I9 7940x worth it for P3D V4

[Mr_LoL 10]

14 hours ago, Uteman said:

Couldn't agree more about sidestepping.

In regard to overclocking that is another development that with the latest generation is straightforward, most mobo's (X299) give you one click options straight out of the box based on your cooling setup.

As for the comment about the latest generation CPUs not offering much of an improvement that is a personal opinion that generalises and in my view ignores overall improvements, for example I am now running 10 cores at a 4.9 setting and using a little less energy at idle than I was with 6 cores at 4.3Ghz to produce much more performance.

I moved up from a 3930K at 4.4Ghz running a 4k monitor and now I am as happy as a pig in the proverbial. There is no doubt in my mind a 10 core Intel cpu at 4.9Ghz is better than a 6core cpu at 4.9Ghz in P3Dv4.

Robs comment about v4 add ons is particularly pertinent and often overlooked in equipment discussions.

The question often asked is can you use more than 6 cores in v4? and my answer is heck yes and you will get a good result when combined with equal graphics power. Through lots of testing and refining I identified with my setup that the extra cores help with fine tuning of scenery detail and load, plus the extra cores (through the use of things like Process Lasso) allow you too move TrackIR, ASC4,Little Navmap and any other plug ins well away from the first core, whilst also assigning  CPU and I/O priority. That helped me to minimise or eliminate any hesitation for example when adjusting scenery settings on TrackIR in the VC e.g. I found 3 scenery screens actually performs way better in my experience but I prefer the flexibility of TrackIR on a single 4k screen. 

Flying low and slow (FL50) over Socal in the A2A Skylane or the Cheyenne III at 4k using the RXP GTN750 on a tablet is an extremely smooth flight without any sign of the slightest hesitation.

A year ago all that was talked about in regard to CPUs for P3d was the 7700k - it was the CPU to use for simming and it seemingly had issues when you wanted everything in your sim to smoothly work together. Now I believe it is easier for you to achieve smooth high level detail and visuals at a high complexity level because the best thing about today is choice - you can choose 4,6,10 or more cores if you want and they will all perform depending on how you set them up.

Simply put you can get 7700k performance with 6, 8 or 10 cores and that can't be bad whatever software you run.

Cheers

Thanks a lot for this informative reply. 

 

As you say I feel that getting a 8700k even overclocked to 5.2ghz is a side grade not an upgrade so I might just stick with the 7900X and save myself £300.

 

Thanks

[Cruachan 705]

No one is suggesting you can't eek out more performance in terms of frame rates with the latest multi-cored processors. However, there are at least 2 prerequisites: 

1. You need to know what you are doing. The CPU will need to be overclocked to ensure the main thread delivers on what you are expecting and this will require additional outlay on an efficient and reliable cooling solution to keep the chip from overheating and to maintain stability. The higher the number of active processors on the chip the greater will be that heat penalty. The Main Board and Ram should be high spec and with proven track records of reliability. As has been mentioned, modern boards allow automatic overclocking in a controlled and relatively safe environment. They will ensure the maximum stable overclock can be achieved given the quality, capability and stability of components installed. Whether or not you are fortunate enough to have purchased a CPU capable of a high overclock is something of a lottery, so that target of 5.2Ghz may be unachievable. There are no guarantees and so it might be best to be more realistic and aim for what is possible given the multitude of variables ready to thwart our intentions.

2. You will require very deep pockets and the depth of those pockets will determine whether or not you consider the outcome to have been worthwhile overall.

As you will have noted, I have a CPU with 8 Physical Cores (16 LPs). It should also be noted that I run with the full complement of the ORBX FTX Global Range installed.

We are aware that Prepar3D v4.x has been rewritten to exploit multi-core and multi-threading, but only to a certain degree. This will likely change in the future as the software continues to evolve. However, we have to work with what exists now and, currently, I do not believe that P3D is optimised to exploit 14 Physical Cores (28 LPs with Hyperthreading enabled). I will not pretend that I have any specialist knowledge on this subject. However, my experience quickly taught me that I needed to employ an Affinity Mask a) to keep the heat down and b) to achieve smooth performance while maintaining acceptable frame rates (I prefer to lock frame rates in-sim at 30 with a monitor refresh rate of 120Hz). Using VSync and Triple buffering seems to make little difference on my setup, although I do try it from time-to-time.

AffinityMask = 21845 (which is telling the operating system that I am 'restricting' the P3D process and any associated multi-threaded activity to 8 logical processors (LP) rather than the full 16).

While sitting on any runway at idle I note that the main P3D thread runs on Core 0 which runs at 90-100% for most of the time. By comparison the other cores are relatively inactive. As soon as I light those fires and start the charge down the runway LPs 4, 6, 8,10,12 and 14 spring into action with an occasional upward blip from LP 2. Addons including Active Sky, ASCA, ChasePlane have their Affinity Masks adjusted by Process Lasso to use LPs 5,7,9,11,13 and 15 so there should be no conflict or competition with the active P3D threads.

This setup appears to deliver consistently fluid performance for most of the time. However, there is no one-fit-for-all set of settings in the sim and so there will be circumstances when frame rates and performance will drop off unless, when appropriate, I am are prepared to reconfigure those settings. Fortunately the GUI allows for this eventuality.

Hyperthreading is enabled in my UEFI System BIOS. Prepar3D is but one of many other applications installed. I have several Flight Sims and Games and these all perform very well and seem perfectly happy while all 16 LPs are available. However, as I hinted at earlier, this is definitely not the case with P3D. I won't say it's a stuttery mess, but it certainly doesn't run smoothly. As while running with an Affinity Mask restricting P3D to 8 LPs, Windows Task Manager will confirm all 16 are in use yet performance is poor. Why? Too many threads for the current software logic to handle efficiently? Unrealistic settings? Whatever the explanation I deduce that there is a sweet spot and, most likely, that lies somewhere between 4 - 8 threads for best performance providing the sim has been configured sensibly according to when, what and where you fly.

For some there is another variable which can be thrown into the mix and that will benefit those with monitors capable of running at 30Hz. In this case employing the use of VSync with Triple buffering (while running Unlimited) matches GPU output with Monitor refresh rate. This ensures consistently smooth screen updating providing a frame rate output of 30 can be delivered by the GPU for most of the time. However, I do wonder whether this also helps to mask deficiencies in performance incurred by excessive multi-threaded activity on certain CPUs?

Please feel free to take all the foregoing with a liberal pinch of salt. These are just the ruminations of a simmer who has been chipping away at the coal face for more years than he cares to admit..LOL!

Mike

[Mr_LoL 10]

Hey

A quick update to this thread. I've just built the PC below. I need to remove those led strips as I don't really need them. I went with the 7920X instead of the 7940X as it was much cheaper. The Samsung 960 EVO is so quick I had windows installed in less 5 minutes.

This is the first time I've ever built my own PC and it will be the last. It took me 1 hour to mount the cpu cooler and radiator. The worst part was inserting the CPU into the motherboard. I was shaking as I didn't want to drop the cpu into it's socket and bend the pins. The whole build took about 7 hours which was way too long. I have overclocked the best 6 cores to 4.7 and the other 6 are at 4.5 @ 1.265v.

 

Overall everything minus the 1080Ti cost £2250 which I think is expensive but worth it.

 

Right round Southern California, it's now playable. With my 5820K @ 4.5, I was averaging around 10- 12 FPS with everything maxed out around downtown LA. Now it's 19-21 FPS. For me 20 is the minimum for smooth gameplay. It's been worth it as my other PC is going to be backup. Another benefit I have seen is scenery loads up so much quicker as theres an extra six cores. I do wish Lockheed 

 

 

 

 

[vortex681 806]

4 hours ago, Mr_LoL said:

The whole build took about 7 hours which was way too long.

Curious to know how long you thought it would take? 7 hours doesn't seem like a bad build time to me (now on my 6th self-build).

[Mr_LoL 10]

3 hours ago, vortex681 said:

Curious to know how long you thought it would take? 7 hours doesn't seem like a bad build time to me (now on my 6th self-build).

I thought it would take 2 hours tops. The guys on YouTube seem to flt through them.

Anyway it's all done now.