SAAB340

FSX will give you lower FPS if you run your RAM single channel. Tri or quad channel doesn't really matter, but dual channel does.

SSD won't ever help with FPS. If you had high FPS before and it has dropped now it's because you have something else stealing CPU cycles now that you didn't before. Where SSD makes a difference is loadtimes, stutters and photoscenery texture load.

I've now updated my post above with LOD=4.5 and LOD=6.5 as well.

 

Some conclusions I can make is that an SSD does help a lot with texture loading even at LOD=4.5.

 

LOD=4.5 on either type of storage is indeed a lot faster than higher LOD settings, especially with only a few texture loaders. It might be that you find it fast enough already, in that case having your photo scenery on an SSD is just a massive expense apart from initial load time. Activating hyperthreading and using AM=244 still yields a large textureloading improvement with a HDD compared to AM=84/14. Given that I find LOD=9.0 on an SSD with Affinitymask=4089 just good enough in the area where I've done the test but I'm still wanting more I'd expect people using LOD=4.5 and AM=84/14 to feel the same given that the texture loading I get is the same when using SSD in both cases.

 

Not to mention that the LOD=9.0 view looks soo much better on the screen compared to LOD 4.5. One way not to see the blurry ground textures at lower LOD levels is to zoom out. It's the same effect as how looking at a low resolution image on a small, low-res screen can look great (early mobile phones with cameras comes to mind) while it looks horribly blurry if you try to print it. Zooming out is just cheating. If you're happy to look at the printed image at long distance that's fine but personally I prefer the higher resolution cameras of later mobile phones (higher LOD setting).

 

We can also see how AM=85/15 vs AM=244 is very similar with the HDD but if you use SSD the 3 texture loaders, each with their own physical core (AM=85/15), gets a higher boost in texture loading compared to Hyperthreading 4 textureloaders together (AM=244) on just 2 physical cores.

 

As bump up the LOD and add more texture loaders you can see that the advantage of using SSD instead of HDD grows larger and larger.

 

I also tested with the reduced scenery that I used earlier at the extremes of LOD4.5 and LOD9.0 @ AM=84/14 and AM=4089 and saw the same small improvements as before apart from when using an SSD with only two texture loaders (AM84/14) were the improvement is basically non existent @ LOD9 and not measurable @ LOD4.5. An SSD really doesn't care if you fill it up with loads and loads of active photo scenery when just using just two texture loaders. Sure your initial load time still takes a hit when you fill it, but far from what using a HDD would give you anyway.

Thanks for that

I've now added LOD 4.5 and LOD 6.5 to the previous result image as well. Enjoy

Keep HT on and affinitymasks to use are 4089 or/and 4084. 4084 might be better if you have a lot of other addons. I use 4089 on pure MSE2.0+FSGlobal but have started to use 4084 over Horizon UK scenery with add-on airfields and treescapes with 3930K.

Theoretically, yes. However, FSX scales well with speed but it doesn't scale well with more then 2 channels. So 4 channels @ half the speed of 2 channels performs worse. Going from single to dual channel does give a good boost in FSX though.

 

 

The problem is what about people like me who want the entire USA covered, at those prices they are asking for well the words "you must be joking" spring to mind.

Thanks for pointing out Nuvectas Treeline series for me. I might try it out as I really enjoy Treescapes on the Horizon UK photoscenery. I actually don't think the pricing looks too bad compared to the Treescapes pricing. I think Treescapes is around £70 for all UK regions. Remember how large the US is compared to the UK. But, yeah, you'd pay a lot to cover the whole of US. Not to mention how much you'd spend on the photo scenery underneath it and the storage to put it all on and the rig you fly it with. :unsure: Just imagine how rich we all would be if we didn't have this hobby

1 monitor would obviously not give you as wide view as you have now with 3 monitors.With all pros and cons that comes with that. Personally I'd love to have 3 screens myself but don't really have the space for it...Can't help you here I'm afraid. I'm sure there's people here that know a lot more about how to get the best out of your multi monitor setup.

 

 

But do you think i should by the 5960X then or better by the price/performance winner the 5820K ? Because 6 Cores are enough?

Possibly neither. Do the blurry textures go sharp enough after a while when you pause the sim?

 

Have a feeling your problem is something that is due to the FOV and not texture loading as such.

 

 

I'd wait for some hardware reviews to come in to see if the 8 core can be clocked as high. If it can't it may be no better than it's little brother at half the price.

It seems to be as good of an overclocker. The little brother is still a lot better value for money...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/3

 

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/08/29/intel_haswelle_core_i75960x_cpu_x99_chipset/6#.VASyRsZ0zmE

 

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/19191-intel-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-och-i7-5820k-familjen-haswell-e/19&usg=ALkJrhhpzMlkrLdkYvQtFv5bG5NUHlbViA#pagehead

 

 

I'm curious, have you tried with a more realistic LOD like 4.5 or 5.5?

Your question actually made me go back and have a look at that. It's been posted in the photoreal forum thread but this is the result image for the textureloading:

 

For me the best thing to do is wait for the new proecessors to appear

 They look very nice indeed. i7 5820K now gives us FSX users a good value 6-core CPU and i7 5960X gives us an expensive 8-core monster. If only DDR4 was a bit cheaper...

I've made one final round of testing at a lower LOD setting just to see how it compares to the maybe somewhat extreme 9.0 LOD that I use with my photo scenery. Using a high LOD together with complex aircrafts is normally to ask for OOMs. I only used the SSD and Velociraptor this time as I've already returned the other disks to their normal usage, but we already know that the WD Black is only slightly slower then the Velociraptor. I also added affinitymasks equivalent to using the Hexa-core with HyperThreading off.

 

This is what the textureloading looks like when you compare LOD=5.5 to LOD=9.0.

 

 

To start with I see a big difference in sharpness of the fully loaded view between 5.5 and 9.0 but the textureloading at the lower LOD is indeed a lot quicker as there's way less textures to load.

 

Using a hexa-core AM=4084 LOD=9 gives slightly better texture loading than quad-core HToff AM=14 LOD=5.5.

 

The SSD still improves texture loading compared to the HDD in the LOD=5.5 case.

 

Using more cores and/or SSDs will either let us fly faster without getting blurries, or lets us increase the LOD without getting blurries at the same speed. Watch out for OOMs though.

 

I better go and get on with renovating my kitchen now as my wife is ready to throw my FSX computer out of the window...

 

 

when i center my view in the middle Monitor the ground is clear and sharp. but on the left and right monitor the ground textures are blurry.

 

Oh, I see your problem. This is due to the fact that you are viewing textures that are further away form your POV as FSX renders your 3 screens as a flat surface and the textures further away from the POV will get lesser quality textures.

 

A solution would be to increase the LOD setting and by doing that you do indeed cause a lot more requirement for texture loading that can be had with more cores, however you probably won't be able to increase the LOD enough as you quickly run it to OOMs as the 4GB VAS limit is easily hit using complex aircrafts and high LOD . I take it the textures you think are blurry never go sharp if you just pause the simulator and let the view be still? More cores/SSDs only help if the textures go sharp when you pause.

 

Another solution would be to run 3 different views, one for each monitor, making the edge of each monitor much closer to its POV. However this would be a huge FPS eater and won't work with trackIR either...

 

Sorry

so the 5960x brings me no advantage if i use orbx global, vector and lc?

 

i thought the 8 cores will also help there?

I very much doubt it will help there. What more cores (above 3) can help with is ground texture loading, terrain elevation loading and autogen loading. It can't give you better FPS for example.

 

I saw you commented in another thread saying you saw no improvements upgrading to the 990X earlier. If you are looking for improvements in areas where the 990X failed last time, the extra cores on the 5960X won't help this time either.

 

Are you still using the 990X? The Haswell architecture is way better than the 990xs' Westmere architecture. In FSX its 25% better clock for clock when it comes to FPS and probably what you're looking for an improvement in. But you won't need the 8 core version for that. A 4 core Haswell version is normally enough for FSX. The only thing you'll notice with 6 or 8 cores is faster photo scenery texture loading. A 4 core Haswell is probably worse at photo scenery texture loading than the 990X.

 

If were looking at PC software in general the 4790K is performing very similar to the your 990X when it comes to multi threaded software.

Test of Intel Pentium G3258 AE @4.8ghz

Great CHEAP CPU very good Overclocker if you now what you do!!!

Very nice to see. I would guess you can get some serious delays loading panel and aircraft textures when switching views at times though? And also some notable FPS drops at times you wouldn't have got them with an i5. I'd guess even a dual core haswell at those speeds will be enough t maintain full autogen population? Not too sure about ground texture loading even with default landclass scenery though...

All of the above could be helped if we got a cheap unlocked Hyperthreaded i3 Haswell (wink wink Intel). Doubt that will happen though as it would eat in to the i5K sales too much.

1200 dollars just for the cpu - yikes out of my budget right now

 

This is one great looking motherboard - would look great in my White Phantom 820 - but I am a gigabyte Guy

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/204537/intel-core-i7-haswell-e-pricing-detailed.html?cp=2#comments

It can be had for $900 if you have a Microcenter close by. Standard Extreme edition pricing that has been around for 10 years now. So in real term it has actually gone down. Still crazy money though. I was worried they would finally up their pricing this time as its been quite a while since they added new cores and that could be an excuse to do it.

 

I was also worried that the eight core version would be a worse overclocker purely from the extra heat concentrated on the chip, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Sure enough you still increase the odds to get a badly clocking core by going from 4 to 6 to 8 cores as always.

Agree to 100% , I wait one year to let the memory be better, remember ddr2 to ddr3 the poor performance and high price tag on the first gen.

You know a lot about RAM. Have you seen/heard anything of how these new CPUs handle overclocked DDR4 ram. Regular Haswell seem to have a great IMC that handles high speed DDR3 at low latency fine. I wonder how Haswell-E is?

 

Part of me is very tempted to pick up a i7 5960X when I go past Microcenter in a month. DDR4 however is quite pricy compared to DDR3 at the moment though, but only when you look at 2133 and 2400MHz parts. Not to mention the latencies for DDR4 at those speeds. But when you compare the high speed 3000MHz DDR3 to the high speed 3000MHz DDR4 it doesn't differ that much in price any more. Will most IMCs in Haswell-E handle those speeds though?

 

Sure, the high speed DDR4 seems to have a bit worse CAS latency but tRCD and tRP doesn't seem to be worse. Don't know about the other sub timings. I also wonder if any of the DDR4 kits would actually handle lower latencies than what they are specified for?

Today Intel released 3 new CPUs in the Haswell-E 5000 series.

 

They are all relevant for us photo scenery lovers as they all have either 6 or 8 Haswell cores.

 

The cheapest $390 on newegg i7 5820K will offer us six hyperthreaded unlocked cores (only $50 more that the quad core i7 4790K.)

 

The $590 i7 5930K only difference to the 5820K is that it has a slightly higher stock speed and 40 instead of 28 PCIe lanes so offers no benefit in an overclocked FSX rig.

 

The top of the line $1050 i7 5960X will give you eight hyperthreaded cores that will improve texture loading even further albeit for a massive price tag.

 

All of the above CPU's seems to overclock to around 4.5GHz give or take a few 100MHz depending on the chips lottery, just as its quad core i5 and i7 Haswell siblings. But Haswell-E require DDR4 RAM that is quite pricy at the moment.

 

The new recommendation for photo scenery CPU will now be an overclocked i7 5820K.

 

If you have a lot of extra money the i7 5960X will be even better.

 

We photo scenery enthusiasts finally won't have to give up FPS for texture loading by having to use a Sandy- or Ivy-Bridge architecture any more. Haswell gave significant FPS improvements in FSX at the same clockspeed compared to the previous architectures. We can finally have them at more than quad-core and that only matters to photo scenery texture loading.

5790K?

 

Tell me more..

Typo. Should be 4790K and has been changed now. Sorry to ruin your exitement

Everyone please remember this quote by Seung-Woo Kim, senior application engineer at Intel involved in FSX SP1 that made all the multithread optimisations for FSX:

 

"There are essentially two ways to use multi-threading for the Flight Simulator. One is to increase the frame rate. Another is to increase the visual quality. Last year, the primary concern at Microsoft was both, but they were more concerned about the visual quality of the software. We decided to use multi-threading to increase the visual quality, instead of increase the frame rate."

 

Every additional CPU core over 3 cores is basically just used to improve the loading of ground scenery textures in FSX. A shame they didn't go for the first option.

Having now read a few reviews my CPU recommendations for FSX are now as follows:

Regular FSX user: overclocked i5 4690K

Regular FSX user that won't overclock: i7 4790K

Photo scenery with high LOD user on a budget: overclocked i7 5820K

Photo scenery with high LOD user where money doesn't matter: overclocked i7 5960X

 

These new CPU's only matter when you use photo scenery with high LOD setting. The 5820K really brought down the price for texture loading compared to previous offerings and the 5960X upped the maximum possible texture loading albeit at a massive price tag.

 

Regular FSX users have nothing to gain from these new CPUs however

Alright so AM=244 feels just right or which one would you use? This is the only thing im unsure at about FSX

 

Best Regards

Use 244. FSX still has several more threads that arn't and can't be assigned with the affinitymask and those can utilize all your cores.

 

Do not use 252 as has been pointed out earlier its a bad setup that induces stutters and FPS drops.

 

Finally, put both OS and FSX on the SSD. That will give you the smoothest flight.

Yes DiamondOreo, you'll get better performance in FSX even with a stock i5K Haswell than you'll get with an overclocked FX8350. And if you overclock the i5 you'll get even more performance. Westman has both so you can trust him when he says you'll see a big improvement. Welcome as a poster in the community BTW

Go for the GTX780. I have exactly that EVGA 780 card and no problems with temps. The TITAN cooler is a very nice cooler. Cant believe how 'cheap' they are now compared to just over a year ago...

So main question is would there be a big difference between the 4690k + 760 and the 4790k + 780 when playing FSX (if anyone actually does) and would I be fine using just a 4690k and 760

 

If you plan to overclock the CPU, won't use photo scenery and don't use a 4K monitor or a triple display setup the answer is no. There won't be much difference between the setups apart from the price.

 

If you won't overclock get the i7.

 

If you're a fan of photo scenery get the i7.

 

The 760 is still a powerful GPU. Pair the new Haswell CPU (preferably overclocked) with some high speed low latency RAM and I promise you'll see a big difference to your current setup. If you feel that you get too low FPS in cloud you can consider upgrading to the 780 later. I've got it myself and its a lovely quiet GPU, but for my FSX usage its very much overkill.

FSX is by no means a mysterious application. Even though many people here seems to think it's running of fairy dust and witchcraft (no names or threads given) its just a computer program and as such its extremely logical.

The way FSX is programmed it will make very good use of 4 physical cores (OK, 3 cores or more is the actual answer). Therefore a hyper threaded dual core (i3) would never work better than a physical quad core (all else being equal). If you can actually see that the i3 gives you significantly higher performance you're ether having a hardware problem (cooler attached properly?), software problem (cfg file?), or you're simply not comparing apples to apples. Just my 5cents.