[P3D] Some Questions regarding Hardware + Performance

[SimeonWilbury 220]

HI All

I have been embarking on a look at my sim setup recently due to some FPS issues I have been having. This being the classic problem of the FPS tanking when on approach with most kinds of Scenery. I noticed that despite my semi-recent investment in a half-decent GPU (a 8GB RX-570), I am seeing little actual use of my VRAM, suggesting that my real problem is my considerably older CPU, an FX-8350.

So here are a few questions coming out of that:

• What can I do with regards to my CPU? Will I need to look at replacing it?
• What tweaks can I make to my settings to give my CPU an easier time (/shift the load) without compromising aesthetics too much?
• Does V4.5 offer any performance improvements? (asking mainly as I'm still on 4.4 currently until I'm sure compatibility is all ok)

I'm looking at a Ryzen model as a potential replacement, but as I'm not as attuned to the hardware side of things as I used to be so any advice on good value upgrades to get the best out of P3D would be appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Martin

Edited May 5, 2019 by SimeonWilbury
fixed a spelling error

[CaptainNick 575]

I recently swapped from an old Xeon e3 1290v2 setup to an OC'd Ryzen 2600 myself running 4.4 still with a gtx 1060 6gb and saw a pretty solid improvement in the ability to turn up visual settings with the same-ish frame rates at 1920x1080, you can see it on some of the videos from the past month at my youtube link in my signature.

Now the real question before everyone starts chiming in about buying a 9900k or 9700k etc is what sort of budget do you have realistically? Anything you swap to, you are going to have to go processor, motherboard and DDR4 ram...so tell us your budget and that will help anyone make a reccomendation.

[SimeonWilbury 220]

15 hours ago, CaptainNick said:

I recently swapped from an old Xeon e3 1290v2 setup to an OC'd Ryzen 2600 myself running 4.4 still with a gtx 1060 6gb and saw a pretty solid improvement in the ability to turn up visual settings with the same-ish frame rates at 1920x1080, you can see it on some of the videos from the past month at my youtube link in my signature.

Now the real question before everyone starts chiming in about buying a 9900k or 9700k etc is what sort of budget do you have realistically? Anything you swap to, you are going to have to go processor, motherboard and DDR4 ram...so tell us your budget and that will help anyone make a reccomendation.

Were I to upgrade I would prefer to keep the budget as low as possible, so in the low-hundreds essentially. What I may do is build up a larger budget and start a whole new build, as parts of my current build are now over 6 years old. I could then use my current GPU in the new build which would be perfectly adequate.

As a Student I would prefer not to string myself too high, price-wise. As a max for the CPU+Board I would say £300-400 (which I believe is around $400-500). Though for a new build where I reuse my GPU I could theoretically go up to around £1000 without taking too huge a chunk out of my savings.

I was thinking perhaps an OCed Ryzen 5 2600 would work nicely given a good cooling solution.

Edited May 6, 2019 by SimeonWilbury

[CaptainNick 575]

for 400-500 usd you can easily swap to a ryzen setup. A decent b450 mobo is going to be 100-150, 2600 is like 160 right now, 120 will get you 16gb of decent timing 3200mhz ddr4, and a few bucks to toss at like a Coolermaster EVO 212 which will get you to 4ghz-4.2 depending on the silicon lottery.

Plus the 450 mobo will fit the new ryzen 3000's coming out....

[ryanbatc 12,851]

1 hour ago, CaptainNick said:

for 400-500 usd you can easily swap to a ryzen setup. A decent b450 mobo is going to be 100-150, 2600 is like 160 right now, 120 will get you 16gb of decent timing 3200mhz ddr4, and a few bucks to toss at like a Coolermaster EVO 212 which will get you to 4ghz-4.2 depending on the silicon lottery.

Plus the 450 mobo will fit the new ryzen 3000's coming out....

Although I wouldn't typically recommend that path for P3D simming... I think that's a good budget build.  Not everyone can spend 2k on a new system each year hehe! As long as Simeon stays with a 1080P monitor I think he'd be fine with that.

[SimeonWilbury 220]

10 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Although I wouldn't typically recommend that path for P3D simming... I think that's a good budget build.  Not everyone can spend 2k on a new system each year hehe! As long as Simeon stays with a 1080P monitor I think he'd be fine with that.

Yeah I'm not planning to move beyond 1080p anytime soon. Till I'm self-sufficient I'm happy with a budget build.

[SimeonWilbury 220]

12 hours ago, CaptainNick said:

for 400-500 usd you can easily swap to a ryzen setup. A decent b450 mobo is going to be 100-150, 2600 is like 160 right now, 120 will get you 16gb of decent timing 3200mhz ddr4, and a few bucks to toss at like a Coolermaster EVO 212 which will get you to 4ghz-4.2 depending on the silicon lottery.

Plus the 450 mobo will fit the new ryzen 3000's coming out....

Sounds like a good fit, I already have a 212 EVO which will simplify things as well.

[ckyliu 1,749]

P3D is still rather dependent on single core/thread performance and clock so factor single thread benchmarks in to your CPU choice, such as https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html where I'd be looking for at least 2200 pts, which would put you in a Ryzen 7 2700X. Unfortunately AMD tend to favour multithread performance with many cores, which puts Intel at an advantage for P3D, an i5 8600K is cheaper and benchmarks a little better.

As regards the RX-570 it has the memory but is rather lacking in grunt for P3D, by all means it is still useable but medium term an upgrade to RX-590, Vega or RTX2060 is probably in order.

There is little performance different between P3D 4.4 and 4.5, most the improvement is in initial load times and 4.5 is awaiting a fix for poor framerates in dense scenery areas so I suggest retaining 4.4 for now.

I've built a spec up at http://viaintercity.com/forums/general-discussion/recommended-addons/msg3982/#msg3982 which comes in at £345 for processor (i5-9600k) and motherboard (Gigabyte Z390), for P3D I suggest that represents more performance for the money than AMD's current product line, but If you do demanding multithread stuff like video compiling and multitask a lot the balance tips back towards AMD.

Edited May 7, 2019 by ckyliu