What are the best CPUs for IL-2?

[chiliwili69]

 

 

Chiliwili should know that our findings only apply to VR, there indeed the bottleneck is the CPU. I wonder whether physics calculations are doubled, one separate instance for each eye. No idea. But we cannot make statements for 2D gaming based on VR tests, even if we got a few hundred runs of a dozen different systems in VR, like we do. Without VR, the CPU indeed seems not to be a bottleneck

 

It is true that when doing the VR test we were only interested in VR tests, but we also incorporated monitor test results in the right columns:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJmnz_nVxI6_dG_UYNCCpZVK2-f8NBy-y1gia77Hu_k/edit?usp=sharing

 

it is also true that we only have done very few tests in VR and less in monitor. But with the existing current data I would say that CPU is also limiting the fps you achieve in monitor.

Look to the people with the same graphics cards and different CPUs. Or look to the graph red correlation that correspond to the monitor fps with single thread performance.

 

You can add your test with the monitor following the procedure. I will magically predict that your performance will be in the 170-180 range. Let´s wait and see   

[Avyx]

What about upgrading from I7 4790k to I7 8700k ?

http://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-8700k-cpu-benchmarks-leak-faster-than-8-core-ryzen/

 

Thank you

[BeastyBaiter]

Shows basically identical single thread performance to the 7700k (stock clocks for both), though 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads are very nice to have. I think it would be a worthwhile upgrade if you do more cpu intensive tasks than DCS and IL2. It is however being rushed out a year earlier than planned in response to Ryzen. So you can expect a lot of early teething problems with it (Ryzen certainly wasn't free of these).

[dburne]

If I were upgrading today, I would go for i7 7700K in a heartbeat.

 

Trying to hold out till around middle of next year though, and see what we have then.

[Avyx]

7700k is much better than 4790k?

[dburne]

7700k is much better than 4790k?

 

Well I would say certainly better, don't know how to qualify "much better".

 

I am currently running a 4820k processor at 4.50 GHz, it has been rock solid and stable for me from day one which was back in Dec 2013. Now I feel confident I could probably get a 7700k up to around 5 GHz, but also other factors come into play - an upgraded platform, faster ram, etc. So I would undoubtedly get better performance, but would it be worth the investment for me at this time to go through the pain and expense of a new build for what I would gain from it?

 

I think for me, as my system is so solid and runs the games I like pretty darn good, I decided I would hold off and see what next year brings. 

 

So really it depends on the individual, what platform they are coming from and what they hope to gain from it, as compared to what they are experiencing now. 

[ZachariasX]

What about upgrading from I7 4790k to I7 8700k ?

http://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-8700k-cpu-benchmarks-leak-faster-than-8-core-ryzen/

 

Thank you

No "upgrading" there. You need a new motherboard and thus memory as well. It is a new system. Congrats for buying new licenses for office or whatever you might run as well on that rig. And for what performance gains? At least 7700 series cpu are getting really cheap as world and their dog are dumping them (inculding the motherboards, they are useless for coffee lake cpu) from their inventory, awaiting the 8xx0 cpu and 300 series motherboards. You get a lot of compuer for the money now.

 

Super benchmark, paid by Intel I suppose. Comparing highest clocked intel 'K' cpus to non 'X' AMD cpus.

 

Still, Intel would be faster in single thread. Given we have a very 'unoptimized' program we run on the cpu, it makes some sense. But it is like benchmarking those cpu with Falcon3. (I wonder wich one would come out on top.)

 

It is safe to assume we're hitting a wall here with single threaded performance. You can only go faster if you increase core count. This mandates simpler cores, as higher performing ones generate more heat and you can't cool them anymore if you place many of them. Should VR ever become a basic feature of this game, a lot had to be changed in the code I suppose.

[ZachariasX]

After going throgh some system configurations, it really appears to me that the 7700K is hard to beat for this game. You get most for the money, it is easy to OC and the cooling (for "normal" operation) is very easy to install.

 

When you look at higher end systems, the socket 2066 from Intel for their lates Skylake-X i7 and i9 offerings, then it really appears that those are really a gigantic fraud from intel. We know that they have still some issues, as they are rushed into the market prematurely due to AMDs competition.

 

But all of their NVMe m.2/u.2 slots are hooked up through the chipset and not through the extra PCIe lanes those CPUs provide. For instance, the $600 i7-7820X CPU has 28 lanes, leaving you 12 lanes that you can use for 3 NVMe drives, hooked up properly through 4 lanes each. With ~4 GBytes/sec on the DMI to the CPU, you just have enough heardroom for ONE fast NVMe drive, such as a Samsung 960 Pro. In therory, you could stripe 3 such drives and would end up with a sequencial read of ~9 GB/s.

 

Hooking NVMe drives up through the chipset has the following consequence:

 

- ALL your SATA, NVMe, network traffic, USB traffic share 4 GB/s bandwith to the CPU. One fast NVMe m.2/u.2 SSD is already getting close in saturating the DMI. Striping NVMe SSD won't make them faster, it will make a bigger drive but it will also make it more likely to fail. Most BIOS options for creating a RAID volume do so by using the chipsets PCIe lanes.

 

- ALL X299 motherboards that I could find had those extra PCIe lanes linked to the card slots. Thus, you MUST use an adaptor card to install NVMe drives.

 

- Intel goes great lenght to make it not possible to let you boot on a RAID volume that is hooked up on the PCIe lanes that are directly linked to the CPU. Should you want to use those lanes to use RAID in the only way it makes sense, you MUST use Intel SSD drives as well as plug in a not-yet-available "VROC"-key ("Virtual Raid on CPU", that is ~$100 for RAID1 and ~$300 or so for RAID1, 5,..) to create a bootable RAID volume. It appears that there is no such dongle necessary for RAID0, then again, there is the requirement for Intel SSD.

 

-You also require Intel RST software installed in windows (VROC is part of that) for Windows to operate the RAID volume.

 

If you want RAID0 on X299 motherboards, these (and those alike from Intel) are your only option.

 

 

From what I can see, there is not a single high end consumer mainboard featuring a fully functional "Intel Volume Manager Device" (VMD) that is a prerequisite to use RST and VROC. Maybe it will have at some point, but as of now, Intel does clearly not deliver what it is selling. Hooking up the diveces as they are now, is like in a car hooking up the gear directly to the starter "because the engine is not yet working properly, but if you spend some hundert quid, we'll activate it for you, should we ever make it working". And if you still insist to have it hooked up the right way, everyone will tell you that you oughn't be speeding anyway. ("Single SSD is fast enough for you, trust me!")

 

So much for curbing an "enthusiast" platform. The 7820X could be an interesting proposition with it's 4 memory channels, also for this game. It is very nice to OC as well from what I read. However, the plattform in practise hardly delivers more as the neutered 1151 socket platforms.

 

 

[ZachariasX]

So far, Coffee Lake brings more cores for low voltage parts (4 instead of 2). This is a good thing as it is within a similar thermal envelope (so they say).

 

The 8700K is a 6 core part, clocked up to 4.5 GHz. This puts it in single thread performance very near the 7700K. So, for BoX, I wouldn't expect much of a difference between the parts. And with the 7700K you get a working product. With the 8700K you have to sit out the usual BIOS iterations before they really start to work properly.

 

The 8700K has the downside though:

-it doesn't exist (as of now)

-you can expect it to be more expensive than the 7700K (as well as the mobo etc.) while giving comparable FPS in BoX

-you can expect all issues of the X299 platform detailed above to be appliocable to 300-series chipsets as well with very little underneath the CPU working for you as advertised.

 

So you are really going for a very high performance part devoid of anything meaningful to create a balanced rig. Still, it will be good in Blender or transcoding with ffdshow.

 

Intel's habit of selling you a sports car and then let you drive on the rims is sickening.

 

But I do agree, that the coming platform will be better than the existing current one.

[Boaty-McBoatface]

If you are on a budget then I have definitely found that single thread performance is the only thing you need look for. I run il2 on a i3 6100 and it runs very well compared to some other CPUs I have run.

 

This is a highly recommended budget CPU because of the fast single thread performance and I found out firsthand that this is what counts for most games including il2

Edited September 5, 2017 by temujin

[Gambit21]

Think it would be stupid to go for the 7700K now, when the 8700k is hitting the market within a month.

Intel makes little sense period unless your system is purely a gaming rig...even then....

 

Hours and hours and days and days of research lead me to the Ryzen 7...currently overclocked +26%.

 

With my GTX 1080 and 4K monitor, bottleneck is my GPU.

[CanadaOne]

If you are on a budget then I have definitely found that single thread performance is the only thing you need look for. I run il2 on a i3 6100 and it runs very well compared to some other CPUs I have run.

 

This is a highly recommended budget CPU because of the fast single thread performance and I found out firsthand that this is what counts for most games including il2

 

I was running BOX on a dual core 3.3Ghz G4400 (no hyper threading) and it ran surprisingly well. I was going to get an i3 6100, but I had an extra few bucks that week and got an i5-6500. I wanted the four cores because I thought the CPU might be good for an extra year or two.

 

That said, I have no doubt an i3-6100 at 3.7 Ghz runs this sim just fine.

[SCG_Fenris_Wolf]

Intel makes little sense period unless your system is purely a gaming rig...even then....

 

Hours and hours and days and days of research lead me to the Ryzen 7...currently overclocked +26%.

 

With my GTX 1080 and 4K monitor, bottleneck is my GPU.

Yes. But the Ryzen locks you out of VR (which it shouldn't if its strength, its cores were utilized properly) unless IL-2 devs put a hell of a lot of work into the engine and split the load on multiple threads, or implement dx11's nvidia VRworks (that would let them calculate a scene a single time instead of twice).

 

 

For 2-D it's perfectly fine though atm.

[SeaW0lf]

Coffee Lake is just around the corner. Micro Center is already offering rebates for i7-7700K and i5-7600K for U$ 250 and U$ 160 respectifully if bundled with a motherboard. They are becoming pumpkins with the Coffee Lake arrival and the whole line will get those 30% off rebates or perhaps even more.

 

I understand why someone would pick a Ryzen, but if you are not being bottlenecked by the GPU, a i7-7700K is far superior for Il-2, ROF and DCS because of the clocks and years of optimization to Intel CPUs. For Adobe and Office tasks as well. I had a 1090T that pushed me back a great deal playing ROF. I updated to an i7-3770K and back then my HD 6870 got a new life. It was like I had updated the GPU as well. I know that Ryzen is not the same, but I still prize clock. i7-8700K reported reaching 5.3Ghz with delid and very low voltages.

 

A person in a forum (who works at Micro Center) is saying that Coffee Lake CPUs are already in store. Then I imagine that October 5th is not a rumor anymore.

Edited September 24, 2017 by SeaW0lf

[BeastyBaiter]

The i7-8700k is certainly appealing, I may swap my R5 1600x for it once released. That doesn't mean Ryzen is in any way a slouch and I've been mostly happy with it. My R5 1600x is absurdly faster than the i5-7600k, i7-7700k and the upcoming i5-8600k. But DCS, BoS and a handful of other things still care exclusively about single thread performance. So while nothing hits a CPU bottleneck, BoS and DCS do hit a programming bottleneck with modern CPU's. With that said, my 1600x ran both BoS and DCS on a monitor well (min fps well over 60 at 1440p, no stuttering). In VR, I still get 90 fps in VR on Wings of Liberty in a full match but I can't run Ultra like that (I use balanced). DCS 2.x runs mostly 45 fps while DCS 1.5 runs anywhere from 90 fps to 22.5 fps. Of course, DCS 1.5 runs like garbage for everyone in VR, so I'm not sure 7700k users running liquid nitrogen with a 7.0 GHz overclock are doing any better.

 

I think that if one is looking exclusively at BoS and DCS in VR, then the 7700k, 8600k and 8700k are the way to go. But if doing monitor and especially if considering other games as well as general PC stuff, Ryzen has an awful lot going for it. The AMD R5 1600 and 1600x look to remain the PC gaming value king even after Coffee Lake is released. The i7-8700k still isn't going to touch the R7 series in raw performance, but it will give Intel a mainstream CPU that can beat the R5 1600's at least, even if costing $100 more. And it should work very well in both BoS and DCS for VR. Hence why I'm interested in it. It will be a downgrade in some areas (Intel z370 boards lack a lot of features even the budget oriented AMD B350 boards have) but it should make BoS and especially DCS run a lot better in VR.

Edited September 24, 2017 by BeastyBaiter

[SeaW0lf]

My R5 1600x is absurdly faster than the i5-7600k, i7-7700k and the upcoming i5-8600k. But DCS, 

 

Not so fast    the 1600X is just 8% faster than the 7700K on PassMark and Kaby Lake overcloks easy to 5Ghz. So the tendency is that the i5-8600K will be some 5% faster than 1600X, with the advantage to overclock and have higher stock IPC. The i5-8600 might cost less than U$200 and become very attractive for games. If they price Coffee Lake right, Intel might continue to rule in the gaming scene, but right now AMD surpassed Intel in sales in a German "Newegg" so to speak. The only CPU that keeps selling over there is the 7700K. So it is nice to have good competition. I hope that Ryzen 2 comes smoking, and then Intel will have to counter.

[BeastyBaiter]

That's just Passmark. Among the synthetic benchmarks, Passmark is the best case scenario for Intel chips and is very much an outlier. I suggest taking a look at some hardware reviews from the usual crowd (Linus, Hardware Unboxed, Gamer's Nexus and others). 

 

Edit: here are a couple other common synthetics at stock clocks for both CPU's:

 

Cinebench R15: 

I7-7700k: 985

R5 1600x: 1253 (27% higher)

 

CPU-Z:

I7-7700k: 2643

R5 1600x: 3393 (28% higher)

 

Edit 2: Interesting article comparing CPU's, contains the assorted leaked benchmarks on the I5-8600k.

http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i5_8600k-765

Edited September 24, 2017 by BeastyBaiter

[SeaW0lf]

That's just Passmark. Among the synthetic benchmarks, Passmark is the best case scenario for Intel chips and is very much an outlier. 

 

From what I understand PassMark is a suite. Cinebench (whatever Cinebench test you are basing yourself) is just one test. In general, if you run different tests, the result will be in the middle.

Edited September 24, 2017 by SeaW0lf

[BeastyBaiter]

True but what separates passmark is that it also allows for benching GPU, RAM, I/O and other elements of the system. The pure CPU test isn't anything special.

[ZachariasX]

So the 8700K is an expected speed bump of about 10% for BoX. Office or webbrowsing will have 0 gain as they usually are storage dependent regarding them „feel fast“. Coffee lake offers no progress over previous socket 1151 systems, it remains neutered in the same way. In VR, BoX must really be at the edge of playability that such minimal gains are worth the fuss.

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

With Coffelake enjoy buying into a new platform for no specific reason: https://videocardz.com/72817/intel-coffelake-s-8th-gen-desktop-and-z370-controversy

Also, speaking of benchmarks. This is supposedly leaked 8700k: https://videocardz.com/72471/first-intel-core-i7-8700k-benchmarks-leaked If what BeastyBaiter posted is true for 1600X ... then Coffelake singlethreaded is similar to Kabylake (no surprise there, same architecture after all and no ipc gains were to be expected) and similar to 1600X multithreaded. It will overclock better for sure, but exactly how far and what gains can be expected is unknown. 

Personally I find no reason to buy into this stopgap platform, especially as only Z370 motherboards will be available for now. Either buy Ryzen or wait for Icelake or whatever Intel will codename their next series.

[BeastyBaiter]

I don't trust the multi-threaded results seen so far for the i7-8700k. It is a fair bit faster than the 1600x in all benchmarks I've seen for single thread but then is roughly equal in multi-thread. Admittedly the 8700k uses a very old architecture and simply isn't as advanced as Ryzen, but one would think the single thread advantage would compensate for scaling issues. I suspect what's going on is, for whatever reason, it's running at 3.7 GHz instead of the 4.3 GHz all core boost speed. The all core boost of the 1600x is also 3.7 GHz and so if the 8700k has a modest IPC advantage (I've heard 5% thrown around a lot) but a modest scaling disadvantage, then the two would be roughly equal as seen. But as said, it should be doing 4.3 GHz, which would push it meaningfully ahead unless there is a massive scaling issue.

[ZachariasX]

What I've seen about Coffee Lake CPUs is that they clock up nice to 4.8 GHz, but after that, they hit a thermal wall. If you want 5+ GHz, you need to de-lid them, to mend what Intel broke. Intel doesn't give a **** about the enthusiast market segment, although they price their offerings as if they did.

 

If you want multithread, it isn't even a competition between AMD and Intel. Perfomance for money, AMD just trouces Intel. For single thread, the 7700K gets you almost as far as you can get. isomethingmeaningless 8000 series or not.

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

That may be the reason they did not disclose boost per core table like they used to. I suspect that once more than 4 cores are used, it drops clocks. Whycry promised today some new "leaks" on 8700k on videocardz so I'm waiting. 

Edited September 24, 2017 by =LD=Hiromachi

[Thad]

Salutations,

 

Any information to share about the new i9 CPUs?

[ZachariasX]

Salutations,

 

Any information to share about the new i9 CPUs?

The maximum you can have for a gaming box. Clocks nicely. Obscenely pricey. If you need the fastest gaming rig that has to serve as workstation too, that‘s you buy then.

 

If you need a workstation, you buy AMD Threadripper. It is obvious why.

[SeaW0lf]

True but what separates passmark is that it also allows for benching GPU, RAM, I/O and other elements of the system. The pure CPU test isn't anything special.

 

But those are separate tests (you can find the tab for GPU benchs on PassMark for example).

 

I'm not expert in benchs, but in my mind what made Cinebench popular is that there was no competition, then people looked at single threaded tests to compare Intel cores especially for games. Then Cinebench gained relevance along the years and became a staple. Nobody was much interested in the AMD line. Now that we have competition, the Cinebench single threaded test (multi as well) lost its relevance because we have basically two chips in the market (edit* three, if we count the HEDT mesh architecture). The same way with SSDs, controllers and algorithms will behave differently from test to test. One test is not good for all. You need some sort of suite to compare CPUs now. 

Edited September 24, 2017 by SeaW0lf

[ZachariasX]

For our purposes, for specific reasons it is enough to look at synthetic single thread performance CPU test to get an idea of how the rig can handle BoX. This game has very little memory or storage load. Also memory bus is not strongly used. Basically, you load your map and content once, then it is mainly CPU work. GPU comes mostly into play with high resolution plus various antialiasing effects.

 

So most tests are really unrelated to BoX.

 

A benchmark suite is supposed to reproduce your typical workflow. Most, except CPU tests, have nothing in common with BoX. Cinema4D is a highly optimized workload for a specific task that never has enough CPU power. Has nothing to do with BoX. Same as you could transcode a video with ffdshow and bench the time required. You would get little correlation with BoX.

[SeaW0lf]

So most tests are really unrelated to BoX.

 

I (we) was not talking about BOX. We were talking about R5s and i7s in general; hence why I mentioned that a suite is more appropriate, adding my personal view of how Cinebench became a staple in the last years just because people wanted to compare Intel cores, not compare with the competition (which was no competition).

Edited September 24, 2017 by SeaW0lf

[ZachariasX]

I (we) was not talking about BOX. We were talking about R5s and i7s in general; hence why I mentioned that a suite is more appropriate, adding my personal view of how Cinebench became a staple in the last years just because people wanted to compare Intel cores, not compare with the competition (which was no competition).

 

Comparing single core performance is disadvantageous for Ryzen chips out of the bat.

Absolutely. The problem is that your office box is essentially running single thread programs that for most of the time do nothing and when they do something they wait for the data trickling in from storage.

 

Typical load for workstations means huge dataset / RAM, highly parallel computation. It is there, where AMD is currently trashing Intel per dollar. Intels entire Xeon-somethingmeaningless-WS is redundant as Intel neutered memory capacity etc. AMD didn‘t.

 

But it is a fact that gaming boxes profit from Intel CPUs, due to higher clockspeeds plus higher IPC. But this only as devs for games don‘t invest in multithreading. Until now.

[SeaW0lf]

where AMD is currently trashing Intel per dollar

 

Read where I said "I understand why someone would pick a Ryzen". I won't go off topic on this.

[Avyx]

Would it be worth to upgrade from I7 4790k to 8700k ?

[CanadaOne]

The GPU video reviews I watched prior to building my rig this summer showed a surprising lack of difference in the performance of many games once you got to a certain level, i5 or so.

 

And many videos showed people with i5-2500 range CPUs getting very good performance in new games when paired with a good GPU. If I hadn't given my i5 rig to my kid, I would have kept the GPU and just upgraded everything around it.

[Avyx]

I don't really know how to do : should i wait for the nVidia 2018 new card ? Getting another GTX 1080 or selling it and get the 1080 Ti

[CanadaOne]

First off, don't sell your 1080 card; give it up for adoption to a Canadian who will give it a good home.

 

With a rig like yours, you should be getting top shelf performance already, no?

[Thad]

^ LOL

[BeastyBaiter]

Heh, seriously though, I don't see much of a point in the 1080 TI unless doing VR or 4k. And in BoS specifically, the 1080 TI isn't pushed very hard in VR, it's really all about single thread CPU performance. DCS 2.x does stress a 1080 TI properly though and of course other, more modern game engines will push it as hard as you want.

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

It makes a lot of sense if you push higher resolutions / higher refresh rates. At 3440x1440p with 100hz refresh, gpu has plenty of work to do. But I still find it underutilized both in Il-2 and DCS. 

 

Here are leaked final specs of Coffelake: https://videocardz.com/72831/intel-coffeelake-s-8th-gen-core-desktop-processors-final-specs-and-highlights

 

 

Enjoy content and connect to the world through the Internet

Thankfully in less than two weeks we will know everything   And we will be able to connect to the internet 

Edited September 25, 2017 by =LD=Hiromachi

[chiliwili69]

 

 

Would it be worth to upgrade from I7 4790k to 8700k ?

 

The 4790K (mine non delid) overclocks well to 4.6 with very basic CPU cooler. A believe better CPU cooler and OC settings can achieve 4.9 and perhaps 5.0. I will be able to know that in the next weeks.

 

The 7700K (for the same OC freq) is a bit worse than the 4790K in passmark single thread (I will call it STMark). I mention STMark since it is the only synthetic test who has been proven well correlated with BoX performance. This is demonstrated for VR and monitor here in the bottom graph:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJmnz_nVxI6_dG_UYNCCpZVK2-f8NBy-y1gia77Hu_k

 

So, all you should worry about is to find a CPU with good STMark (of course, with GPU 1070 and RAM above 2600).

 

Look the STMark you can achieve with a 4790K as posted here:  https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/29322-measuring-rig-performance-common-baseline/page-9?do=findComment&comment=514240

 

GHz STMark

4.0    2405

4.4    2646

4.6    2766  (2688 with a 7700K, this is 78 less)

4.7    2821  

4.8    2883  (2806 with a 7700K, this is 77 less)

4.9    2947  (2863 with a 7700K, this is 84 less)

5.0    3006  (2913 with a 7700K, this is 93 less)

5.1    3066

 

So, for the same clock speed, the 4790K deliver about 3% more than the 7700K. But it is also true that the 7700K for the same CPU cooler could overclock a bit better (I have no data to back this).

 

We still have no data for the STMark of the 8700K, but taking the CPU-Z singlethread tests they reported (525.4 for 8700K and 492 for 7700K) as a reference, they get 6.8% more in single-thread at their base clock (4.3 and 4.2 respectively). In the following months we will be able to get passmark data from the first 8700K and how they can be OCed

 

In summary, having a 4790K there is a very small incentive to go for the 8700K if your only purpose is BoX.

A better CPU cooling or faster RAM speed could give you much more extra fps for the same money.

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

https://videocardz.com/72915/first-review-of-intel-core-i7-8700k-leaks-out

 

There you go, dont drop your jaw. Some games may see performance gains, if they utilize more than 2-4 cores others not really. And there are no IPC gains.