6 years on, time for an upgrade

stimpson

Like everyone else on here (it seems) my PC is struggling with FS 2020. Unfortunately my 6 year old build from here is struggling a bit.

I know the RTX 3000 series are due to drop soon but I think they are still going to be way over budget, so I decided to do a cheap upgrade for now with an eye on a bigger upgrade int eh new year.

At the moment I have this spec:

i7 5775c
16GB DDR3
ASRock Z97 Extreme4.
Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming, 4GB
SATA SSD

This is driving 3 x 24" 1080p Dell monitors

I also have an unRaid server as follows:

Z390 AORUS ELITE
i5 - 9600K
16GB DDR4

the i7-5775c isn't struggling wtih the gme - it's around 33% usage at full pelt. The 970 is maxed out though!

One option is to swap the CPU, MB and RAM between the machines, buy a new GPU for the 9600K and use the 970 for transcoding on unRaid.

Otherwise I'm thinking of dropping a new GPU into the i7 and calling it a day.

I guess what I need to know is if either board/CPU/RAM combo is going to give me a performance boost. And what GPU will give me best bang for my buck (I'm thinking of GTX 1660 Super for £200 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07ZPM6WKQ )

Regardless of this, I'm thinking of this for my gaming rig: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07VXCFNVS/ Should be a bit of a boost on loading times???

Any insight would be appreciated.

circadian

Just goin to pitch in on the GPU front here. If you can hold off for a few weeks you'll see the newer gen cards being announced and released. This should result in a price reduction of the current gen and I could see you getting a much better card for that price.

stimpson

circadian wrote: »

Just goin to pitch in on the GPU front here. If you can hold off for a few weeks you'll see the newer gen cards being announced and released. This should result in a price reduction of the current gen and I could see you getting a much better card for that price.

I thought they were going to be ditching the RTX 2000 series. Nvidia never seem to discount stuff.

circadian

stimpson wrote: »

I thought they were going to be ditching the RTX 2000 series. Nvidia never seem to discount stuff.

Yeah they're heading to, presumably, RTX 3000 although it could be called something else. AMD also have new architecture coming out and judging by the new consoles they've managed to get more performance out of the chips using less power and at a low price.

Depending on how it goes over the next few months nvidia may need to drive down prices in the low and mid range. I wouldn't be surprised to see price drops in the 2000 series to shift the hardware as soon as possible.

stimpson

Yeah. Looking at the moment I can get a 1660 Super for £200 but a 2060 seems to be £375 at a minimum. That’s why I’m thinking about going for the 1660 to tide me over. I’m hitting 20fps with the 970 but it drops when I get close to a city etc. I’m hoping the 1660 would allow me to get by for 3 or 4 months.

I think I’m going with the i5-9600K. Performance should be about on a par with the 5775c and I would have DDR4 and faster PCI SSD.

beauf

Looking at the benchmarks and indeed games in general there's a case to be made for putting the majority of the budget into the gfx card. I would also look to get at least a 8gb card and a motherboard with the fastest interfaces to the Gfx, Ram and storage. You can get away with a much lesser CPU.

I would be waiting to see what the new cards bring and also if there are any bargains in older cards. I would wait to see what new cards work well with FS2020 by watching reviews and benchmarks. Build a system and budget around the Gfx card. Especially if you have any thoughts around trackIR or VR in the future.

Aodhan5000

Why not go with a ryzen 3600 over that intel chip?

Aodhan5000

Why not go with a ryzen 3600 over that intel chip?

Edit : just saw you're pulling out of other rig so neverminddddddd

stimpson

beauf wrote: »

Looking at the benchmarks and indeed games in general there's a case to be made for putting the majority of the budget into the gfx card. I would also look to get at least a 8gb card and a motherboard with the fastest interfaces to the Gfx, Ram and storage. You can get away with a much lesser CPU.

I would be waiting to see what the new cards bring and also if there are any bargains in older cards. I would wait to see what new cards work well with FS2020 by watching reviews and benchmarks. Build a system and budget around the Gfx card. Especially if you have any thoughts around trackIR or VR in the future.

Yeah, GPU is always the deciding factor. I've decided to bide my time on the GPU front and see what happens. I've ordered an NVMe SSD and I'm going to swap boards/CPUs in the meantime. At least I'll have faster load times!

beauf

We have a few older machines we use for gaming with 1050ti because of the power requirements.

I'm not willing to spend big bucks to build a better gaming rig for the kids. (unless they earn it) but I would like faster I/O and more ports than the laptops I usually use.
So I'm looking at lower end CPU's but with a modern board, and better PSU with capacity and connections to run more powerful GPU's.

I know on a modern board the bottle neck between GPU memory, and the main system bus and memory reduces the impact of only having 4GB of memory on performance.
But on an older system, those slower bus'es have a much greater impact.
So I expect going forward, you need not just a GFX card with 8GB+ but also those faster interfaces.



So what I'm saying (and explaining it badly) that I suspect a new GPU will only get you so far. You'll need the newer architecture to get the best out of it. The CPU is the lesser part of it.
In particular for FS2020 which seems to be very demanding on GPUs. People are getting very mixed results. I suspect thats why.

K.O.Kiki

PCI-Express 3.0 has been around since 2010 and it's taken until the 2080 Ti to max-out the bandwidth of a 3.0 x16 slot (i.e. there's a performance deficit on 3.0 x8).
While I expect Nvidia's next monster to need PCIe 4.0, it's unlikely AMD's top-end cards will need the same UNLESS they have a monster on their hands.

beauf

I'm guess I'm saying I'd want the DDR4 board and more cores and threads and a 8GB+ VRAM card. FS2020 seems to do better with more cores.

stimpson

I guess I’m not expecting to run on Ultra settings and I’d like to keep an eye on my budget. I’m going with the 9600K (more cores, less threads) and am waiting to see what GPU bargains come up. There was an RTX2070 Super 8GB on HUKD yesterday for £390 which I just missed out on. If I see something like that I’ll snap it up.

Samuel T. Cogley

beauf wrote: »

I'm guess I'm saying I'd want the DDR4 board and more cores and threads and a 8GB+ VRAM card. FS2020 seems to do better with more cores.

Limited to 4 cores because of DX11.

Wonda-Boy

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Limited to 4 cores because of DX11.

I taught it was 6.....

beauf

There's a lot of very reviews and benchmarks on web for fs2020 but they are usually very specialised.

This article I found more useful as a general guide...

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/microsoft-flight-simulator-benchmarks-performance-system-requirements

stimpson

Thanks for this. Looks like the 9600K is probably going to be a decent performer for mid-high settings.

The RAM benchmarks are very interesting. Bandwidth seems to have a bigger impact than capacity. I’m thinking this might be a decent investment over my current 2x8GB 2400MHz: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RM39V5F

Edit: this seems to be better for an extra fiver: https://eu.crucial.com/memory/ddr4/bl2k8g36c16u4r

stimpson

Ok, so I did my build over the weekend and swapped in the i5-9600K and Aorus Elite Z390 board. I picked up a set of Crucial 2x8GB DDR4-3600 for €73 and a Crucial P1 1000GB PCIe NVMe SSD for €105.

Performance has indeed jumped quite a bit. If I clock the GTX970 a bit I can get 40FPS on Very High settings (up from ~25fps on medium). For a flight sim that’s quite playable. I intend to pick up an RTX 3700 as soon as they hit the shops.

Thanks all for the advice!

beauf

It's interesting the difference it made.

stimpson

beauf wrote: »

It's interesting the difference it made.

It should be noted that I had only one 8 pin cable powering the GPU before. It seems to be happier to clock higher with an additional 6 pin attached. Not sure how I made that mistake...

beauf

I used to overlock and build my own back in the day. But in recent years, I've just bought used systems and upgraded them.

I think next time I'll have to build new, FS2020 is really only a sign of things to come.

stimpson

I was never a big fan either, but if it means I can get by for another few weeks then I’m happy to do it. It’s getting very hot though - the case was hot to the touch and GPU temps touched 80deg.