What CPU should I upgrade to for best VR performance?

[GarandM1]

I currently have:

• CPU: i5-4690
• GPU: GTX 1080
• RAM: 8gb DDR3 (upgrading to 16 along with CPU)

 

What CPUs should I consider for improving my VR performance? Is my CPU even my biggest current bottleneck? I currently am running on lowish settings and getting ~30 FPS which occasionally dips to about 20 which just isn't very good. 

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

[lurch9494]

Your CPU is the biggest bottle neck by far. I just upgraded from an i5 6600k to  an i9 9900k and overclocked that to 5Ghz on all cores. Only now is my GTX 1080 the bottle neck. That said, I am running the Valve index, with fairly high settings and still getting a genuine, solid 80 fps (headset set to 80Hz) and never drops below this...

 

CPU is king for VR in IL2, so I would suggest going as good as your budget allows and even a slight overclock like me.

[GarandM1]

20 minutes ago, lurch9494 said:

Your CPU is the biggest bottle neck by far. I just upgraded from an i5 6600k to  an i9 9900k and overclocked that to 5Ghz on all cores. Only now is my GTX 1080 the bottle neck. That said, I am running the Valve index, with fairly high settings and still getting a genuine, solid 80 fps (headset set to 80Hz) and never drops below this...

 

CPU is king for VR in IL2, so I would suggest going as good as your budget allows and even a slight overclock like me.

Thanks for the help, I figured that it was the CPU. Any opinions on the i7-9700k? I am seeing that come up a lot in my research.

[lurch9494]

Just now, GarandM1 said:

Thanks for the help, I figured that it was the CPU. Any opinions on the i7-9700k? I am seeing that come up a lot in my research.

 

 

Awesome chip, its basically the same as my i9 9900k, just without hyperthreading (and a bit less cache) I went 9900k as I had some spare budget and could use the exta threads for video editing, but the 9700k would be very good! Plus you can easily give it a light overclock too!  Good, fast ram helps too, DDR4 3200 is what I am using...

[ZachariasX]

It is a good chip. But you should be aware that in the coming days Intel has to axe the CPU prices drastically.

You can see here:

https://wccftech.com/intel-i9-10920x-12-core-cpu-benchmark-leaked-crushes-amds-threadripper-2920x/

The successor to the i9 9900X (socket 2066, not the neutered gaming box 1151 socket sibling) is shipping at half the price of its predecessors that were all $1000+ USD. They still are right now, but that changes this October.

 

The 9700 is a nice game box CPU as it clocks well and basically gives you what IL2 needs. But it as it seems now today it is just 100 bucks cheaper than a drastically superior chip. Since you will have to buy a new motherboard and memory as well, I‘d wait a week to see what will happen to the pricing. Intel cutting its top end CPU prices by half (Thank you AMD!!) will have effect on the lower end of the food chain.

 

EDIT: The article I referenced goes great length in whitewashing a terrible situation. The Intel chip is only „better“ if sold at half the price you‘re paying right now. And that is what Intel is forced to do.

Edited October 13, 2019 by ZachariasX

[GarandM1]

6 minutes ago, lurch9494 said:

 

 

Awesome chip, its basically the same as my i9 9900k, just without hyperthreading (and a bit less cache) I went 9900k as I had some spare budget and could use the exta threads for video editing, but the 9700k would be very good! Plus you can easily give it a light overclock too!  Good, fast ram helps too, DDR4 3200 is what I am using...

 

Awesome, I will check that out. Thanks for the advice! I need to double check the motherboard to see if it will support the DDR4 ram as well.

 

 

32 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

It is a good chip. But you should be aware that in the coming days Intel has to axe the CPU prices drastically.

You can see here:

https://wccftech.com/intel-i9-10920x-12-core-cpu-benchmark-leaked-crushes-amds-threadripper-2920x/

The successor to the i9 9900X (socket 2066, not the neutered gaming box 1151 socket sibling) is shipping at half the price of its predecessors that were all $1000+ USD. They still are right now, but that changes this October.

 

The 9700 is a nice game box CPU as it clocks well and basically gives you what IL2 needs. But it as it seems now today it is just 100 bucks cheaper than a drastically superior chip. Since you will have to buy a new motherboard and memory as well, I‘d wait a week to see what will happen to the pricing. Intel cutting its top end CPU prices by half (Thank you AMD!!) will have effect on the lower end of the food chain.

 

EDIT: The article I referenced goes great length in whitewashing a terrible situation. The Intel chip is only „better“ if sold at half the price you‘re paying right now. And that is what Intel is forced to do.

 

When do you think we will see the price change?

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

48 minutes ago, GarandM1 said:

 

Awesome, I will check that out. Thanks for the advice! I need to double check the motherboard to see if it will support the DDR4 ram as well.

 

 

 

Be sure to get a motherboard with a Z390 chipset for overclocking and higher memory frequency support.

 

RAM such as 3200CL14 or 3600CL16 will give you a small but sometimes significant performance boost over the standard 2400 or 2666 parts.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Mitthrawnuruodo

[Sgt_Joch]

I have a i5-4670k. Thinking of pulling the plug on the i7-9700KF (without integrated graphics)/ASUS Z390-E strix gaming motherboards(I have had different MBs in the past, many are cheaper than ASUS, but I find ASUS are more stable and user friendly).

 

But I am also holding back at least until Black Friday. Intel just announced a price cut and the 10th generation is coming out, so you might see some interesting bargains before Xmas. Just keep checking prices regularly.

 

Any recommendations on memory? There seems to be so many options.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Sgt_Joch

[dburne]

1 hour ago, Sgt_Joch said:

I have a i5-4670k. Thinking of pulling the plug on the i7-9700KF (without integrated graphics)/ASUS Z390-E strix gaming motherboards(I have had different MBs in the past, many are cheaper than ASUS, but I find ASUS are more stable and user friendly).

 

But I am also holding back at least until Black Friday. Intel just announced a price cut and the 10th generation is coming out, so you might see some interesting bargains before Xmas. Just keep checking prices regularly.

 

Any recommendations on memory? There seems to be so many options.

 

I am running G Skill Trident Z 3200 CL14, been pretty happy with it. Runs at it's XMP profile on my Z390 Dark great.

[whitav8]

If you want to be guaranteed of a 5.0Ghz or faster overclock, consider using siliconlottery.com who charges a very small fee for checking out a chip at a particular  overclock.  If you use a liquid cooler like h115i by Corsair, you don't need to delid

Edited October 14, 2019 by whitav8

[ZachariasX]

11 hours ago, GarandM1 said:

When do you think we will see the price change?

The chips are out and they are being reviewed. I would expect them become available within two weeks or so.

 

It would now depend on your location and how easy you can get a hold of the latest things. It is not just the availability, but going down from $103 to $57 USD per core will not come easy on the shelf value of the distributers, so many might be holding the new parts back before having to slash the value of their inventory.

 

I only point this out because I‘m guessing those significant price changes in the days coming, not weeks or month. Normally, I‘d advise to just go today for what you need today. The 9700 plus the fastest RAM certified (that is available to you) for your mobo will serve you well.

 

Silicon lottery is nice, as it sells the fast cpus. However, it might make the 9700 a less attractive proposition as it comes with a price hike. If cost is really a metric. But just check the prices, you might find a suitable deal.

 

Also you should be aware that socket 1151 will not be used anymore on any higher end future CPU from Intel. The Core Wars require more power pins. Any future upgrade will be a platform change.

[chiliwili69]

8 hours ago, Sgt_Joch said:

Any recommendations on memory? There seems to be so many options.

 

On the memory you have to try to go to the highest ratio in Freq/Latency. Just last week I did some research in what is available on the market (regardless of price and number of sticks 2 or 4) and make a table with the lowest latency available for each frequency, then calculated the ratio.

 

So as said above, 3200 CL14 or 3600CL16 is the best for the money.

I really don´t know is frequencies above 4000 are really worth.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, whitav8 said:

consider using siliconlottery.com

 

The problem of SiliconLottery is that they use an AVX offset of -2 for all their test.

So, when they say 5.2GHz, it means 5.0 with AVX instructions (which are used by IL-2 VR).

It is a kind of a trick what they play.

 

Since IL-2 VR is very much dependent on CPU singlethread performance, the new AMD line processors (3700X, 3800X, 3900X) could be also a good choice.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/54715-is-still-intel-better-than-amd-for-single-thread/

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by chiliwili69

[Sgt_Joch]

thanks for the tips.

 

Ryzen looks interesting.

 

Ryzen 3800x+mobo delivers about the same performance and is about the same price as 9700k+mobo. Think I will wait for a while to see which way prices are going.

[whitav8]

@chiliwili69,

       Yes, I noticed the recommended AVX setting but I asked them about it and just set it to 0 and had no issues whatsoever. Anyway, the small amount that I paid over newegg/amazon/whatever gave me confidence that I could actually get the desired frequency. 

Edited October 14, 2019 by whitav8

[chiliwili69]

11 hours ago, whitav8 said:

Yes, I noticed the recommended AVX setting but I asked them about it and just set it to 0 and had no issues whatsoever. Anyway, the small amount that I paid over newegg/amazon/whatever gave me confidence that I could actually get the desired frequency.

 

You were lucky then.

 

What I mean is that stating that they reach 5.2GHz in the headlines is too much marketing. Most of the games uses AVX instructions so the CPU throttle to 5.0.  And people will think their CPU runs at 5.2.

 

They should remove that AVX offset in all their tests and advertise/sell those frequencies.

When people talks about OC frequencies they normally refers with no AVX offset.

 

[whitav8]

@chiliwili69

      I agree - I will mention that to them. One consideration though is that most of our flight simulations use only ONE core heavily and therefore the test that Silicon Lottery uses which runs ALL of the cores simultaneously at 5.0Ghz (or higher) would generate a lot more heat. If I could be sure which core IL-2 uses every time, I could possibly run that one at 5.2Ghz or so. In fact, watching each of the cores separately with Task Manager, I see that one of them (out of eight ) is loaded at 80% and the rest are below 50%.

   I am using  Level 8 LLC  and set the core voltage in BIOS (ASUS Maximum Hero XI) to 1.33v. This has run successfully for almost a year. Core temps are usually in the high 40s at most with IL-2 with the Corsair h115i cooler.

  

Edited October 15, 2019 by whitav8

[dburne]

Mine seems to bop around different cores, so I run all 8 at 5.1 GHz with no AVX. I do not run HT though.

[chiliwili69]

8 hours ago, whitav8 said:

One consideration though is that most of our flight simulations use only ONE core heavily and therefore the test that Silicon Lottery uses which runs ALL of the cores simultaneously at 5.0Ghz (or higher) would generate a lot more heat.

 

Yes, the load of IL-2 VR is much much lower than any CPU stress test. I was analyzing the load of Prime95 in these threads:

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/29322-measuring-rig-performance-common-baseline-for-il-2-v3010/page/10/?tab=comments#comment-514455

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/29322-measuring-rig-performance-common-baseline-for-il-2-v3010/page/15/?tab=comments#comment-549855

 

Basically because IL-2 only has about 4 threads which are jumping from core to core, but one of those threads is the heavy one.

 

In another thread I was suggesting to disable some cores of a multiple core CPU (keeping just at least 4 active). So it will generate less heat, so more OC might be achieved.