6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Yes, I agree. I'm planning on two modules. Easier to overclock too apparently.

My old Gateway system lasted almost ten years and went thru three video cards (the prior two died of fan failure).  The only BSOD I ever received on the Vista based system was when I attempted to overclock my graphics card.....  My bad and I thought "Holy...." my system is toast!  But I was able to revert what I had done and see the error of my ways.  Overclocking the card did boost fps in FSX by about 10 percent, I was surprised.  My current system was store bought at Fry's Electronics and although I have Nvidia Inspector I just let the sims work my graphics settings for me.  My Gateway system died of two things, but one thing I could fix in my own unique way.  My cpu fan died and the system would shut down when it got too hot, as it was designed to do.  So I removed the cover, got a $10 desk fan, and soldiered on with no more issues and cooler temps than the onboard cpu fan used to provide.  Before the cpu fan completely died I used to give it a whirl with my finger, by spinning the blade and sometimes it would run for a few days.

The old system finally had to go because Windows dropped updates for Vista, but my system tried to update anyway--and got stuck in an endless cycle of reboots with "0 pct installed" coming up.  Tried to get it to update for a week non stop but the Vista updates were gone and I learned online via my cell phone browser that other Vista users had lost their systems due to the same issue.  I looked for Windows 7 update edition but it was no longer available.  Gave me the excuse I needed to get a P3DV4 and Xplane11 capable system last year.  Carenado restored my licenses for almost all the products I had purchased from them for FSX, so I have them installed in P3DV4 now.

John

My first response: YAGNI

I can't predict the future and certainly not the future of P3D, but I can't imaging ray tracing will be a P3D feature anytime soon. 

Edited October 25, 20187 yr by Egbert Drenth

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’m close to placing an order for a new PC to run P3D v4 and cannot decide if 16Gb of RAM is sufficient or whether I should go for 32Gb for future-proofing.

The best way to find out is to ask you to complete the poll and add any comments here you feel would help me (and potentially others). Thanks for your help.

 

Not sure any choice applies to me.  I have 32 gb on my sim rig, but I do NOT have 32gb for my sim.  If you understand my drift -- I built it with 32 gb for handling big photo manipulation tasks.  I realize the sim isn't going to use that.

That said, if I were building again, I'd probably just go for it -- 32 gb, that way I wouldn't  have to worry about anything.

The number of RAM modules will depend on the CPU, chipset … for dual channel 2 modules, but for quad channel 4 modules … even in OC situations you'll get far better thru-put with quad channel provided you're using a quad channel CPU/chipset.

But for 8000 and 9000 series, they're dual channel … quad channel is usually the domain of X series CPUs and associated chipsets and much more expensive MB's due to the additional layers needed for quad channel support.

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

Still happily flying with 8 GB RAM, wondering what I am missing

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 (1024 texture res for LC support) … if you don't fly LC much on 4K or more res, then you'll not see much of a difference in P3D V4.3 … however I can assure you, to "see" the visual feast in it's entire glory moving forward, I would recommend more than 8GB.  However, if you're happy with 512 LC res, then you'll not need more than 8GB … 512 can look good too.

Cheers, Rob.

9 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

The number of RAM modules will depend on the CPU, chipset … for dual channel 2 modules, but for quad channel 4 modules … even in OC situations you'll get far better thru-put with quad channel provided you're using a quad channel CPU/chipset.

But for 8000 and 9000 series, they're dual channel … quad channel is usually the domain of X series CPUs and associated chipsets and much more expensive MB's due to the additional layers needed for quad channel support.

Rob, proposed mobo is Acer Prime Z370-A ATX variant with i7-8086K. Does that lend itself to a dual or quad setup? Dual I would imagine but you're the expert.

18 minutes ago, Egbert Drenth said:

My first response: YAGNI

I can't predict the future and certainly not the future of P3D, but I can't imaging ray tracing will be a P3D feature anytime soon. 

YAGNI? New one on me. I know if I go for the 1080Ti they'll introduce RT. I'm lucky like that!

25 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

However, if you're happy with 512 LC res, then you'll not need more than 8GB … 512 can look good too.

Cheers, Rob.

Yup, happily using Texture Exp = 9 

Looks good and uses less CPU/GPU resources.

And, you are right, I do not use 4K, but still on 1080p.

At least now I know what "I am missing" 

Edited October 25, 20187 yr by Bert Pieke

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

YAGNI? New one on me. I know if I go for the 1080Ti they'll introduce RT. I'm lucky like that!

What if Ray Tracing turns out to be a gimmick?  What if RT severely impacts performance of the 2080ti when enabled?

33 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Rob, proposed mobo is Acer Prime Z370-A ATX variant with i7-8086K. Does that lend itself to a dual or quad setup? Dual I would imagine but you're the expert.

Acer?  Asus perhaps?

All Z370 boards are dual channel...the Asus Prime Z370-A has a dual channel, 4-slot memory config.  If you populate all four DIMM slots, you are still dual channel, with two DIMMs per channel.  DIMMs are not all the same, either...might not be a bad idea to research the state of the art in RAM...single vs double-sided, single bank vs double bank etc.  The 8086K really brings it...make sure you don't leave too much performance on the table with a memory config that limits what the CPU/IMC can do.

As far as how much...my last sim build had 32GB.  I never used it for the sim itself, so this time I'm building, at least initially, with 16GB (2x8GB) of high-end fast RAM (GSkill 3600MHz CAS 15).  Still doing burn-in testing, but it looks pretty good so far.

Cheers

 

15 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

What if Ray Tracing turns out to be a gimmick?  What if RT severely impacts performance of the 2080ti when enabled?

Feel free to discuss that in another topic. 😉

1 minute ago, w6kd said:

Acer?  Asus perhaps?

All Z370 boards are dual channel...the Asus Prime Z370-A has a dual channel, 4-slot memory config.  If you populate all four DIMM slots, you are still dual channel, with two DIMMs per channel.  DIMMs are not all the same, either...might not be a bad idea to research the state of the art in RAM...single vs double-sided, single bank vs double bank etc.  The 8086K really brings it...make sure you don't leave too much performance on the table with a memory config that limits what the CPU/IMC can do.

As far as how much...my last sim build had 32GB.  I never used it for the sim itself, so this time I'm building, at least initially, with 16GB (2x8GB) of high-end fast RAM.  Still doing burn-in testing, but it looks pretty good so far.

Cheers

Sorry, been a long day. Yes, Asus of course. I’ll carry on researching but I am aware that top end RAM costs a lot but isn’t proportionally faster. I just need a pair of (probably) 8Gb modules that won’t hold back the rest of the system and keep it well balanced.

36 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Sorry, been a long day. Yes, Asus of course. I’ll carry on researching but I am aware that top end RAM costs a lot but isn’t proportionally faster. I just need a pair of (probably) 8Gb modules that won’t hold back the rest of the system and keep it well balanced.

If the choice is between 32GB of average RAM and 16GB of high-performance RAM, I'd go with the 16GB config.

Also, a lot of the conventional wisdom on RAM has its roots in CPUs and chipsets several generations old.  I don't think the oft-held notion that RAM speed doesn't make a difference still holds true with processor speeds now approaching the mid-5GHz range.  It just doesn't make sense to me that increasing CPU throughput 35-50% (speed and IPC) while using RAM still running at the same approximate latencies wouldn't waste that additional CPU throughput with alot of empty clock ticks spent waiting for data.

The real measure of RAM performance is true latency, roughly computed (in ns) as (2000 x CAS level)/Speed (MHz).  Lower is better.  RAM with true latency of ~10 ns is average consumer-grade stuff, 9-10 is good, and <9 is high performance.  As an example, 3000 MHz CAS 15 RAM has a true latency of 2000*15/3000 = 10 ns (average).  And supposedly faster 3600 MHz CAS 18 memory has a true latency of 2000*18/3600 = 10ns.  Yup, no faster at all, in fact if you take the heat spreader off, don't be surprised to find the same memory ICs on the DIMM.

The chip configuration can make a difference in how much load is placed on the CPU's IMC (integrated memory controller).  That's why, usually, 2 DIMMs are better than 4, although 2 double-sided DIMMs versus 4 single-sided might be close to the same.  Bottom line, there's more detail worth considering than just price and clock speed.  You can get better-grade stuff without hitting the pricey top end if you know what to look for.  And you can get stuck with low-performance skunky RAM dolled-up like a pig wearing lipstick if you're not asking the right questions.

Regards

 

9 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

What if Ray Tracing turns out to be a gimmick?

It's not a gimmick, it's just a better way to present light that's good enough to fool the eye with hardware support.  Prior to ray tracing it was almost entirely all done on the CPU side and VERY VERY slow … think seconds per frame rather than frames per second.  There is not "True" ray tracing, that's just not possible unless you talk about quantum computing.  Ray Tracing as it relates to software visuals is an approximation (as is most software/games/sims that are presenting a virtual reality) … and it only needs to be an approximation that just good enough to fool the eye.

Ray tracing would benefit any sim/game, it's definitely not a gimmick as we have real world examples with recent releases (Tomb Raider and more) and Microsoft have pushed out the DXR extensions in Windows 10 October update … so it's very real.

Tensor cores are very good at matrix operations and matrix operations are fundamental method in graphics processing.

I'm not going to predict how and when this will be used in Flight Simulation, but its a VERY good match for flight simulation … especially dynamic lighting where you're applying matrix multiplication to come up with the final RGB value for a pixel … i.e. you flash a light towards a bunch of objects (pixels in 2D space which is a matrix) and you need to modified those pixels (representing objects) to be lighter (this is matrix multiplication to come up with final RGB value for the pixels that need to be adjusted) because you're shining a light on them.  This is an expensive process so the more the hardware can accelerate this process the better.

Cheers, Rob.

 

58 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

YAGNI? New one on me

Sorry, an occupational hazard. YAGI: You Ain't Gonna Need It

Can't really add anything useful to this thread other than to say thank you - it's very interesting and I've learned a lot for my next upgrade. Also, looking VERY forward to the day FSL release the new Concorde.