Some Hardware Advice

[RJC68 823]

Hi All,

I wondered if I could pick your brains.....

I have been thinking about some hardware upgrades for my X-Plane 11 machine. You will see from my signature I have a water cooled i3570K running @ 4.6ghz, an Asus GTX 980 TI Strix & 16GB DDR 3

Although I can achieve a steady locked 30 FPS in most situations running X-Plane 11 with Ortho4XP scenery and settings cranked pretty high I do seem to be sitting on somewhat of a knife edge. I keep a careful eye on the CPU & GPU loads and tend to find that my CPU is always higher (around the 0.3 mark) which leads me to believe that although I do have a pretty decent system I am CPU bound. The GPU load of the 980 TI is always around the 0.2 mark although most flights I am pushing around 5GB VRAM.

I don't really want to upgrade both CPU & GPU right now but am thinking about upgrading my trusty old i5 3570K. I would be interested to see what people out there are using for X-Plane. This machine does nothing else and if I go down this route will have just X-Plane 11 and no more FSX (Time to put that old girl into retirement lol)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

Richard

[CarlosF 1,234]

If I was in the same crossroad as you are now, I would upgrade video card to a 1080 fist so I could increase eye-candy, reason being is that LR is currently working on performance improvements which will be coming out within the next updates. Your cpu is pretty strong and probably will benefit from these improvements.

just my 2 cents.

Here's some info.

 

[RJC68 823]

4 hours ago, CarlosF said:

If I was in the same crossroad as you are now, I would upgrade video card to a 1080 fist so I could increase eye-candy, reason being is that LR is currently working on performance improvements which will be coming out within the next updates. Your cpu is pretty strong and probably will benefit from these improvements.

just my 2 cents.

Here's some info.

Thanks Carlos,

I got that email regarding the upcoming performance tweaks.

Now I am torn lol I thought I was CPU bound but I did wonder in the back of my mind could my GPU be the bottleneck. Although the 980 never seems to be working hard as I mentioned in my original email I can very easily consume the 6GB of VRAM.

Do you think the extra video  memory of the 1080 will help lower the draw on the CPU?

 

[CarlosF 1,234]

12 hours ago, Richdem said:

Do you think the extra video  memory of the 1080 will help lower the draw on the CPU?

No, I do not think so.

Lets put it this way, if you are happy with your current eye-candy settings, then go for the CPU upgrade, or wait until 11.10 comes out with the performance enhancements and see how it impacts your hardware, then you'll have more data you can rely on to make your decision. 

 

[RJC68 823]

On 8/2/2017 at 10:26 AM, CarlosF said:

No, I do not think so.

Lets put it this way, if you are happy with your current eye-candy settings, then go for the CPU upgrade, or wait until 11.10 comes out with the performance enhancements and see how it impacts your hardware, then you'll have more data you can rely on to make your decision. 

 

Thanks Carlos,

That is a pretty decent suggestion. I think I will wait. Don't get me wrong I am not unhappy with my sim, just always striving for that little bit more lol.

One thing I am going to start with tonight is finally get rid of my FSX SE and all the associated software I had too install with it., I just do not use it anymore. Then I am going to do a fresh install of WIndows 10 hopefully with the creators update and I will see how things fair over the weekend. One thing I do love is that my X-Plane 11 installation is on a separate SSD and my custom scenery is on a 4TB WD external. No more days of setting up windows & the sim again. I am hoping to install from a bootable USB add junction link magic and start flying again :)

[CarlosF 1,234]

40 minutes ago, Richdem said:

just always striving for that little bit more lol.

LOL..don't we all!

 

[wiler 394]

On 8/1/2017 at 10:52 PM, Richdem said:

Hi All,

I wondered if I could pick your brains.....

I have been thinking about some hardware upgrades for my X-Plane 11 machine. You will see from my signature I have a water cooled i3570K running @ 4.6ghz, an Asus GTX 980 TI Strix & 16GB DDR 3

Although I can achieve a steady locked 30 FPS in most situations running X-Plane 11 with Ortho4XP scenery and settings cranked pretty high I do seem to be sitting on somewhat of a knife edge. I keep a careful eye on the CPU & GPU loads and tend to find that my CPU is always higher (around the 0.3 mark) which leads me to believe that although I do have a pretty decent system I am CPU bound. The GPU load of the 980 TI is always around the 0.2 mark although most flights I am pushing around 5GB VRAM.

I don't really want to upgrade both CPU & GPU right now but am thinking about upgrading my trusty old i5 3570K. I would be interested to see what people out there are using for X-Plane. This machine does nothing else and if I go down this route will have just X-Plane 11 and no more FSX (Time to put that old girl into retirement lol)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

Richard

Im gonna try the 1700x paired w 1080ti. Im coming from a 6600k 4.5ghz and a 980ti. I dont think ill gain much FPS wise, I will be able to run 4K with more sliders to the right and ill be ready for Vulkan in 9-12 months. 

[strider1 575]

4 hours ago, wiler said:

Im gonna try the 1700x paired w 1080ti. Im coming from a 6600k 4.5ghz and a 980ti. I dont think ill gain much FPS wise, I will be able to run 4K with more sliders to the right and ill be ready for Vulkan in 9-12 months. 

I would get a Vega for one simple reason, Freesync 2 ! All of those beautiful 4K, HDR, OLED and QLED tv's will probably be freesync 2 enabled sometime next year ! And we have a new one HFR !!! http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1473185035

[CarlosF 1,234]

14 hours ago, strider1 said:

I would get a Vega

I would too, but the problem with AMD is their drivers, they suck most of the time.

I think that if AMD invests more time/resources on driver performance/stability, people like me would think twice and consider them as an alternative to nvidia. 

 

[wiler 394]

Just dropped in the 1080ti with my 6600k @4.5 to see how big of a boost the 1080ti is compared to the 980ti. This card is an absolute beast, everything maxed except im staying at 4xssaafxaa. I did a quick test out of LAX, i have ortho 18/19 for the entire city 10.5G of VRAM used!! GPU is running at 98% and frames are 30+ and around 45 at 4000 ft +. I will try some other more common flights that I do with this setup then swap the 6600 for the 1700x sunday. Running 4K!

[strider1 575]

3 hours ago, wiler said:

Just dropped in the 1080ti with my 6600k @4.5 to see how big of a boost the 1080ti is compared to the 980ti. This card is an absolute beast, everything maxed except im staying at 4xssaafxaa. I did a quick test out of LAX, i have ortho 18/19 for the entire city 10.5G of VRAM used!! GPU is running at 98% and frames are 30+ and around 45 at 4000 ft +. I will try some other more common flights that I do with this setup then swap the 6600 for the 1700x sunday. Running 4K!

What kind of frames are you getting in downtown LA ?

[wiler 394]

21 hours ago, strider1 said:

What kind of frames are you getting in downtown LA ?

well i took off from LAX and flew over the city that is ortho 18/19 and got well over 45FPS. I havnt swapped the 6600k for the 1700x yet, ill do that tmrw and see how things change. 

[strider1 575]

6 hours ago, wiler said:

well i took off from LAX and flew over the city that is ortho 18/19 and got well over 45FPS. I havnt swapped the 6600k for the 1700x yet, ill do that tmrw and see how things change. 

Looking fwd to it !

[wiler 394]

5 hours ago, strider1 said:

Looking fwd to it !

my best guess itll be similar performace with 1700x maybe max 5% less on 1700x, the caveat is im hoping for a "smoother feel"  less spikes. I have a feeling the larger cache and more threads will help in this. Also,  when ryzen 2 comes out next year can swap chips for a hopefully faster clock speed ryzen 2 series. 

[strider1 575]

On 8/4/2017 at 9:52 AM, CarlosF said:

I would too, but the problem with AMD is their drivers, they suck most of the time.

I think that if AMD invests more time/resources on driver performance/stability, people like me would think twice and consider them as an alternative to nvidia. 

 

My understanding is they are doing exactly that ! Thats what I remember reading.