Ryzen 5 3600: Is it a good CPU for P3D?

[Mengy 814]

So I've been using an i5-2500K since 2011 for all of my flight simming (P3Dv4) and gaming, here is my build:

• I5-2500K
• Biostar TZ68A+ motherboard
• 8GB Gskill Sniper DDR3 1333 memory
• EVGA GTX970
• (2) Western Digital Blue 1TB old fashioned spinning 7200RPM HDD’s (no SSD's!)
• 650W power supply

I'm looking to build a new PC around the new Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, this is what I'm thinking of building:

• Ryzen 5 3600
• MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS motherboard
• G.SKILL Flare X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 CL14 memory
• Western Digital 500GB SATA3 SSD
• Western Digital 2TB SATA3 SSD
• Cooler Master HAF 912 Case

Quick note, for now I'm considering keeping my GTX970 and the 650W power supply from my current PC, with the mind to upgrade the GPU+PSU in a year or two once PCI4 ray tracing cards come out.  I might pick up a GTX1660 XC Black when I place the order, its about twice as good as my GTX970 and it would allow me to wait even longer til adopting newer tech.  Not sure yet.

So yeah, I know the high end Intel chips are the best for flight simming with overclocking, but I'm not into overclocking as a rule and I'd like to build this new PC with some frugalness in mind.  I don't want to spend a lot of money, just a moderate amount.

Has anyone here upgraded to the Ryzen 5 3600 yet?  And if so, does it perform well with P3Dv4?

[Samany69 41]

Hello,

I'm awaiting the 3950X to build a system, but if you are certain about building an AMD based system, the 3600 and 3700X is like a sweet spot, I would also recommend you to get a PCIe 4.0 ready NVMe SSD since I am sure its gonna be a considerable improvement over normal SSD's for loading huge amount of heavy scenery data into the RAM and CPU. Also, the new Ryzen 3000 series seems to favor 3600MHz memory, so have a look around the best of them.

Best Regards.

-S.
 

[Brisafresca 58]

HI

I don't have any AMD cpu, but I think it is a good cpu:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-3600-vs-Intel-i5-9600K-vs-Intel-i7-9700K/3481vs3337vs3335

Regards

[Mengy 814]

Yep, I know the Ryzen 5 3600 does very well in CPU benchmarks and such due to it's cores and multithreading, but I wonder how that will translate into P3D performance which seems to primarily favor single core speed?

Well no matter what it should be a huge improvement over my i5-2500K for a decent price.  🙂

Edited July 28, 2019 by Mengy

[swiesma 625]

Just one remark regarding the SSD. For me it made no difference if I have P3D and addons on a SATA SSD or on a PCIe M.2 SSD....

[Jiri Kocman 20]

21 minutes ago, swiesma said:

Just one remark regarding the SSD. For me it made no difference if I have P3D and addons on a SATA SSD or on a PCIe M.2 SSD....

Exactly, it reads lot of very small files, absolute sequential read speed is irrelevant, you looking for 4k files read, aka you have to be focuset on I/O operations, not pure speeds. You are even limited with CPU performance, only loading can really 100% utilize your CPU.

NVMe is mostly irrelevant for most users, they cant notice difference at loading speeds of OS, sim, game... NVMe4 is even worse, cost a lot of money same as MoBo and provide no perfromance boost fror most users. Wasted money.

 

New ryzens are good, but for most powerful flight sim PC Intel is still better. You even have to buy cheaper Ryzen CPU as 3600 will perfrom same as 3900X, all rnew Zen2 CPUs will reach ahout 4.3GHz as maximum all core boost.

[vortex681 806]

Anyone contemplating getting an AMD processor over the Intel equivalent may want to read this article before pressing the button: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-3000-turbo-boost-frequency-analysis,6253.html

[Mengy 814]

48 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Anyone contemplating getting an AMD processor over the Intel equivalent may want to read this article before pressing the button: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-3000-turbo-boost-frequency-analysis,6253.html

Yeah I read that article yesterday.  The Ryzen chips don't appear to be as ideal for flight sims as the high end Intel chips, yet they are a decent value for the lower prices and still a far cry better than my i5-2500K.

At this point though I'm contemplating switching to the Ryzen 3700X instead, or even just opening the wallet a bit farther and building a high end Intel system.  Although with the beta for FS2020 coming out in the next month or so I may just wait to see what chips run the new sim best before building any new PC.

[F737MAX 5,557]

12 hours ago, Mengy said:

Yeah I read that article yesterday.  The Ryzen chips don't appear to be as ideal for flight sims as the high end Intel chips, yet they are a decent value for the lower prices and still a far cry better than my i5-2500K.

At this point though I'm contemplating switching to the Ryzen 3700X instead, or even just opening the wallet a bit farther and building a high end Intel system.  Although with the beta for FS2020 coming out in the next month or so I may just wait to see what chips run the new sim best before building any new PC.

Ryzen Gen 2 has definitely had a challenging 'birth'.
While there is concern and disappointment that the chips only reach the advertised boost clock speeds on one core and then sometimes only very briefly, there is still a lot of noise being generated by people that are failing to recognise that what worked with CPUs previously is not relevant to these new Ryzen CPUs and that they are performing rather well.

Having seen threads that the new Ryzen power plan and new chipset driver releases from AMD, the new bios updates from mobo manufacturers, and a better understanding of how the CPUs function are showing better and more stable performance, I have finally taken the plunge and have ordered a 3700X.

Being able to wait is a great place to be.
Not only will you get reports from simmers sharing their experiences with Ryzen Gen 2 CPUs in P3D, but you should hopefully start seeing even bigger price drops on the 9700K and 9900K Intel CPUs.
Given that July saw two European online retailers report that AMD had 66% and 80% share of CPUs sold plus 58% and 75% share in revenue respectively (Azerty.nl and mindfactory.de), Intel has to respond further on price. That will give you an even better set of choices.

I'll post my P3D findings with the 3700X in the next 2 weeks, if my order isn't delayed.
 

[Mengy 814]

11 hours ago, F737NG said:

I'll post my P3D findings with the 3700X in the next 2 weeks, if my order isn't delayed.
 

Thanks, that would be so much appreciated!  I think I will wait until you post back then, because the 3700X is what I'm leaning towards too.

Edited August 2, 2019 by Mengy

[vortex681 806]

1 hour ago, Mengy said:

Thanks, that would be so much appreciated!  I think I will wait until you post back then, because the 3700X is what I'm leaning towards too.

I don't think that anyone is saying that the 3700x is bad - it isn't. I'm sure that anyone who buys one will be very pleased with the results, especially if their existing system is a few years old. But unless you can try them both in the same configuration, side-by-side you'll never know which is better. Most review sites seem to lean towards the 9900k as the better gaming CPU and the Zen 2 as the best all-round CPU. 

[F737MAX 5,557]

On 8/2/2019 at 2:06 PM, Mengy said:

Thanks, that would be so much appreciated!  I think I will wait until you post back then, because the 3700X is what I'm leaning towards too.

So, I've had a play around with my new 3700X.

With just Precision Boost Overdrive (the AMD automatic overclock function) enabled, using the updated Ryzen Master utility, a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler and the same cr*ppy B350 mobo, I'm getting an average of 4.3 GHz across all cores (a couple at 4.275, and one or two at 4.325, maybe pushing to 4.35 on occassion).

Testing using the PMDG 737NGX, AIG traffic limited to 150 aircraft, Rex SF textures at 512 resolution, ActiveSky, and using the FFTF Dynamic utility - all of the features used when I was using the 1700X.

Running TrueEarth Netherlands and FlyTampa Amsterdam, I am currently getting 21 FPS on average on 3700X compared to 18 FPS on the 1700X.

At FlyTampa Las Vegas, I am now getting 28 FPS on average compared to 23 FPS before.

Total average gains are between 16% and 22% in these and other tested scenarios and locations.

Outside of TE GB, I use these settings as a minimum:
https://imgur.com/icle51G
But usually up the shadow objects cast, dynamic reflections and water detail.


An easily observable benefit is that P3D takes a shorter amount of time to startup and to load a scenario (about 2 minutes and 1 minute faster respectively).


Overall I'm happy with the upgrade as I didn't have to change any other components.
The retaining of an AM4 socket motherboard and the slightly cheaper pricing are the only reasons I can recommend a new Ryzen over Intel.
(You could also argue that the new Ryzen Master Utility program makes overclocking very simple, with a click and go interface).

If anyone is going for an entire new build, testing by reviewers shows that you would still be better off getting a 9700K or a 9900K (choice depending on price and on HT usage) to get the best possible performance on P3D / XP.
 

[flyinion 280]

5 hours ago, F737NG said:

So, I've had a play around with my new 3700X.

With just Precision Boost Overdrive (the AMD automatic overclock function) enabled, using the updated Ryzen Master utility, a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler and the same cr*ppy B350 mobo, I'm getting an average of 4.3 GHz across all cores (a couple at 4.275, and one or two at 4.325, maybe pushing to 4.35 on occassion).

Testing using the PMDG 737NGX, AIG traffic limited to 150 aircraft, Rex SF textures at 512 resolution, ActiveSky, and using the FFTF Dynamic utility - all of the features used when I was using the 1700X.

Running TrueEarth Netherlands and FlyTampa Amsterdam, I am currently getting 21 FPS on average on 3700X compared to 18 FPS on the 1700X.

At FlyTampa Las Vegas, I am now getting 28 FPS on average compared to 23 FPS before.

Total average gains are between 16% and 22% in these and other tested scenarios and locations.

Outside of TE GB, I use these settings as a minimum:
https://imgur.com/icle51G
But usually up the shadow objects cast, dynamic reflections and water detail.


An easily observable benefit is that P3D takes a shorter amount of time to startup and to load a scenario (about 2 minutes and 1 minute faster respectively).


Overall I'm happy with the upgrade as I didn't have to change any other components.
The retaining of an AM4 socket motherboard and the slightly cheaper pricing are the only reasons I can recommend a new Ryzen over Intel.
(You could also argue that the new Ryzen Master Utility program makes overclocking very simple, with a click and go interface).

If anyone is going for an entire new build, testing by reviewers shows that you would still be better off getting a 9700K or a 9900K (choice depending on price and on HT usage) to get the best possible performance on P3D / XP.
 

Just curious, is that P3D v4?  and what resolution?  I just updated to a 3700X from my 4790K and have been contemplating getting P3D.  

[F737MAX 5,557]

Yep, P3D v4 with a 3 monitor setup at 4160 x 1024 (not even full HD, let alone 4k).

I push my PC quite hard with the settings I use. You can get disproportionate performance improvements if you are willing to sacrifice some of the visuals.


Some points for you to consider regarding migrating to P3D v4:
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/557988-hunting-an-fps-loss/

 

[Mengy 814]

Thanks F737, very good info.

I'm still undecided whether I want to build a Ryzen 7 3700X system or just spend the money on the 9900K system instead.  I know the 9900K will run P3D better, I'm just not sure it will be "all that more money" better.

Either way it will be a ton better than my i5-2500K, lol.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Mengy