Hello,

I am currently running an Intel i9-9900K with a BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4. I am looking to potentially upgrade to an Intel i7-12700K. Is this a smart move? Doing the usual flight simming P3D and MSFS. My graphics card is an older GTX 1080 but i do not see myself upgrading it any time soon with the terrible GPU prices...

Thanks in advance!

Don't forget you will need a new motherboard.

1 minute ago, pgde said:

Don't forget you will need a new motherboard.

yeah, thats no problem! I have a friend whom I can sell both my old CPU and MoBo to 🙂 

That 9900K is still an excellent CPU. I wouldn't bother, rather spend money on upgrading your GPU (shop carefully and you will get fair prices).

Especially with DX12 eventually maturing on the sim, your graphics card with more VRam will give you bigger benefits.

have you tried overclocking your processor just a little bit to see if it's the limiting factor ?

I think with a i7-12700K, the Nvidia 1080 video card will present a serious bottleneck.  The i9-9900K is not a bad CPU and can be overclocked.  I know video card prices are high right now and likely to stay high, but you have a solid system, a video card upgrade may net more improvement than a new motherboard, CPU, and old video card.

Isn't MSFS still fairly CPU bound? I'm thinking he will see an improvement Cant say how much. If we upgrade incermentally we have to start somewhere. 

20 hours ago, martin-w said:

Isn't MSFS still fairly CPU bound? I'm thinking he will see an improvement Cant say how much. If we upgrade incermentally we have to start somewhere. 

Not really, based on recommended requirements, I'd say it leans a bit more on the video card for performance.

 

Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

• CPU: Intel i5 9600K
• RAM: 16 GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti
• PIXEL SHADER: 5.1
• VERTEX SHADER: 5.1
• DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2 GB
• STORAGE: HDD

Recommended system requirements

• CPU: Intel i7 9700K or AMD Ryzen 7 1700 or better
• RAM: 32 GB
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA RTX 2070 8 GB
• PIXEL SHADER: 5.1
• VERTEX SHADER: 5.1
• DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 8 GB
• STORAGE 512 GB M.2

 

Source:  https://www.computerplanet.co.uk/pc-hardware-needed-for-the-new-flight-simulator-2020-game/

I don't have it you see, so don't know first hand. 

MSFS used to be CPU bound by one thread (main thread) but SU5 was released in Jul 21 it now spreads the CPU load quite nicely across all cores, making the GPU more likely to be the bottleneck (as it should be). Of course that all depends on resolution and graphics settings, but a i9-9900K should still be holding up pretty well.

Easiest way to tell whether a CPU upgrade is worth it or not for MSFS is to load up MSFS, turn on developer mode in settings and turn on the FPS counter in the developer menu, load up a representative flight you normally do and see what the FPS counter is telling you is limiting peformance and by how much. If main thread is the limiter and its frame time is significantly longer than GPU, then a CPU upgrade would be worth it. However, if your GPU and main thread frame times are close to each other, then your system is currently balanced and, assuming you are not happy with your current level of performance,  to see any notable peformance boost you will need to upgrade both GPU and CPU.

8 hours ago, Reset XPDR said:

MSFS used to be CPU bound by one thread (main thread) but SU5 was released in Jul 21 it now spreads the CPU load quite nicely across all cores, making the GPU more likely to be the bottleneck (as it should be). Of course that all depends on resolution and graphics settings, but a i9-9900K should still be holding up pretty well.

Easiest way to tell whether a CPU upgrade is worth it or not for MSFS is to load up MSFS, turn on developer mode in settings and turn on the FPS counter in the developer menu, load up a representative flight you normally do and see what the FPS counter is telling you is limiting peformance and by how much. If main thread is the limiter and its frame time is significantly longer than GPU, then a CPU upgrade would be worth it. However, if your GPU and main thread frame times are close to each other, then your system is currently balanced and, assuming you are not happy with your current level of performance,  to see any notable peformance boost you will need to upgrade both GPU and CPU.

MSFS still is bound by the main thread. They did spread some threads across other cores but the main thread core is the one that is still taxed the most.

11 hours ago, GSalden said:

MSFS still is bound by the main thread. They did spread some threads across other cores but the main thread core is the one that is still taxed the most.

Generally, the term "bound" is used to confer that a particular component is limiting performance and is not necessarily the case for the CPU  just because one core is being taxed more than others. eg. in the following task manager screenshot taken while running FS2020, the last CPU core is being taxed the most, but is well below 100%. The GPU is loaded the most, and in fact is maxed out, hence in this scenario FS2020 is GPU bound.

33 minutes ago, Reset XPDR said:

Generally, the term "bound" is used to confer that a particular component is limiting performance and is not necessarily the case for the CPU  just because one core is being taxed more than others. eg. in the following task manager screenshot taken while running FS2020, the last CPU core is being taxed the most, but is well below 100%. The GPU is loaded the most, and in fact is maxed out, hence in this scenario FS2020 is GPU bound.

With my 3090 the GPU always has a low load and even with my 2x 4K front view stays below 50% ….

The CPU’s main thread is taxed way more than the other cores and always stays above 58%…

Minimum system requirement - i5 9600K? Surely there are plenty of MSFS users with less than that?