My flight sim rig has been serving well for 4ish years and I'm starting to think of an upgrade.  Price is always a consideration, but I'm actually out of school and can consider hardware nearer the top of the line this time around.  I play DCS and P3Dv4 almost exclusively.  No real other gaming.  DCS runs well, but bogs down in VR (which I don't normally use due to the screen resolutions).  P3D v4 performs admirably, but I can be at 12-14 FPS in a heavy add-on aircraft (FSL or PMDG) and scenery.  It seems that people out there with some very current hardware are getting much better results.  I find 20 or so FPS fairly playable in P3D, but need this to be more of a minimum to be happy with the hands flying times of taxi, takeoff, and landing (where FPS normally bogs down).  I play both on a 55" TV at 4k.  I also see a lot of new stuff discussed in the pipeline, but not actually sounding very close (like 10 nm Intel chips).  So I was hoping for some feedback.

My current system:

1. Intel 4790k OC @ 4.4GHz
2. Asus MB (forget exact model)
3. 16 GB DDR3 RAM
4. EVGA nVidia 1070, factory overclocked
5. 3 SSD drives

What I'm looking at:

1. Intel 8700k (planned OC about 5GHz) vs 8086k (at factory 5GHz)
2. Asus ROG Maximus Hero MB
3. 16 GB DDR4 RAM (can always add more later, have had no OOM issues with P3D v4 yet on 16 GB)
4. 1080ti vs wait for 2080ti vs 2 x 1080ti in SLI
5. Same hard drives, etc

In particular, I'm wondering about any comments on:

1. Increase in performance based on CPU? Am I going to see a huge jump here, or is this only going to reflect only about the 10-15% jump in clock speed? All of this for a couple FPS wouldn't be worth it, but I understand that clock speed isn't the only improvement in the new CPU's and the busses, MB chipsets, etc, may help a lot.

2. Am I missing a new great CPU about to come out? I don't stay very up-to-date on CPU news.  However, it looks to me that the 10 nm chipsets would be the major breakthrough, and those seem to be a year or so away now.  It seems that 8th vs 9th gen Intel 14 nm chipsets may not be much different?

3. Use of 8700k with OC or 8086k at stock? Or what can I get easily on an 8086k overclock? I will overclock some, but am not a water cooler or major tweaker.  So I'm unlikely to push a serious oveclock.  Just something simple to boost performance some without pushing temps through the roof or stability through the floor.

4. Graphics cards? I think the 2080ti may be worth it for VR and 4k?  Are they going to be obtainable anytime soon?  Or what about the plain 2080 performance wise? Can anyone give me some feedback about the value they may have in P3D at 4k or in VR (or for DCS)? Most comments I'm seeing are calling it about equal performance to the 1080ti, but these have been at 1080p.  I haven't seen much comment on VR or 4k.  For equal, I'd go for the obtainable and cheaper 1080ti, but I'm suspecting to work with next generation VR, this may not be enough.  Any thoughts about what step up these might be from a 1070?

Thanks for any feedback!

 

 

 

Hi,

Just so you know, you can still OC the 8087K. I took mine to 5.5Ghz but that made no apparent difference to P3Dv4 so I set it back to 5.2GHZ for longevity's sake which I run with now.

That's in a roundabout way is what I'm wondering a bit about.  What does 0.5GHz really mean for performance?  I suspect it may be more going from 4.5-5.0 than 5.0 to 5.5.  Whats your GPU? Because I'm also seeing that some people are actually getting GPU bound with faster CPU's now. 

The 9700K and 9900K (and a whole bunch of new Z390 motherboards designed for those chips) are due out in a matter of weeks now, and both top-end intel SKUs are supposed to represent a return to soldered IHS construction, making the possibility of a 5.2GHz O/C on 8 physical cores doable with a higher-end cooling solution.  Personally, I think waiting a little while more to go that route may pay off.

I run a pair of 1080Ti GPUs in SLI, which works quite well for P3D, but I would still prefer a single-board config if it could get one that would power through peak loads like the twin 1080Ti config does.  If I were looking to upgrade from a 1070 now I might wait and see how the 2080Ti, also nearly here, pans out for P3D.

If ya gotta have it now, I'd go with the 8086K over the 8700K, as the $50 price premium buys a pre-binned chip that gives you a more or less guaranteed win in the chip lottery.

I put 32GB of DDR4 in my current build, anticipating that maybe the next generation or two of sim software might leverage that, but so far that hasn't come to pass.  I probably would still do it today, though.  It doesn't go to waste--I run a 16GB secondary disk cache that makes reloads pretty snappy when doing configuration and development work that entails restarting the sim over...and over...and over.

Regards

 

Wow, it's been years since I've built a new rig. 

 

I'm in the exact same boat, 4790 @ 4.6 TitanX 1080 16Gigs DDR3 and thinking about going full bore for P3D.  Sounds like waiting a bit is the prudent move.  Jeez, 9K chips and 2080 video cards, where have I been LOL

On 10/4/2018 at 7:58 AM, psolk said:

Wow, it's been years since I've built a new rig. 

 

I'm in the exact same boat, 4790 @ 4.6 TitanX 1080 16Gigs DDR3 and thinking about going full bore for P3D.  Sounds like waiting a bit is the prudent move.  Jeez, 9K chips and 2080 video cards, where have I been LOL

Ha!  I'm still on my 2500k at 4ghz

I would also advocate waiting a bit... your current config is pretty capable, and the new technology is only just coming out..

Intel are launching the new CPUs today and the motherboard manufactures are launching the Z390 boards to support the new CPUs, it will be interesting to see if the PCIE slot has been upgraded to 4.0.