Advice on upgrade

[Rocky_53 1,579]

I'm certainly not a newbie, but I've been a little absent from FSX for the past twelve months. As such, I am out of touch a little and need some advice on an upgrade. I have toyed about with the idea of P3D , but you know, if I can get some reasonable increase in performance, maybe 30%, I will be perfectly happy with FSX. I currently run an overclocked Sandy Bridge 2500 @ 4.4Mhz, have a GTX 770 4Gb with 16Gb RAM. FSX and Win 7 are on separate SSDs, I have no inclination or time to overclock and so am interested in buying a pre OC bundle from Overclockers UK. Am I right in thinking that the new Skylake series of CPUs would be a good bet. Perhaps not, maybe an i7 4790? I won't be in the market to upgrade yet, but in the winter months I hope to go down this road. I am interested in any opinions or advice on this subject. I need to ensure that any upgrade would in fact be a big enough increase in performance over my OC i52500 to justify the cost. Cheers guys.

[martin-w 3,235]

I'd highly recommend Skylake. All here on the forum who have upgraded to Skylake have been very pleased with their new systems.

 

I can't give you specifics re FSX, as I haven't installed it yet, but BF4 is running like a dream on Ultra settings, that's with an EVGA 980Ti Classified.

 

2500K to 6700K should give you greater than 30% increase in terms of single thread performance...

 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500K/3502vs619

 

Regarding overclocking, I wouldn't trust OCUK to do a good job to be honest, I doubt they would spend the time stress testing like you or I would. I would suggest you utilise Five Way Optimisation, available in Ai Suite.

 

5WO will automatically overclock your system, taking into consideration your cooling and all that comprises your system. I usually overclock manually, but gave 5WO a try this time and the results have been very good. 

 

 

See my thread on Five Way Optimsation, it includes the settings I used that were very effective....

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/494147-asus-five-way-optimisation-impressions/

[Rocky_53 1,579]

I'd highly recommend Skylake. All here on the forum who have upgraded to Skylake have been very pleased with their new systems.

 

I can't give you specifics re FSX, as I haven't installed it yet, but BF4 is running like a dream on Ultra settings, that's with an EVGA 980Ti Classified.

 

2500K to 6700K should give you greater than 30% increase in terms of single thread performance...

 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500K/3502vs619

 

Regarding overclocking, I wouldn't trust OCUK to do a good job to be honest, I doubt they would spend the time stress testing like you or I would. I would suggest you utilise Five Way Optimisation, available in Ai Suite.

 

5WO will automatically overclock your system, taking into consideration your cooling and all that comprises your system. I usually overclock manually, but gave 5WO a try this time and the results have been very good. 

 

 

See my thread on Five Way Optimsation, it includes the settings I used that were very effective....

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/494147-asus-five-way-optimisation-impressions/

Thanks for this Martin. Is the 5WO that you refer to within the BIOS setup? What MB would you recommend?

[mikea76 184]

I would go i6700k... that's what I did

[martin-w 3,235]

Thanks for this Martin. Is the 5WO that you refer to within the BIOS setup? What MB would you recommend?

 

 

Not exactly. It's within the Asus Ai Suite bundle of software that comes with the motherboard. Some of the applications you probably wouldn't use and can be excluded when you install it, some are useful.

 

5WO runs in Windows, but makes changes to the BIOS in exactly the same way you would if you were to manually overclock. It increases frequency and voltage and stress tests automatically for you. It's software, firmware and hardware based. The settings I mention in the other thread work great for me. The reasons why I chose those settings are important! 4.6 GHz, low voltage and 100% stable.

 

JJ from Asus has a nice video on Five Way Optimisation...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSz4qydUL2c

 

As for MB recommendations, it depends on your needs. I went initially for the Z170-A. Great value, overclocks well and Asus quality. Unfortunately, due to an embarrassing incident I'd rather not talk about, I ended up having to order a second board. I went for the Z170 Deluxe, great board performs well.  :smile: Very good fan control, lots of headers, fan extension module header if you need it, VRM's nicely cooled. Plenty of USB's. WiFi if you need it. 

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Sounds like a plan. Thanks for the advice. Cheers.