Very confused about CPU: Intel or AMD for P3D?

[riccardo74 36]

Hi guys, I'm looking to upgrade my PC but I'm very confused about buying the new CPU, I do not know whether to choose between Intel or AMD. I would be Intel oriented. So, my choice would fall on an i7-7700K, but the processor is quite expensive (I imagine it's very high performance), and I would be looking for an AMD equivalent to make comparisons.

1) If I chose AMD which processor would match an i7-7700K?

2) Is it true in your experience that P3D (I refer to 4) is very CPU dependant and prefers Intel CPU?

3) Again, is it worth choosing between 16 or 32GB of ram? (if I chose 16 I could save something)

My upgrade would be:

• Intel i7-7700k
• MOBO: Gigabyte Z370 Aorus ultra Gaming chipset LGA 1151
• GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 X 8 GB), DDR4, 3000 MHz, C15 XMP 2.0

I would like to have your opinion and you could share experiences with Intel and AMD.

Thank you all for your valuable advice.

[Charlatan 68]

Intel all day long, you should be looking at the 8700k or 8086k rather than the 7700k thought.  Also you want at least 3200mhz RAM

[Sartanius 399]

3 hours ago, riccardo74 said:

My upgrade would be:

• Intel i7-7700k
• MOBO: Gigabyte Z370 Aorus ultra Gaming chipset LGA 1151
• GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 X 8 GB), DDR4, 3000 MHz, C15 XMP 2.0

I would like to have your opinion and you could share experiences with Intel and AMD.

Thank you all for your valuable advice.

Hi Riccardo,

Like @Charlatan, Intel is the right choice for flight simming.  Also, regarding your list above, the i7-7700k is not compatible with a Z370 motherboard.  You would have to drop back to a Z270 board. That said, I would wait a month or so and see what release of the upcoming i9-9900k/9700k CPUs does to prices of the 8700k.  If 8700k prices drop, I'd aim at that processor, which would indeed be compatible with the Z370 Aorus board you listed above.  Just a thought...

[ckyliu 1,749]

The main point of an i7/i9 over an i5 is hyperthreading, which P3D can't utilise, and sometimes extra cores, which P3D also struggles to make use of; P3D is still quite dependent on individual core clock speeds, so you'd get similar performance from an i5k for less money (before anyone jumps down my throat I am not saying an i5 would be as fast as an i7, but it wouldn't be far away and personally I don't think it's worth $150+ for marginal gain. Essentially 4x4 GHz would be better than 8x3 GHz, and 8x4 GHz would bring very little improvement in P3D). The exception is if you  do other demanding tasks whilst flying in P3D, then you'd want an i7/i9.

16 GB RAM should be enough for now, you can always add more later should you start running.

You could then use the money from those two savings above to upgrade to a 1080 graphics card which I believe would make more of an impact on your P3D framerates.

I'm not convinced AMD is an outright bad processor choice (it's well known that P3D prefers nVidia GPUs though), although Ryzen seems to be struggling to get much over 4 GHz reliably people are reporting P3D performance is reasonable, so I think a lot will come down to price (as in most P3D FPS for your "buck"), see https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/512083-anyone-using-ryzen-7-for-p3d-v4/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-3689175 & https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=124218#p155598

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by ckyliu

[Hamilton_ 45]

Intel will be the best choice.

Edited July 26, 2018 by hmuller

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

The main point of an i7/i9 over an i5 is hyperthreading, which P3D can't utilise, and sometimes extra cores, which P3D also struggles to make use of; P3D is still quite dependent on individual core clock speeds, so you'd get similar performance from an i5k for less money (before anyone jumps down my throat I am not saying an i5 would be as fast as an i7, but it wouldn't be far away and personally I don't think it's worth $150+ for marginal gain. Essentially 4x4 GHz would be better than 8x3 GHz, and 8x4 GHz would bring very little improvement in P3D).

 

I'll say it!  Aside from Westman's rig .... I'll put my I5 rig up against any I7 8700K user that regularly chimes in here at Avsim.

Heck, with the money I take in I'd probably let it ride against Rob's stuff, setup in a typical user single monitor configuration.

As Cklyiu recommends ...take the money you save and upgrade somewhere else. But!!! If one has zero interest in overclocking then get the 8700K ..it comes with higher clock speeds out of the box.

Nuter important note: talk has it that new Intel cpus are just weeks away.

[Nickbe 401]

For P3D4 I would be looking in the direction of the i5-8600K in combination with the Intel Z370. This is a real 6 cores working steadily in overclocing to 4.5 GHz with a good air cooling system. In addition, Intel promises that the new processors 9XXX will work with this chipset, so in the future you can always make an upgrade if you will not have enough power.

[Sam 68]

3 hours ago, ckyliu said:

The main point of an i7/i9 over an i5 is hyperthreading, which P3D can't utilise, and sometimes extra cores, which P3D also struggles to make use of; P3D is still quite dependent on individual core clock speeds, so you'd get similar performance from an i5k for less money (before anyone jumps down my throat I am not saying an i5 would be as fast as an i7, but it wouldn't be far away and personally I don't think it's worth $150+ for marginal gain. Essentially 4x4 GHz would be better than 8x3 GHz, and 8x4 GHz would bring very little improvement in P3D). The exception is if you  do other demanding tasks whilst flying in P3D, then you'd want an i7/i9.

16 GB RAM should be enough for now, you can always add more later should you start running.

You could then use the money from those two savings above to upgrade to a 1080 graphics card which I believe would make more of an impact on your P3D framerates.

I'm not convinced AMD is an outright bad processor choice (it's well known that P3D prefers nVidia GPUs though), although Ryzen seems to be struggling to get much over 4 GHz reliably people are reporting P3D performance is reasonable, so I think a lot will come down to price (as in most P3D FPS for your "buck"), see https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/512083-anyone-using-ryzen-7-for-p3d-v4/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-3689175 & https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=124218#p155598

 

On my system (8700k@5.0+1080Ti)FSL 320 is smoother with HT on...

dont forget that p3d may be getting upgrades which utilize more threads in the future.. so it’s not black/white

Edited July 26, 2018 by Sam

[Greggy_D 937]

OP, if you want to investigate the new Ryzen CPUs here's an awesome link:

Ryzen Second Gen Megathread of Reviews

 

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by Greggy_D

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

As you may know, pretty much every Microprocessor on the planet has one more major security flaws which was discovered back in 2017 and the public was informed about this earlier this year.  These major security flaws are built into the processor, and firmware and software used to MITIGATE (not correct) these problems results in slowing down the processors (how much performance impact is based on the type of processor).

I bring this up because unless there is a reason why you have to purchase/build a new system, I would wait until these issues are resolved in a next generation of processors (after the Intel i9 and I don't know what it would be for AMD) to purchase or build a new system.

Anyway, that's what I'm trying to hold out for.

 

Best wishes!

 

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

43 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

As you may know, pretty much every Microprocessor on the planet has one more major security flaws which was discovered back in 2017 and the public was informed about this earlier this year.  These major security flaws are built into the processor, and firmware and software used to MITIGATE (not correct) these problems results in slowing down the processors (how much performance impact is based on the type of processor).

I bring this up because unless there is a reason why you have to purchase/build a new system, I would wait until these issues are resolved in a next generation of processors (after the Intel i9 and I don't know what it would be for AMD) to purchase or build a new system.

Anyway, that's what I'm trying to hold out for.

 

Best wishes!

 

Please. Hardware will never be totally ""safe""" and will always """require"" some kind of microcode update.

Edited July 26, 2018 by FunknNasty

[seasley 17]

In my opinion, stick with Intel over AMD for now. P3d is still very much a single threaded program (LM has made a lot of improvements, but the speed of a single CPU core is usually the limiting factor in performance).  That means you should take into account single core speeds instead of overall processor benchmarks. Passmark has an easy way to look at the overall benchmark (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html), and a single-core benchmark (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html). The i7-7700k is pretty far down the list of high-end CPUs and well below that of several different AMD options at lower prices.  But for a single core, the i7-7700k is near the top and well above anything by AMD. Passmark's benchmarks may not be rigorously scientific, but I think they illustrate why there's not really a 1-1 match between Intel and AMD, and why Intel is a better option for P3D.

(This is also why many advocate disabling hyper-threading on Intel processors; sharing one physical core between two logical cores means a potential performance hit to single core speed.  That performance hit may or may not outweigh the benefits of have more logical cores depending on the system - the evidence is not completely clear cut.)

The i5-8600K (FunknNasty's CPU and the one recommended by Nickbe) has a single-thread score on Passmark that is only 2.4% less than the i7-7700K that you are considering. It is an excellent option at a lower price. But everything in your system has an effect. P3d hits a lot of components pretty hard, and upgrading one component (e.g. CPU) can reveal that another component (e.g. RAM) was running at near 100% capacity.  So instead of getting a 10% boost from an upgrade, you only get 1% or 2%. That's why you want to pay attention to things like RAM and disk speed as well.

Don't discount over clocking either, which is going to be greatly affected by the case and cooling system you put with the CPU.  Even if you don't want to mess with voltages or timings, you can squeeze some GHz out of a CPU by using the motherboard's "automagic" overclocking routine, but the key is keeping things cool. My Asus board automatically bumped my i7-4790K from 4.0 GHZ to 4.4 GHZ, and I was able to get it to 4.6 GHz without trying hard and doing anything exotic like de-lidding or water cooling, but I bought a very nice air cooler to do it. That made a bigger difference in performance than the upgrade in the first place.

[GHarrall 494]

5 hours ago, ckyliu said:

The main point of an i7/i9 over an i5 is hyperthreading, which P3D can't utilise, and sometimes extra cores, which P3D also struggles to make use of; P3D is still quite dependent on individual core clock speeds, so you'd get similar performance from an i5k for less money (before anyone jumps down my throat I am not saying an i5 would be as fast as an i7, but it wouldn't be far away and personally I don't think it's worth $150+ for marginal gain. Essentially 4x4 GHz would be better than 8x3 GHz, and 8x4 GHz would bring very little improvement in P3D). The exception is if you  do other demanding tasks whilst flying in P3D, then you'd want an i7/i9.

16 GB RAM should be enough for now, you can always add more later should you start running.

You could then use the money from those two savings above to upgrade to a 1080 graphics card which I believe would make more of an impact on your P3D framerates.

I'm not convinced AMD is an outright bad processor choice (it's well known that P3D prefers nVidia GPUs though), although Ryzen seems to be struggling to get much over 4 GHz reliably people are reporting P3D performance is reasonable, so I think a lot will come down to price (as in most P3D FPS for your "buck"), see https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/512083-anyone-using-ryzen-7-for-p3d-v4/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-3689175 & https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=124218#p155598

 

Well, Im not going to jump down your throat but on my HT enabled 6700k @4.5 gHz with AM=253, the texture loaders on the cores with HT on do a much better job than with HT off.  Textures load in faster within the LOD and the load time of the actual sim scenario is also reduced.

I have tested several times and can easily see the difference, so to say HT isn't useful in P3D is not true in my book. 

I will say that HT enabled without a suitable AM is not productive. For instance, if I have no AM then the first core with the main simulator thread causes stutters. 

The key is making sure the first core that runs the main simulator thread is masked off correctly, then you can take advantage of the texture loaders on the other HT enabled cores.

[Greggy_D 937]

26 minutes ago, seasley said:

  But for a single core, the i7-7700k is near the top and well above anything by AMD. Passmark's benchmarks may not be rigorously scientific, but I think they illustrate why there's not really a 1-1 match between Intel and AMD, and why Intel is a better option for P3D.

Look at actual gaming benchmarks, which is more applicable to P3D.  The new Ryzens are within spitting distance (or even best) Intel's offerings, especially at higher resolutions.  It comes down to what you want to spend on a CPU.

[fghdgdfdfgfgf 111]

1 hour ago, Greggy_D said:

Look at actual gaming benchmarks, which is more applicable to P3D. 

It's stuff like this that has controlled the narrative of this forum far to long ....Hell, I paid Viemo good dollars to host my videos and tried to give several picture hosting sites my hard money to support my claims and save you from advertising ( btw, none could match imgur, which is free -go figure)  .....Please, someone show me the geriatric ward, I'm ready!!!.

Really man ....the least you can do is put up a link ....so we can educate the listeners as to why we cant draw P3D parallels with virtually any "gaming benchmarks".

Edited July 26, 2018 by FunknNasty