CPU or GPU? my upgrade suggestion

[dommel1234 1]

Hello fellow simmers ,

I have a recomendation to make for those willing to upgrade based on my own experience. If you own a I7 2XXX you may consider if its worth going for a skylake or babylake or a new gpu. Well, i had recently this dilemma i had an i7 2600 coupled with a Gtx 780 and after a lot of research i decided to upgrade my gpu intead of the cpu And i bought a gtx 1070.  Well i think i made the right choice, big improvement on fps and smoothness, and the I72600 still cope very well and do not bottleneck the gtx1070.  Why buying  a cpu that according to tests beats the i7 sandybridge only by 10 % and with also the heating problems the 7700k exhibits (see the latest intel warning on overclocking). That way  i have decent prformance and i can reserve the cpu upgrade in a future chip much better than the babylake.

Ps: all these are valid only if you overclock your i72XX of cource mine working steadily in 4,4 GHz

[Sartanius 399]

Thanks for sharing your experience.  At the end of the day, all that really matters is how you like the performance of your simulator.  This community is made up of all types, those that are very satisfied with medium to low sliders and minimal eye candy, all the way up to those who live on the bleeding edge and feverishly seek the highest FPS money can buy, and of course, all the unwashed masses in between.  Sit back and enjoy our hobby... it really is an amazing community and a ton of fun simulating an exciting slice of our world.

I'm happy for you that you were able to improve your experience with a new GPU.  Your next upgrade will target the CPU, and the upcoming Coffee Lake might just fit the bill.

[mpw8679 428]

1 hour ago, dommel1234 said:

Hello fellow simmers ,

I have a recomendation to make for those willing to upgrade based on my own experience. If you own a I7 2XXX you may consider if its worth going for a skylake or babylake or a new gpu. Well, i had recently this dilemma i had an i7 2600 coupled with a Gtx 780 and after a lot of research i decided to upgrade my gpu intead of the cpu And i bought a gtx 1070.  Well i think i made the right choice, big improvement on fps and smoothness, and the I72600 still cope very well and do not bottleneck the gtx1070.  Why buying  a cpu that according to tests beats the i7 sandybridge only by 10 % and with also the heating problems the 7700k exhibits (see the latest intel warning on overclocking). That way  i have decent prformance and i can reserve the cpu upgrade in a future chip much better than the babylake.

Ps: all these are valid only if you overclock your i72XX of cource mine working steadily in 4,4 GHz

A 7700k will slaughter a 2600k hands down in P3d.  

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Hello all,

The only comment I feel qualified to make is that a GPU upgrade is far cheaper in that it is a one off purchase.

The CPU on the other hand involves CPU, Motherboard, RAM and then you still have a substandard GPU to replace at a later date.  Granted a full upgrade will still involve al of these but as an interim, the GPU, I feel, is the way to go and has the potential to greatly improve performance of your chosen sim..

I think that we would all love to have the "top of the woz" system but a lot of us are financially constrained and that includes mine own good self. This will always leave us with an incremental approach to upgrades and my suggestion is for the GPU first.

For me, I am upgrading very soon to a 1080ti and a 1050ti to drive my system. I therefore, very much hope that what I have said above is actually correct LOL

Regards to all

Tony Chilcott

[magnetite 38]

4 hours ago, dommel1234 said:

Why buying  a cpu that according to tests beats the i7 sandybridge only by 10 % and with also the heating problems the 7700k exhibits (see the latest intel warning on overclocking).

There's also some DRM that comes with the Kaby Lake CPUs that doesn't come with the Skylake ones. If you want to watch Netflix on your PC. If that doesn't apply to you, then go ahead. I don't use Netflix personally. I bought Skylake (i7 6700K) mainly due to less heat being generated over Kaby Lake.

[willy647 193]

6 hours ago, mpw8679 said:

A 7700k will slaughter a 2600k hands down in P3d.  

I used to have a 2600K running at 4.4 Ghz and recently upgraded to a 7700K at 4.9 Ghz.

Is it faster?  Yes, but not that much. Its a lot of money (considering also a new motherboard is needed) for little gain in speed/fps

[AnkH 2,233]

Willy, are you really comparing the correct things here? Or do you compare the v3.4 performance with the 2600K@4.4GHz with the v4 performance of the 7700K@4.9GHz ? Fact: your 7700K has 11% higher clock speeds, so at least those 11% you should see. Otherwise, something goes wrong. Honestly, it might also be the case that your 970 is a limiting factor here.

[MrFuzzy 2,118]

For your information between Sandy Bridge and Kaby Lake i7s there is also a substantial improvement in IPC (+30% avg), therefore you don't have to look only at the frequency. Even at the same frequency a 7700K is much faster than a 2600K.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Review-Kaby-Lake-and-14nm/Clock-Clock-Kaby-Lake-Skylake-Broad

 

[AnkH 2,233]

Well, that's why I thought maybe this 970 is the limiting factor. As the 7700K should be faster than the 2600K in any case even at the same clock speeds (add the DDR4 memory to the equation and it should be even faster), he even does not see the 11% performance increase he should have simply due to the fact that he uses the 7700K at 11% higher clock rates.

[MrFuzzy 2,118]

Yeah, probably the GTX 970 is a bottleneck there, having only 3,5 GB of available VRAM...

[dommel1234 1]

On 26/7/2017 at 11:14 AM, enek0id said:

For your information between Sandy Bridge and Kaby Lake i7s there is also a substantial improvement in IPC (+30% avg), therefore you don't have to look only at the frequency. Even at the same frequency a 7700K is much faster than a 2600K.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Review-Kaby-Lake-and-14nm/Clock-Clock-Kaby-Lake-Skylake-Broad

 

The improvement is less in higher resolution when the GPU takes charge. But even this is not worth the money to buy an essentialy not overclockable overheating chip like the 7700k. Surely there is much better cpus to come soon

[lownslo 592]

20 minutes ago, dommel1234 said:

...an essentialy not overclockable overheating chip like the 7700k.

Not overclockable?  Hmmm, lots of folks have pushed that chip to 5Ghz and beyond.  It's proven itself to be overclockable.

Greg

[dommel1234 1]

50 minutes ago, lownslo said:

Not overclockable?  Hmmm, lots of folks have pushed that chip to 5Ghz and beyond.  It's proven itself to be overclockable.

Greg

I said essentialy, of cource it is, if you delid it and loose your guarantee can reach some 5 Ghz and beyond. The point is that they dont represent the technological revolution to make worth the investment especially when the 2XXX performance is comparable or a bit inferior

[Noel 4,487]

On 7/26/2017 at 0:38 AM, willy647 said:

I used to have a 2600K running at 4.4 Ghz and recently upgraded to a 7700K at 4.9 Ghz.

Is it faster?  Yes, but not that much. Its a lot of money (considering also a new motherboard is needed) for little gain in speed/fps

Single core performance gains have been so paltry over the past 5y that my next build, when my 3930K@4.4Ghz finally gives up the ghost, will seem like a lot of expense for very little real improvement.  And that's a real first for me.   If only we could put all of Threadripper's 16-core model to work full time.  That is the unfortunate part you have an excellent multicore processor and only a one core gets fully utilized.    Fortunately there are useful gains in the GPU domain.

[Uteman 51]

2 hours ago, Noel said:

Single core performance gains have been so paltry over the past 5y that my next build, when my 3930K@4.4Ghz finally gives up the ghost, will seem like a lot of expense for very little real improvement.  And that's a real first for me.   If only we could put all of Threadripper's 16-core model to work full time.  That is the unfortunate part you have an excellent multicore processor and only a one core gets fully utilized.  

I run a 3930K at the same speed, I am perplexed and must say that I am more than happy with its all core performance in v4. I do run it with HT on as turning it off was a negative for me. My best tune up was using Multicore Next to move the addons TrackIR, Chaseplane etc to the top cores.

This is a recent process explorer snapshot of my 3930K with NGX over ORBX Australia ( note CPU says 26.2% because I paused for the screen shot it was 78% avg in sim just before pause) covers around 2.5 minutes of activity over Sydney City at Terrain level9 (cant do L10 at 4k until I get a 1080Ti.)