Straight forward question! I wonder if I can get an answer. I asked over on the P3D forum too. I think it might be important for anyone planning a new system right now with the intention that will be that for 5 years except for perhaps a GPU Upgrade in the middle.

Right now I an running an i7 4770k at 4.8ghz. It owes me nothing but since I switched to VR i am struggling to get over 30fps with setting I can live with.

I see that LM have certainly put the other cores to use with cores 3 and 4 also at 100% or close to it. Core 2 seems to hover between low usage and about 50%

So we all know that FSX/P3D is limited by the main thread so the faster the core that runs the main thread the better your performance all other components being up to the task.

Will this be the same with V5 or will that main thread be broken up making the program no longer single core performance dependent.

If that were the case, would it make a difference to the CPU that anyone building now would chose?

Edited January 13, 20197 yr by Guest

I'm pretty sure that anybody answering doesn't know and anybody who knows can't answer.  Prolly when LM starts advertising v5, then they'll say.

I do see lots of ppl building i9-9900K systems, though.

i want to know this to 🙂 16 core threadripper or 8 core intel is the name of the game. 🙂

but as buffy foster says till the NDA is not lifted nobody can or will tell it to us.

The problem with threadripper  is it`s not intended for gaming the new AMD CPUs to be released this year are.

19 minutes ago, rjfry said:

The problem with threadripper  is it`s not intended for gaming the new AMD CPUs to be released this year are.

That`s true but P3D is not realy "Gaming" 🙂 And if P3D will move towards more multi core it can happen that 16 Cores with 4.5 Ghz are more powerful then 8 cores with 5 Ghz. 

So the information is realy interesting for people which plan to build systems which should last some years.

16 Cores would be nice so you can give P3D 8 Cores and still have 8 cores for addons, windows ..... 

Currently i`m using an old 4770 with 32 GB RAM and a GTX 1070 and the system can maintain about 20 - 25 FPS in "most" situation only not when approaching EGLL or other dense area`s ( Flytampa EHAM with True Earth installed). 

When i think that this system is nearly 5 years old and i cannot oc it so i only have 3,8 Ghz and still DDR3 RAM.  I would not imagine what a 16 Core with current IPC and 4,2 - 4,5 Ghz and fast quad channel DDR4 is able to do when P3D uses more cores by default. 

And for sure currently a 9900K with 5,2 Ghz is also already a powerful system. But the price diference between Intel 8 and AMD 16 is about 300 EUR`s where i live. 

So when lookhed martin moves to more multi the 300 EUR are worth every penny.

 

 

Edited January 13, 20197 yr by 331BK

I think LM should just stick with 4.X until they build a new flight simulator on an up to date engine. Yes we would all have to purchase licenses again for all of our addons, but it would remove a lot of headaches and performance issues many are having. Its time LM moved on from the extremely outdated engine they currently use. 

3 hours ago, Avidean said:

Straight forward question! I wonder if I can get an answer. I asked over on the P3D forum too. I think it might be important for anyone planning a new system right now with the intention that will be that for 5 years except for perhaps a GPU Upgrade in the middle.

Right now I an running an i7 4770k at 4.8ghz. It owes me nothing but since I switched to VR i am struggling to get over 30fps with setting I can live with.

I see that LM have certainly put the other cores to use with cores 3 and 4 also at 100% or close to it. Core 2 seems to hover between low usage and about 50%

So we all know that FSX/P3D is limited by the main thread so the faster the core that runs the main thread the better your performance all other components being up to the task.

Will this be the same with V5 or will that main thread be broken up making the program no longer single core performance dependent.

If that were the case, would it make a difference to the CPU that anyone building now would chose?

The best way I can answer this is to study the other simulators you have on your system. If you have flyinside simulator, look at the way it allocates cores. It has been built from the ground up with latest multi-threaded concepts so you could safely use it as a bench mark. If you notice that even in flyinside, there is one core doing more work than the rest, you will know that it is necessary. The only way you can test that though is to compare flyinside simulator with HT-ON and HT-OFF. This is because the main thread has to manage more cores and in P3D it becomes more busy with more cores. But does flyinside? P3D can only move toward the same direction as Flyinside if it ever does assuming that Flyinside is already future design tech. After all, there is a an optimal solution to balancing cores in a flight simulator and P3D might iterate toward it.

I think a safe bet is that single core performance will continue to matter less, and more cores will continue to matter more. There will be an optimal number of cores for a simulator. I suspect that number is somewhere between 8-16 cores. At the moment it is probably 6 maybe 8.

Since the 9900k is a good compromise between single core and multicore performance, the 9900k will probably be good for a few years. Once multicore really evolves and the new core optimum is somewhere around 8-16, your hypothetical CPU would become old at that point.

I'm guessing though. But the flyinside comparison would be useful for you to do so as to possibly "glimpse the future".

16 minutes ago, shamrockflyer said:

I think LM should just stick with 4.X until they build a new flight simulator on an up to date engine. Yes we would all have to purchase licenses again for all of our addons, but it would remove a lot of headaches and performance issues many are having. Its time LM moved on from the extremely outdated engine they currently use. 

While I agree in principle, i'm not sure we'll see that happen anytime soon, if ever....

LM is primarily a global security, defense, and aerospace company. They are also the world's largest defense contractor, so that's where their focus is, not on making consumer PC based flight simulators. 

I would venture to say that P3D is but a miniscule blip on LM's corporate radar.....

1 hour ago, shamrockflyer said:

I think LM should just stick with 4.X until they build a new flight simulator on an up to date engine. Yes we would all have to purchase licenses again for all of our addons, but it would remove a lot of headaches and performance issues many are having. Its time LM moved on from the extremely outdated engine they currently use. 

With P3D 4.4, it's sure not performing like an outdated engine.  Whatever they're doing, keep it up.

The new RyzenCPUs will be 8 cores first then a 16 core to follow, they will not have the latency lag of threadripper that`s more for multi tasking, how the new CPUs perform we will have to wait and see when the testers get them. A new P3D engine I suspect would take more then just a few years some of the big game studios take years of development for a new game, and don't forget what P3D is designed for if gets the job done why change, eye candy is nice but that's not it`s main purpose.

Edited January 14, 20197 yr by rjfry

LM has publically mentioned that a new rendering engine would be a next step. They didn’t confirm anything but they have referenced it.  A modern rendering engine would put more on the GPU (probably see more autogen and ai being pushed there) and take some stress off the CPU but the newer faster processor will still always provide some advantages.  Is it worth the cost would be the bigger question. 

Also the whole core thing has a limit. The main core still has to manage those cores and not everything can be threaded so at some point in real time the main core will limit the CPU to some extent. I am sure use of other cores will always get better but it’s not a magic fix. 

5 hours ago, shamrockflyer said:

but it would remove a lot of headaches and performance issues many are having

Because?
Does XP11 have performance issues? Yes.
My guess is that flight simulators (and other complex simulations) always will have certain performance issues, because they continue to stretch hardware to the limits.

You also have to take into account the user, example the 20 series GPU requires WIN10 and DX12 if you change the specs for P3D you could shut some present users out, and it`s unlikely that companies that use P3D will change there hardware, they don't like upgrading it cost. 

Hopefully V5 will have a new engine.

In the mean time with future V4.x versions making more use of the GPU and less of the CPU might help a bit ..

8 hours ago, shamrockflyer said:

Its time LM moved on from the extremely outdated engine they currently use. 

The "outdated FSX engine" is an old myth. The ESP engine was more or less completley rewritten over the years.

There will be NEVER Hardware which can run high-sophisticated Flightsims like P3D or XP on full settings with high fps, period.