I'm curious if anyone has some experience to share w/r/t running P3D v4/5/6 on one of the V-cache (X3D) AMD CPUs.

The latest ASUS BIOS fix (2703, Intel microcode 0x12B) for 13th/14th Gen Intel problems just completely bricked my P3D machine.  And from reading the tea leaves, it seems that the latest Intel platform BIOS/microcode revisions have also nerfed smooth performance, with the ability to disable processor C1E state being taken off the table, resulting in microstuttering caused by intermittent 800 MHz core slowdowns.  After 30-something years on Team Blue, I've just about about had it with Intel and ASUS.

I really like how the 7800X3D I'm using for SimZilla performs--the tradeoff of massive memory bandwidth for CPU clock speed works quite well there.  I'm just not sure if the X3D V-cache translates into P3D performance like it does in MSFS.  Anyone know?

 

Extremely good performance on AMD 7950X3D and 7800X3D.  For the AMD 7950X3D you’ll need to get latest OS updates and UEFI updates and might need to confirm core preference to CCD with the Vcache.

If you plan to go AMD, might want to wait for the 9950X3D, supposed to have Vcache on both CCDs.

I would avoid the Intel Ultra CPU series for any sort of simulation/gaming, performance is very poor.

I got a 5700X3D in June. I'm running it with SMT disabled. I couldn't find any good reason to keep it on. I got an interesting performance bump from my old 5600X, that can't be replicated with the standard benchmarks (Cinebench, Passmark, and similar). But well, my budget was a bit tight, so I won't complain.

I can't remember exactly how much was the improvement, but it was close to the same variation I got in MSFS 2020, give or take. I can only confirm it was good enough for using the FSL A320 in v4, departing KJFK (Ray Smith AFCAD), using FSHud as ATC and AI (20 static+50 parked, I think), and keep between 25 and 30 native FPS.

Thermals have been very good (seldom over 62°C with air cooling), but summer is due to come soon. I may give further comments in February.

Agree, SMT should be disabled … same as with Intel disable hyper-threading.  Neither of these features are helpful for games/simulations.

Heck Intel finally dropped Hyper-threading in their next gen Ultra CPUs.

Less heat allows for higher clock frequency with SMT off or Hyper-threading off.

7900X3D without problem, but I don't know how good or bad is compare to nonX3D, as the last one I use is 3850

And yes SMT off makes better

On 10/28/2024 at 1:50 PM, CO2Neutral said:

If you plan to go AMD, might want to wait for the 9950X3D, supposed to have Vcache on both CCDs.

I hadn't heard that...dual v-cached CCDs does sound like an interesting development, especially with the 3D cache moved down below the cores to give the cores direct contact with the IHS. 

It's going to be interesting to see where the point of diminishing returns lies with higher V-cache equipped core counts on all of the sim platforms. 

On 10/27/2024 at 10:46 PM, Bob Scott said:

The latest ASUS BIOS fix (2703, Intel microcode 0x12B) for 13th/14th Gen Intel problems just completely bricked my P3D machine.

Hi Bob,

Ouch! That's not good. I've been keeping in touch with Chillblast who supplied my computer and they advised to only update the BIOS when it became official, not in beta.

I did it last week and so far all is okay. CPU temps remain high but when I supplied a file to Chillblast showing temps over 30 mins they seemed happy they were okay. I've had no throttling either.

One thing you didn't mention is if your running Lossless Scaling. I have my base sim running at 20fps with a x3 accelerator set. In theory 20 should impose less stress on the CPU than 30 before. Time will tell I suppose.

Is that you done with Intel then? If mine fails I wouldn't accept another 14th gen CPU as the same issues would exist. Probably look at swapping mobo and CPU for an AMD. Fingers crossed.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Hi Bob,

Ouch! That's not good. I've been keeping in touch with Chillblast who supplied my computer and they advised to only update the BIOS when it became official, not in beta.

I did it last week and so far all is okay. CPU temps remain high but when I supplied a file to Chillblast showing temps over 30 mins they seemed happy they were okay. I've had no throttling either.

One thing you didn't mention is if your running Lossless Scaling. I have my base sim running at 20fps with a x3 accelerator set. In theory 20 should impose less stress on the CPU than 30 before. Time will tell I suppose.

Is that you done with Intel then? If mine fails I wouldn't accept another 14th gen CPU as the same issues would exist. Probably look at swapping mobo and CPU for an AMD. Fingers crossed.

I did an RMA on the motherboard...it's still at ASUS for a warranty repair/replacement.  Once that's taken care of I still have to wonder if the CPU has been damaged by several years of running it with the bad original microcode and BIOS.  I've run the Intel function test on it several times, the last one a few weeks ago, and it passed OK.  If it fails in the next three years during the Intel warranty extension, I'd have to send it back to Intel for a replacement.  At that point I'd have to take a look at whether P3D remains viable and at what's out there in the hardware arena, but certainly Intel has lost it's luster with this 4-star goat rope, and meanwhile the AMD X3D chips have become a real sleeper hit w/r/t simming. 

I use LSFG frame generation on my MSFS/XPlane box to good effect with MSFS--haven't tried it with XP12 yet.  Right now I still run P3D v5 to a 55" TV set to 30 Hz hardware refresh rate, so frame gen wouldn't be of any benefit in that configuration, since the 13900KS can hold a rock-solid 30 fps in pretty much any scenario I fly with.  I just bought a high-bandwidth HDMI cable that should be able to carry 4K video at 60 Hz a few weeks ago, and was about to try 30 fps boosted to 60 fps with x2 LSFG frame generation on my P3D box when this BIOS update debacle happened.

 

1 hour ago, Bob Scott said:

I did an RMA on the motherboard...it's still at ASUS for a warranty repair/replacement.  Once that's taken care of I still have to wonder if the CPU has been damaged by several years of running it with the bad original microcode and BIOS.

Ah, so it was the mobo that died, not the CPU. That’s odd. Asus are meant to be the best. Seems their just as culpable as Intel then.

On 10/28/2024 at 6:52 PM, CO2Neutral said:

Less heat allows for higher clock frequency with SMT off or Hyper-threading off.

Unless you're already maxed at 5050Mhz with the 78000X3D because your curve optimizer is set correctly. 😉

The X3D chips use so little power that heat dissipation is rarely an issue. AMD claims it's a 105W part, and I've got it in 105W ECO mode, yet it still refuses to use more than 75W or so.

Cheers

22 hours ago, Luke said:

Unless you're already maxed at 5050Mhz with the 78000X3D because your curve optimizer is set correctly. 😉

The X3D chips use so little power that heat dissipation is rarely an issue. AMD claims it's a 105W part, and I've got it in 105W ECO mode, yet it still refuses to use more than 75W or so.

Cheers

Not sure about the 7800X3D frequency limit?  7950X3D no problem running 6.125 GHz with SMT off and one CCD with vCache operational (yes there other 8 cores aren’t used and excellent cooling is required).

I’m glad Intel dropped HT and I hope AMD follow suit and drop SMT (at least for their desktop CPU ranges).  I’m all for Intel/AMD partnership for dumping X86 and moving forward, about time and I’m glad both are involved. NVidia’s move into the CPU market has my wallet worried … if the 5090 really does list for $3200, I’m afraid to think what an nVidia CPU would list for (if it was faster than AMD/Intel).

On 11/3/2024 at 7:07 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

That’s odd. Asus are meant to be the best.

They used to be, lately their quality control has dropped off significantly.  I’ve had failures from MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte.  

ASUS had issue with B slots for RAM, could only work on A slots and a USB port that was flakey and a 2.5G port that never worked.  

MSI suddenly started reporting CPU thermal problem that didn’t actually exist and was a bad sensor other board which I couldn’t disable so it always put the CPU into limp mode (aka 2Ghz or less).  

Gigabyte, just wouldn’t boot one day, replace CPU, RAM, M.2, PSU … just dead.

I was hoping EVGA would move full time into the Motherboard market, but that seemed to be more an experiment they elected to not follow thru on.

It’s a little strange, I went for over a decade without a single issue on ASUS motherboards, then within the past 3 years I started getting all sorts of issues.  I caught wind of Gamer Nexus video piece on ASUS support issues and that matched with my experience.  Don’t know what happened at ASUS, a once very reliable (maybe not fastest MB) manufacturer is no longer very reliable … shame.

On 10/29/2024 at 4:18 PM, Bob Scott said:

I hadn't heard that...dual v-cached CCDs

I believe that was from “Gamer Meld” or something like that … not exactly sure how reliable the source.  My understanding is they saw a leaked part on one of the benchmarking tools (SiSoftware I think?).

1 hour ago, CO2Neutral said:

They used to be, lately their quality control has dropped off significantly.

I’ve had my system for 13 months now with no issues. Even my GoFlight modules plugged into a powered USB2 hub connected to a USB Header has been rock solid.

Maybe I’ve got one of the good ones. 😉

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Maybe I’ve got one of the good ones

I think they have several manufacturing locations so your region of the world might be coming from a better location with higher quality control standards.  

And

 

Steve is probably one of the more thorough YT channels and actually visits ASUS for a response and discussion and they seem to communicate with him.

There is a entire series of videos Steve has made on ASUS.