My AMD Story - Upgrading to a FX 8350 reasonable?

[sylosis 0]

Hey guys,

 

I've been thinking about upgrading my PC. I mainly use it for Flightsimming (and office stuff, but that's irrelevant in this case).

But probably my system differs a lot from the system a lot of simmers have, because I'm a proud AMD user, never was disappointed by AMD, my CPUs kept running and running. Great pieces of hardware.

Speaking of hardware, here are my specs:

 

AMD Athlon II X4 @ 3.4GHz

4GB DDR3 RAM

AMD Radeon HD5670

Asus mainboard with AM3+ socket (not the cheapest and not the most expensive but does its job)

and an SSD with Win7 64bit installed

 

Now as the title tells you already, I'm considering upgrading my CPU to a FX8350 (and doubling the RAM to 8GB). Is this a reasonable step?

 

Consider this: I'm flying FS9 only... until now at least. However I have some stuff installed... various addon sceneries (Aerosoft, FlyTampa and a bunch of freeware stuff), as for the aircraft I mostly use the IFly B737NG series, Level-D B763 and PMDG B744. Weather engine is ActiveSky Evolution, Performance calculation by TOPCAT and I'm flying online on Vatsim (so Firefox is always open for airport charts etc.)

Standing at the gate at Frankfurt (MAF by Aerosoft installed) sitting in the standard Cessna under medium rain and heavy clouds in the sky I usually get about 24fps in average. With the IFly that value drops to around 20 in average with ASE running. However my sim just does not feel "smooth" when I'm taxiing on airports like that or when I'm on approach into those airports. I've done some tweaking... recently I've tweaked too much and now my sim crashes all the time, which is why I'll freshly install him again tomorrow.

 

 

Now what do I want to achieve by buying a FX8350?

 

I want my FS9 to run smooth as silk. No (or almost no) stutters at all, no significant framedrops, neither standing at the airports nor flying through clouds. Is it possible to nail 35fps with an FX8350 when I use as much software as stated above?

 

 

For the future I plan to migrate to P3d. This could be in half a year or maybe a year... I'm not sure yet. Sometimes I think about buying P3d and the C172 trainer by A2A simulations right now and have some fun with it, but I really like my FS9 and buying all the addons again would hurt my wallet a lot.

Assuming I choose the FX8350 and maybe get a newer gfx card with P3d and have 8GB RAM by then, what will the performance of P3d be like? Will I have fun with P3d? Is this system still too weak to run P3d (+ A2A/PMDG/IFly aircraft addon + ASN + FlyTampa scenery)? Rumours that I've heard say that P3d simply "works" better than FSX, meaning it is more stable and its performance is more solid compared to FSX, how big is the difference in FPS between FSX and P3d with the same addons running?

Also I've heard that P3d uses multicore technology while FS9 does not. Is it possible that P3d even runs better than FS9 on an hexacore like the FX 8350?

 

I'm absolutely aware that actually Intel processors are the way to go for flightsimming. However this is not an option for me as upgrading my system to make it compatible with an Intel CPU, that easily can be double the price of an FX8350, is far too expensive for me. There simply has to be another way, hasn't it? So I hope you can "answer" my questions. Maybe there's someone running his FS with a FX8350? Please reply to this post, I'm looking forward to hear your experiences! Maybe there's someone that tested a lot of CPUs with FS9/X or P3d and, by accident, you've also tested a FX8350 or similar CPU? Share your insights!

 

Have a great sunday and hope to hear from you soon!

[z06z33 763]

I have two systems one powered by an FX-8350 at 4.5ghz and one powered by an I7-4790K at 4.5GHZ exact same setup as AMD ie same video card,ram ect and in FSX the Intel out performs the AMD by over 20 FPS. I love my AMD but intel wins hands down

[PhilthyFrank 0]

I have an FX-8350 at 4.5ghz and use P3D v2 with addons like the Airbus X Extended, ASN, and detailed payware airports (KDEN, KIAH, KJFK). Performance for me is pretty good. Some people might cringe when I say I get about 20fps, but for me, it's just fine. Prepar3d runs very smoothly, so lower frames aren't as big of a deal. I've never owned an Intel processor though, so I can't speak on the relative performance. 

[rickgo 64]

My thoughts..Ive owned amd since 1992. They have performed admirably..I am a p3d user and Im barelly getting by with a amd6100 oc to 4ghz..I have most setting on medium..My graphics card is a geforce 660..just in case your wondering...The point is..If you want smooth in fs9 , well you definitely wont be satisfied in p3d...A intel is a definite must and then you still wont have the smoothness of fs9. However you will have some visuals that will make it very hard to ever go back to fs9...

                                                   Rick....currently saving for Intel!

[mjrhealth 820]

I owned AMD exclusively till this year. Gave up waiting it does one no good. last was a 6300 @ 4.6 but even at that 4770K beats it at stock 4 gig, the 4790k which i have at 4.6 slaughers it. You dont say waht chip you currently have. When AMD get there act together I will go back.

[sylosis 0]

Hi all,

 

many thanks for your replies so far. Never thought I'd get these information that quick in this forum!

 

 

 

I have two systems one powered by an FX-8350 at 4.5ghz and one powered by an I7-4790K at 4.5GHZ exact same setup as AMD ie same video card,ram ect and in FSX the Intel out performs the AMD by over 20 FPS. I love my AMD but intel wins hands down

 

How many frames do you get in both the FX8350 and the 47960K? Does the FX8350 run "smooth"? What settings are needed in the P3d to run it smooth with the FX8350 for you and what is your RAM count and graphics card?

 

 

I have an FX-8350 at 4.5ghz and use P3D v2 with addons like the Airbus X Extended, ASN, and detailed payware airports (KDEN, KIAH, KJFK). Performance for me is pretty good. Some people might cringe when I say I get about 20fps, but for me, it's just fine. Prepar3d runs very smoothly, so lower frames aren't as big of a deal. I've never owned an Intel processor though, so I can't speak on the relative performance. 

 

Although your frames state 20fps, the FS might still run "smooth"! I've seen this behaviour with my FS9 many times. It's not that important how many frames per second you get (well, of course it's important too!), but when the graphics/display you see does not stutter and the movements are smooth, you can well be satisfied with 25fps or so.

Same questions to you: How many RAM and what graphics card do you use with your FX8350?

 

 

 

My thoughts..Ive owned amd since 1992. They have performed admirably..I am a p3d user and Im barelly getting by with a amd6100 oc to 4ghz..I have most setting on medium..My graphics card is a geforce 660..just in case your wondering...The point is..If you want smooth in fs9 , well you definitely wont be satisfied in p3d...A intel is a definite must and then you still wont have the smoothness of fs9. However you will have some visuals that will make it very hard to ever go back to fs9...

                                                   Rick....currently saving for Intel!

 

That is very interesting indeed. How many frames do you usually get with your FX6100? What RAM and graphics card?

Have you been flying FS9 with that rig aswell? How would you compare the performance between FS9 and P3d with the FX6100? Did the FS9 perform much better and generally smooth?

 

I owned AMD exclusively till this year. Gave up waiting it does one no good. last was a 6300 @ 4.6 but even at that 4770K beats it at stock 4 gig, the 4790k which i have at 4.6 slaughers it. You dont say waht chip you currently have. When AMD get there act together I will go back.

 

Currently I'm owning an AMD Athlon II X3 460 @ 3.4GHz stock. However I could unlock the 4th core of it, so it's no triplecore but actually a quadcore processor that I'm running on. I'm now running this one for about 3 years.

What frames did you get with the oc'ed FX6300 and how many of them now with the 4790K? Also, do you run P3d, FSX or FS9 as you forgot to mention that?

And you are totally right about AMD in general: I've been waiting for a new badass CPU for a year or so now. But sadly it looks like APUs are the future plans for AMD. I'm not even sure but I think I've read somewhere a while back that a new generation of standalone-CPUs by AMD will be launched in 2015. Maybe I should wait for them to be launched, otherwise maybe a FX8350, which fits to my current mainboard as it has an AM3+ socket, is enough. Everybody ever thought about upgrading his PC knows what a tough decision it is, haha!

 

Anyways thanks again for your replies you guys and hope to hear from you soon! Cheers

[PhilthyFrank 0]

I have 8gb of ram and a Sapphire 7870. I get the performance I do in P3D because my settings are pretty high, with heavy autogen and cloud shadows. So I think if you upgraded your pc, you'd be pretty happy with Prepar3d.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Had amd fx6300 not bad for most programs but for fsx it's fine at 15 to 20fps but with settings on i5 get 25 to 30 fps. Hope the APU can close the gap with intel i5 so it becomes good option as extra all purpose pc. Buy a amd PC for general purpose and use intel for flight sims only. Middle of road pc amd intel are neck and neck the high end intel wins.

[sylosis 0]

Thanks a lot everyone for your opinions and information.

 

I set up my fs9.cfg all new just yesterday and the performance is way better. Also I did some tweaking in the AMD Catalyst Centre (graphics options for my gfx card) and to me it looks outstanding now. You shall never underestimate what performance you can get out of old systems with some nice little tweaking here and there!

I will do some testflights and then decide whether I should do the step for a new FX 8350 + double the RAM to 8GB or not. Probably for P3d I'd need a new gfx card aswell.

 

However if you just discovered this thread and still have anything to say to the discussion, please go ahead and write a post. It's always nice to hear experiences from people with the same or a similar (same generation) processor that I'm looking into.