadwell to come out?

 

Thanks

[ryanbatc 12,800]

Funny, I was looking at the same board and CPU.  Though I'm already at a 2500k @ 4.2 GHz.

 

I'm betting though it would be significant....  sorry I don't have any numbers for you.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

My guess is that only the CPU speed will directly translate into fps improvements, so 10% better..

 

You've got a pretty well balanced system, as is..

 

But the overall experience is likely going to be smoother, especially under heavy conditions, like weather,

traffic, etc

[Robert McDonald 167]

Question is how big a jump is this in terms of lets say FPS within FSX. What gain do you think I will see. Or should I wait till the nex gen broadwell to come out?

 

 

A question for the ages.  You may not like or agree with the following comments, but if you're looking for advice based on personal experiences, please, read on.

 

 

If you are solely an FSX pilot, you will see a bit of improvement, but likely a relatively negligible one.  If you are looking for butter smooth graphics and great frames rates it would be my suggestion you play around with X-Plane 10.  Forget the demo, buy XPlane 10.  The demo is too time-limited, and you will become insanely frustrated when the timer runs out and you are barely off the ground.

 

What does x-Plane offer you that FSX does not, from a purely TECHNICAL point of view?

 

1.  SCALABILITY.  The more PCs and graphics cards and monitors you have on your flight deck, the better the overall flight experience can be.

 

2.  64-bits.  Not a sure-fire cure-all, but it DOES allow your simulator access to your maximum system ram.

 

3.  Split views with less distortion (as compared with WideView in FSX).  You can set up 180-degrees field of view on three monitors, driven by 3 pcs, and achieve a level of performance that is nearly mind-boggling.

 

4.  The ability to use ALL of your graphics-card VRAM.  The Vram (or 'video-ram' on the Titan Black (Formerly GTX Titan) is 6GB.  In FSX, that Vram goes principally to waste.  Not the case in XPlane, it can and does use it to permit stunning graphics and rendering.

 

IMHO, the 'minimum' acceptable Vram and best bang-for-buck for XPlane 10 is on the msi (and other brands) OC GTX 770 with 4GB Vram OPTION.  (Also available with only 2 GB vram, NOT recommended).

 

The FSX cognetti will tell you more than 2GB is overkill, I do NOT agree.

 

5.  A decent bronze power supply at 750 watts or better is a wise investment.  Best $80 USD you can invest other than your actual GPU itself.

 

Plan for high heat levels- invest in great case, well vented, and with muchos circulating fans!  If you're a distant relative of the late Lloyd Bridges, you might consider liquid-cooling, but for the rest of us, there's NOCTUA DH-14 (beware the razor sharp fin blades- wear heavy gloves during build).

 

Scalable means you can start with a 'centerpiece' PC, and then branch out with wingman pcs for multi-screens and crazy frames rates.  

 

Why all of this hubub and push for XPlane vs FSX?  Simply because no matter what else you're trying to do with your sim- you keep adding extra work to it (scenery add-ons, weather engines, ATC, complex aircraft,  texture packs, ortho scenery, etc...) you will cause even the most powerful of PCs to come to a grinding halt.  Because XP can divvy up the video work between multiple PCs, and because software like Sim-Avionics can run the complex airplane electronics on yet a 4th Networked PC, you benefit by splitting the tasks up amongst many PCs, not burying your "one and only" with the incredibly hard job of doing all of the calcs and renders on just ONE computer with only ONE graphics card and all of that in 32-bits!

 

Since FSX is severely limited in several ways (32-bit, does not take advantage of todays modern GPUS with huge VRAM possible), along with very old base-coding (programming), it can pay off to move to the dark side.

 

Usual caveats apply:  XPlane -does- have warts and weaknesses.  People who have invested a lot in FSX upgrades and hang-ons will feel a strong pull to keep what works, and what they have.  If you're happy with your present setup, there is simply NO REASON to change it.  Do NOT watch XP videos.  You may become unhappy with your chosen sim.  

 

If you're curious to see what the differences are, my YouTube site (link below my sig) has vids from both FSX as well as XP.

 

I think if you watch the night-vid of the approach to KSFO on triple-screens with triple-PCs, you will see what possibilities exist.  Throw in glass-cockpit software from FlightDeckSolutions (Sim-Avionics) and a couple of nice hardware bits (Pro-MX CDU and JetMaxx MCP/EFIS, also from FDS), and the impossible becomes reality.  And the frames are incredible.  Your CURRENT system could become part of your new multi-pc setup.  Remember, if you go XP, you will be rewarded for better components, particularly the GPU and the VRam on those GPUS.

 

Cheers.

[TheFamilyMan 279]

Last June I retired my i7 860 3.9Ghz OC, 2x4GB 2133 ram with a gtx 660 ti and replaced with 4770K using the same RAM and gcard.  I found that without an OC, my 4770K was at least on par performance wise to my OCed 860, but with a 4.5Ghz OC my 4770k leaped ahead in terms of smooth performance with my preferred slider and fsx.cnfg settings.  As far as FPS increase I cannot say for I always use 30 locked, but there are areas at which I regularly operate which would always bounce around 23-28 which now are nearly or completely solid at 30. 

 

Last week I tossed in a gtx 780 and upped the ram to 2400; still dialing in the performance on that upgrade.  Seems for most of FSX the 780 is at 40% to 50%.  Flying through layers of super dense cloud cover will peg it at 100% which send FPS down to 25 or so, but this drop could also be due to the CPU being clobbered as well.

[outofphaze 4]

It kind of depends on the add ons you are using and what you expect of the sim.

 

I personally have a ton of add ons to make the sim as real as I can make it. 

 

For this you pretty much need the highest over clock you can get. 

 

I am currently on a 2600K at 4.8 Mhz and still max out core 1 pretty much all the time. I do have a very stable sim though. 

 

I would advise you do not buy the Titan but a GTX 770, which is much better bang for your buck, and in FSX, you will see 0 difference between the 2. If you are planning to use P3DV2 however, you might see a very slight increase in performance. 

 

I would use the money to buy a water cooler instead. something like the H80i or H100i which will give you a nice over clock like mine. 

 

As for your RAM, you are better off getting RAM that is capable of lower timings that high clocks. The best would be 1866 at CL8 or CL9, instead of 2133 at CL10 or 11. 

 

If you do a new build though, with a 2600K or 3770k with a GTX 770 and a good over clock, I think you will see a huge performance increase. 

[Robert McDonald 167]

I would advise you do not buy the Titan but a GTX 770, which is much better bang for your buck, and in FSX, you will see 0 difference between the 2. If you are planning to use P3DV2 however, you might see a very slight increase in performance. 

 

I agree that the -4GB- Overclocked GTX 770 is probably a great value for money (about $400 street) as contrasted with the ~ $1000 USD Titan Black (Formerly GTX Titan), but if X-Plane is ever a consideration and money is not an object, the extra 2GB (6GB total on the Titan) can pay off -if- you are trying to run at max rendition levels.  Of course the 6GB of Vram on the Titan is useless in FSX, as you rightly stated.

 

If you are considering a 3-pc / 3-screens setup in X-Plane, I can vouch that there are times with Ortho Scenery where those OC 4GB 770s are a little less than ideal compared with the center-monitor / center-PC w/ Titan 6GB video.  Plain language, the Titan can generally plow through all but the very most extreme scenery loads, while there are times when the 770s overload. This is at KSAN (San Diego) with the KSAN ortho scenery pack which is a FSX to X-Plane conversion.  That scenery ALONE is 1GB.  The freeze up/stutter issue only happens about 10 miles out to the East from runway 27. I think that is when the default textures are unloaded and the ortho-scenery loads up. 

 

So far it's the ONLY place in XP where I have encountered the problem, which I empirically believe is caused by inefficient coding resultant from migrating FSX scenery to XPlane via software conversion.

[Nyxx 6,993]

Thank you for all the time in replying.

 

I will take it all on board and have a good think.