Different CPUs for different sims

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Hello all,

I have searched and failed to find any discussion on this subject, albeit lots of discussion on CPUs.

I was just wondering/intrigued/curious about whether or not the following could possibly  be relevant.

Given the ifferent use of CPU cores by different simulation platforms, would a CPU choice based on a preferred Sim, ie P3Dv4 or XPlane 11, be logical? This question comes to mind after reading an article recently about XPlane being able to utilise more cores/threads than P3Dv4. I do not know if anyone is aware of LMs plans in this direction, after the huge leap forward with 64bit, but at this point in time, I lean towards thinking as follows:-

1.  If I chose Xplane as THE platform do I lean towards the new AMD threadripper or the new i9 from Intel (to my knowledge both slower speeds but more cores) or stay with what appears to the the current choice - i7. Would there be a significant advantage in the multithreading route without regard to the future proofing aspect, should LM go the multithreading route soon or eventually.

2. If P3Dv4 is the platform of choice, and stays the same regarding the single core system I am assuming the i7 is the logical way to go. However, I do genuinely wonder, if this is indeed correct.

Given that I am pondering an update in hardware in the longterm, can you guys and girls shed some thoughts on the matter, possibly stating your preferred choice of sim platform ... your choice of CPU/MB and why ... whether of not, anyone is taking the new Vega 64 seriously (given that it is only 8GB VRAM in lieu of the initially inferred 16GB HBM VRAM), and your choice of GPU as well maybe.

I honestly do not really know if I am being pedantic about all of this or whether it is truly relevant or indeed, even significant.

Looking forward to your responses

Regards

Tony Chilcott 

[RichieFly 726]

This subject is very interesting to me and probably to those who are contemplating a new hardware build or upgrade.

It would be great if a review was done with this topic in mind.

We've seen the hardware reviews on the pro and amature web sites where the testers will measure the subject hardware using various benchmark software and well-known games. Always interesting and focused on intended use.

I'd love to see a through review based on the criteria you describe; best hardware for the flight simulator of your choice.

We need a wealthy benefactor to fund this study! 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Hello all,

Firstly an apology.

AMD Vega 64 GPU IS indeed available (I previously had only found the 8GB HBM VRAM version.  Amazon has it listed for only USD1079.00 and PLE Computers in Australia have it listed for ONLY 1769.00 AUD. Ozzie dollar must be worth about 60c at that rate of exchange.

So .... Does this effect the equation (if affordable) particularly with both afore-mentioned platforms? At the moment is any sim capable of bringing a 1080ti (11GB VRAM) to its knees. If the answer is NO, then are we looking a vast future proofing with the AMD? Also to consider, is whether or not the AMD process is equivalent to or inferior to Nvidia for flight simulation, as has previously been the case?

The decision making just gets harder, more complex and less affordable. LOL

Lets have some more input and Cheers to all

Tony

[lownslo 592]

Any simulator, whether one of our flightsims, or anything else will place a premium on CPU speed.  This is because of all the calculations a CPU must do for any type of simulation.  Soooo...

I'll take raw CPU speed over number of cores... almost any day!  I say almost because newer sims (think 64 bit) have changed the rules as we have known them over the past decade.  While the number of cores is certainly becoming more important (especially since the release of Ryzen), the priority is still on raw processing power (CPU Speed... and today Intel still has the advantage).

Raw computing power will always reign supreme in any simulation.  It's just that simple!  Start there when building your system!

Simply put... I wouldn't worry about different CPU's for different flightsims.  I would simply concentrate on the fastest, most processing-capable CPU no matter which sim I choose... or how many sims I choose!

Greg

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Greg,

I know from experience that this has been covered many times in this forum and I am aware that fast is best.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you have two CPUs with roughly the same speed, is one with 8 cores going to be a better choice for (for example) XPlane (allegedly handles multicores better) than a 4 core CPU. I would guess that it would make no difference whatsoever with P3D in its current state. New versions of P3D may well be a different story entirely.

Again, is this going to make a difference with future proofing in mind?

Regards

Tony

[lownslo 592]

I understand the confusion... let me reiterate... CPU speed is king in any simulator.  Period!  You may have various folks showing up here stating otherwise.. but they will be wrong!

It simply is impossible to future proof any application within any Windows OS. I've been hearing the same BS artist's for more than thirty years ( yep, I'm that old!) and it is... BS!

Any simulation= speed.... is the King

 Greg

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Greg,

I take your point mate.

The last thing I want to do here is create any dissension, so please take this in the manner it is meant. 

Why has my good mate (LOL) Austin Meyers consistently claimed his sim handles multicores/threads better. I ask this mainly because ALL the chip makers are making more and more cores/threads available and if speed is king, what is the point of doing that? I have to assume that if you have more cores, then it follows that more information can be processed (and I stress CAN) which in turn, makes the CPU more efficient.  As has been stated numerous times P3D at the moment works best with a single (fast) core and multicores are largely ignored.

THAT, makes your statement make a lot of sense, but where is Austin coming from?

Please, please forgive me if I am coming across as more than a trifle dense, but, I am struggling to make sense of it all.

Regards again

Tony

 

[lownslo 592]

4 minutes ago, himmelhorse said:

Why has my good mate (LOL) Austin Meyers consistently claimed his sim handles multicores/threads better.

I have never used X-Plane, so I won't argue with Austin that his flightsim handles multi-cores better.  But I have to ask... better than what?  All I care about is how my CPU (4790k overclocked to 4.9 Ghz) handles my sim.  And I'll stress.. my Cpu and My (choice) of  sim.  The important part in all this is my... each of us has our system configured differently for whatever sim is our favorite.

[JimmiG 244]

X-Plane has made some progress toward using more threads, but it still has a long way to go. XP11 started off almost completely single-threaded (except when entering a new scenery area), now it can use maybe 3, possibly 4 threads efficiently.

Things have changed in recent years, so what was true 30 years ago isn't necessarily true today. The push for higher clock speeds ended about 10 years ago due to heat/power constraints. The push for higher IPC is also coming to an end. IPC is essentially ILP - the Instruction Level Parallelism, being able to take a serial stream of instructions, and run them in parallel on a single CPU core through pipelining, out of order execution and other techniques. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked when it comes to extracting more ILP. from a CPU core. 

The only thing that remains is to give CPUs more threads, and rely on developers to extract thread-level parallelism by writing multi-threaded code. This is hard, sometimes impossible (some things just have to done serially, you can't calculate X+Y until you've actually figured out what X and Y are supposed to be). However it's going to be the only way going forward as IPC and clock speeds will not improve meaningfully. That doesn't mean you should run and buy a 16-core CPU today to future proof the system, as you should always buy what works best *today*, but that's where we're headed.

Flight sims will catch up eventually, but they carry a lot of baggage in the form of legacy code dating back to the GHz race. Otherwise, flight sims are good candidates for multi-threading, with lots of complex systems running in parallel without dependencies, or only requiring occasional inter-thread communications (once every few hundred milliseconds to once every few seconds).

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Greg,

Exactly mate,

There is no way I am telling you, or trying to tell you, that YOU are using the wrong CPU or wrong anything, for that matter.

But you have really just reinforced my original query, which was "is more multicore better for users of XPlane or any sim platform that can utilize them." Does this or will this, actually make a sim faster or more efficient and therefore better for a particular sim or sims.  

I know, and not from experience, that other games use more cores and are incredibly quick FPS wise. I notice from another thread that Ryzen is performing at a lesser rate than the old i7 6700 for instance, but again, there is no reference, to my knowledge, what platform is being used. This may well be a definitive answer and I shall be following up with that.

Thanks again for your informative reply.

Regards

Tony

[himmelhorse 1,276]

AdvancedFollower,

Thank you. 

I guess it does not get better than that as far as information is concerned. I guess that and Gregs responses have answered all of my queries and I am happy not to put it to bed for now.

For the time being then, the search is on for i7 or i9.

Regards to all and thank for your participation.

Tony