Upgrading - Where to Start? RAM, CPU, GPU?

[Jaws2002]

13 hours ago, RedKestrel said:

Here's a potentially stupid question: right now I have 2 x 4 GB RAM in my machine, and the motherboard has 2 slots. Speed is limited to 2133 mhz by the motherboard, but their maximum speed is 2800 mhz (I believe, if I am reading CPU-Z right.

If I get a motherboard with 4 RAM slots, I plan to purchase 2 x 8 GB 3200 mhz RAM. Could I put in the 2 x 4 GB RAM in the other slots, or does the RAM all have to match in speed and size chunks?

 

 

Nope. 

[Dakpilot]

Maxing GPU memory will bring stutters, this was even a problem with GTX 970 with its 4 gb vram although only 3.5 was fast (er) and when you passed 3.5 a drop in performance was noticeable going over 4 and using on board ram was even slower. 

 

I had to turn down settings to avoid going over 3.5vram to keep smooth gameplay (this was quite a while back) 

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

[RedKestrel]

7 hours ago, Dakpilot said:

Maxing GPU memory will bring stutters, this was even a problem with GTX 970 with its 4 gb vram although only 3.5 was fast (er) and when you passed 3.5 a drop in performance was noticeable going over 4 and using on board ram was even slower. 

 

I had to turn down settings to avoid going over 3.5vram to keep smooth gameplay (this was quite a while back) 

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

Good to know, that is what I suspected!

[CanadaOne]

On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2020 at 11:21 AM, RedKestrel said:

The basics of my PC are as follows: 
Geforce GTX 1060 3GB 


If I had to pick between upgrading my GPU or CPU first, which should I go with for Il-2? I know its often said that Il-2 is processor intensive.
 

 

 

I replaced my 1060 3GB with a 2060 Super and my FPS skyrocketed! A huge improvement. 

 

I still have my i5-6500 and 8GB RAM.

[RedKestrel]

4 hours ago, CanadaOne said:

 

 

I replaced my 1060 3GB with a 2060 Super and my FPS skyrocketed! A huge improvement. 

 

I still have my i5-6500 and 8GB RAM.

I suspect that the biggest limit on my rig is the memory on the graphics card, at least on my settings. There is plenty of processing capacity going unused but not enough memory, and when it loads from my RAM which is already at its limit, I get the stutters. I may yet go the route of GPU first and memory, then make the leap for new processor and motherboard. Even though the processor has less headroom during intense periods.

 

Agh, I think everything is interdependent, its all just slightly too low in performance to bottleneck improvements anywhere else. Full cost of replacing all the components I want to do is 750. Of that, about 300 for the GPU. 

[CanadaOne]

4 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

I suspect that the biggest limit on my rig is the memory on the graphics card, at least on my settings. There is plenty of processing capacity going unused but not enough memory, and when it loads from my RAM which is already at its limit, I get the stutters. I may yet go the route of GPU first and memory, then make the leap for new processor and motherboard. Even though the processor has less headroom during intense periods.

 

Agh, I think everything is interdependent, its all just slightly too low in performance to bottleneck improvements anywhere else. Full cost of replacing all the components I want to do is 750. Of that, about 300 for the GPU. 

 

There are certainly many who know more than me, but we had pretty much the same system and I was having issues getting nice FPS on the new maps. Replacing the 1060 3GB With the 2060 Super 8GB... it became a whole new game. Hell, it was like a whole new PC. Other games really picked up as well.

 

I'm going to get a 3600X or 3700X one day, but for the moment I'm glad I didn't split the cash and just got the best video card possible. I always went middle of the road before and balanced everything out, this time I said "**** it! I want something top shelf."

 

For me, the price of a 2060 Super was an extravagance, but it was worth it.

[Redwo1f]

I really didn't suffer from stuttering at all when I had my 1060 6GB running at 1080p  (though my processor isn't that strong relatively speaking to those that spend a bundle on high end systems (mine is i5-7600, but I also have 16GB ram as well).  -- currently running a 1660S (with no intention of going past 1080p for a long time, tbh, lol -- but the cpu and unfortunately motherboard is next in line for upgrade for me down the road).

Edited February 29, 2020 by Redwo1f

[SeaW0lf]

It might be memory related. I also have a GTX 1060 6GB and I'm running on ultra, 4AA and 70km horizon (to help with spotting) with a 2560X1080p monitor and I experience no stutters. Perhaps a micro stutter here and there, but I don't even think about stutters when flying. At least when I have my i5-9600K at 5Ghz, it runs pretty smooth.

[RedKestrel]

3 hours ago, SeaW0lf said:

It might be memory related. I also have a GTX 1060 6GB and I'm running on ultra, 4AA and 70km horizon (to help with spotting) with a 2560X1080p monitor and I experience no stutters. Perhaps a micro stutter here and there, but I don't even think about stutters when flying. At least when I have my i5-9600K at 5Ghz, it runs pretty smooth.

Memory is the only thing coming close to maxed out all the time so I am inclined to think the stutters I am getting are memory related. The devs improved the stuttering situation when they fixed something with texture caching. It’s better now but still there, so I think I have an ongoing issue with loading textures. Probably if I had the 1060 6 gb instead of 3 gb it would be less of an issue.

 

 

[chiliwili69]

On 2/28/2020 at 3:59 AM, RedKestrel said:

I ran it on my normal settings, minus Vsync and the fps target.

 

That benchmark was specifically created to measure CPU performance and the settings specified in the instructions (just 1080p, Clouds low dince cloud settings load GPU not CPU) were aimed to not load the GPU.

If you use the benchmark with your settings (Clouds high), then you mix CPU load and GPU load son you can not see the real bottleneck.

 

Also the %CPU or %core usage given by any monitoring tool (MSI afterburner, etc) is not really telling you if your CPU is the bottleneck. We saw here that the main thread of IL-2 is jumping from core to core, so those % are not a real representation of how you CPU is bottlenecking your IL-2.

 

The best way to know the GPU vs CPU bottleneck is to use the same settings of the benchmark except for resolution, put a really low resolution for example 800x600. Then run the becnhmark. The GPU load should be really low and it will tell you the fps you will achieve with your current CPU&RAM if you would have a 3080Ti (doesn´t exist yet).

 

Then you can increase the 2D resolution to 1024x768, 1280x720(HD), 1600x900, 1920x1080(FullHD), 2560x1440 (2K) or more if you like... and see how your performance degrade by the GPU when it is being more and more loaded.

Edited March 1, 2020 by chiliwili69

[RedKestrel]

4 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

 

That benchmark was specifically created to measure CPU performance and the settings specified in the instructions (just 1080p, Clouds low dince cloud settings load GPU not CPU) were aimed to not load the GPU.

If you use the benchmark with your settings (Clouds high), then you mix CPU load and GPU load son you can not see the real bottleneck.

 

Also the %CPU or %core usage given by any monitoring tool (MSI afterburner, etc) is not really telling you if your CPU is the bottleneck. We saw here that the main thread of IL-2 is jumping from core to core, so those % are not a real representation of how you CPU is bottlenecking your IL-2.

 

The best way to know the GPU vs CPU bottleneck is to use the same settings of the benchmark except for resolution, put a really low resolution for example 800x600. Then run the becnhmark. The GPU load should be really low and it will tell you the fps you will achieve with your current CPU&RAM if you would have a 3080Ti (doesn´t exist yet).

 

Then you can increase the 2D resolution to 1024x768, 1280x720(HD), 1600x900, 1920x1080(FullHD), 2560x1440 (2K) or more if you like... and see how your performance degrade by the GPU when it is being more and more loaded.

Thank you for this explanation. I will give this a try.

[RedKestrel]

For those intrepid individuals who have been helping/educating me throughout this thread, thank you again.

I've been sick all weekend and relegated to my couch - moving my head too quickly is decidedly not fun so Il-2 playing and testing has not been on the cards. Unfortunately this also means I have too much time on my hands and an inclination to shop. 

So I've put together a shopping list for upgrades. we're not looking at a world-beating rig here but the objective is to get it to a place where i can run on High settings at 60 FPS 1080p into the Battle of Normandy release, and have at least a good enough machine to keep running Il-2 past that point for a little while.

So, basically I'm looking at:

-Ryzen 5 3600 - I am tempted by the 3600X but it doesn't appear to have much of an advantage at the end of the day, especially while overclocking, and single thread speeds are nearly the same between the two but with a 30-50 dollar price difference. I'm probably going to pick up a better cooler since the reviews indicate the stock cooler doesn't do very well with overclocking.

-B450 or X570 Motherboard - It will probably be a B450 just for cost considerations, but if a good X570 goes on sale I will look at it. I don't really need a lot of bells and whistles at the motherboard, just enough slots for RAM and one GPU and enough room for cooling. 

-2x 8GB 3000 or 3200 mhz RAM - I know there are memory modules with much higher speeds but the price does not scale with performance, you start paying 30-40 dollars more for an extra 400 mhz and I'm not sure there would be a noticeable difference.

-GTX 1660 Super - This hits my price and performance sweet spot from what I can tell. The 2060 would probably be a better choice but wherever I look the price point is about $200 higher. Looking at reviews, the 2060 really only becomes worth it when you're going higher resolutions or trying to get ray tracing going, which I don't think we'll see in Il-2 anytime soon.

I've thought about just building a completely new machine and I haven't ruled it out. The thing that puts me off is that i can conceivably upgrade in stages and see benefits on my playing sooner, but if I save up for an entirely new machine then it may be a long time before I am able to upgrade anything at all. What I'm planning right now is two separate upgrades, each about $400.00. 

What I will probably do is buy new RAM and GPU first, and put them in my current machine. My motherboard runs DDR4 RAM, just throttled to 2133 mhz, but even with this at least I will not be running out of memory while playing, even if the speed is the same. If the GPU has more and faster VRAM I think that my RAM speed will be less crucial. My motherboard and PSU will support the GTX 1660 (it only has 5 w more TDP than my GTX-1060, the motherboard has the PCIe 3.0 port required, and I can see in my case that the right power connectors are there for the 8 pin it needs). The plan is to swap it out and use the packaging I get from the new stuff to seal up the old stuff, which I can then set aside and store.

Next phase would be CPU + MOBO. At that point, if it looks to be worth it and I have the funds, I can just get a new case, PSU, and hard drive at the same time, take the 1660 and RAM from my old rig and make it part of the new build, then reinstall my old 1060 and 8 GB RAM back in the older rig and turn it into a light gaming/family computer alongside the better rig. 

[RedKestrel]

Well, there were some deals that were too hard to pass up on Newegg so I ordered a 1660 Super (this one here, managed to get it cheaper than the link and there's a rebate too) and two sticks of 8GB 3200 DDR4 RAM. My Mobo will limit the speed to 2133 mhz but the extra space alone will be worth it.

Figured if I wasn't going to buy now when I'm likely to be stuck indoors for a good chunk of time, when was I going to buy?

Only thing I'm slightly concerned about is that the card is factory overclocked which likely boosts the power draw. I have a 500W power supply and according to the calculators I've used I have head room, but its one of those things I can't be 100% sure about.

I'm hoping to get it delivered by the end of the week, then install the new hardware this weekend. Figured I would make it a little tutorial for my daughter as well so she can get to know computer components and how they fit together. Then, if nothing goes wrong, I'll put Il-2 through its paces and report back!

[RedKestrel]

In the interest of screaming into the void, I got the RAM and video card within only a couple days - which is frankly almost unbelievable considering the situation.

Every day when I get home from work I think about installing the new components but talk myself out of it, as if something goes wrong I don't have time to troubleshoot it, and the computer is needed when I'm not around for schoolwork stuff and my wife's graphic design work.

Obsessive research  indicates I should be still good for the power supply, as my current 1060 apparently draws more power at peak than my new card in comparative tests I've seen online. Time will tell.

 

I have done computer maintenance a bit before for work - mostly swapping out failed hard drives, cleaning dust and fixing loose connections - but I'm nervous about cracking open my PC and rearranging the bits. I keep waffling between just installing everything at once, or swapping out just the RAM first, then the video card. The second option sounds better for systematic troubleshooting, but I worry about moving the PC, opening and closing it. I can't leave it open when turning it on because I'm sure one of the extremely static-charged cats is going to come and investigate the fans (we already have a large number of cat-induced paper jams in the printer). 

I am probably just over thinking it but what do people recommend? RAM, close it up, test, then open it again, then video card, close it up, then test? Or is it less risky hardware-wise to just put it all in at once and then troubleshoot if needed?

[cardboard_killer]

I would do the ram first, but that is really simple, so I'd keep it open boot up to check the memory, and then do the video card immediately after. Keep the cats outside for a half an hour. Won't take that long (fingers crossed).

 

I admit that this thread inspired me to upgrade the old 2 meg RX 460 to a 8 meg RX580. Not a big upgrade, but I did have to switch my monitors around to get the card to recognize both. No idea why and it works, so jimmy crack corn and I don't care.

[RedKestrel]

1 hour ago, cardboard_killer said:

I would do the ram first, but that is really simple, so I'd keep it open boot up to check the memory, and then do the video card immediately after. Keep the cats outside for a half an hour. Won't take that long (fingers crossed).

If one of you forum denizens could just lightly crinkle a plastic bag or tap a tin can, I think both of my cats would be over at your place in about 1.6 seconds in hope of food, so I'll post before I do the install so someone can summon the little furbastards. 

[Redwo1f]

Congrats on your new system!

Regarding the 1660S - pretty much just about all of them have some sort of factory overclocking to some extent or another. I am not sure which model you eventually purchased (mine is a MSI Ventus), but don't be afraid to overclock it further. The 1660 super's in general are very good overclockers. If you don't want to manually do it yourself, you can use MSI afterburner to automatically do it for you (testing stability levels as it goes) - it won't in the end give you the best possible OC that you could achieve if you do everything manually, but it does a decent job establishing a decent, stable, and safe overclock without the stress. The 1660S can easily be turned into a 1660ti this way without so much as breaking a sweat.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Redwo1f

[RedKestrel]

5 minutes ago, Redwo1f said:

Congrats on your new system!

Regarding the 1660S - pretty much just about all of them have some sort of factory overclocking to some extent or another. I am not sure which model you eventually purchased (mine is a MSI Ventus), but don't be afraid to overclock it further. The 1660 super's in general are very good overclockers. If you don't want to manually do it yourself, you can use MSI afterburner to automatically do it for you (testing stability levels as it goes) - it won't in the end give you the best possible OC that you could achieve if you do everything manually, but it does a decent job establishing a decent, stable, and safe overclock without the stress. The 1660S can easily be turned into a 1660ti this way without so much as breaking a sweat.

Mine is the MSI Ventus XS OC, so probably the same as yours. I do have MSI Afterburner and may tweak with that to get better performance if necessary. I do think that my CPU will become a bottleneck before I truly reach the peak of what the 1660 can provide. Honestly the bigger and faster memory is where I expect to get the best improvements.

Considering there are big changes brewing with rendering as per the DD today, I want to get this all up and running and put through its paces before the update drops, so I can see what impact there is and what needs tweaking. From what I've read the new update with deferred rendering will put a bit more load on the GPU but might ease up on the CPU a bit. Time will tell there.

[Redwo1f]

Yes, I have the same card. And yes, the cpu is the bottle neck now of my system - but it isn't the end of the world to have a bit of an overhead (mine apparently is about 8-9%) on the video card as it gives you a bit of a future boost if you upgrade a part at a time in the future (as I do now due to finances) vs whole system purchases at once. I will get this back when I eventually upgrade the cpu (and dam it - motherboard too (uggh)).

 

Anyways, best wishes with your system, and enjoy! ...and yes, it will be interesting to see what impacts the engine alterations are going to eventually have - but looks like very good things indeed in the future.

[RedKestrel]

Well, I did the upgrade. It went pretty smoothly! The first time I tried to boot the PC I only got a black screen. Thankfully I had done some research beforehand and knew this was commonly caused by RAM not being seated properly. I had been too gentle and had not pressed down enough. Once it booted I just needed to reset my screen resolution and things were back to normal. I had updated the drivers before installing the card so no need for that.

 

putting Il2 through its paces was eye opening. I cranked everything up to ultra, clouds to Extreme, landscape distance to 150 km, and then threw on a quick mission over Brussels on the Bodenplatte map with 8 p47s vs. 8 He111s. Previously on this mission, on balanced settings with medium clouds, I had gotten stutters especially over the city. With the new card and the new RAM I only got very occasional stutters when flying over the city. Previously I would get stutters when zooming...now, nothing! At full ultra settings the GPU was never taxed beyond 80% and frames never dropped below 59 except during the stutters. It was using just over 8 gb of RAM and 4 gb of VRAM, so It’s clear memory was the limiting factor before the upgrade.

 

the game looks amazing and runs smoothly. If you are gaming at 1080p and 60fps I think the 1660 super is a great card. So far I haven’t even pushed its limits with everything maxed out. 

 

Thanks again to everybody who offered advice in this thread! This upgrade is making a huge difference in my game already.

[kendo]

Congrats on your new set-up RedKestrel. I too added a 1660 Super a few months back to my rather aging sytem, and have had the same excellent results in the game as yourself.

 

Really nice timing for your upgrade too! Couldn't be better ?

[RedKestrel]

On 4/9/2020 at 5:16 PM, kendo said:

Congrats on your new set-up RedKestrel. I too added a 1660 Super a few months back to my rather aging sytem, and have had the same excellent results in the game as yourself.

 

Really nice timing for your upgrade too! Couldn't be better ?

Yes, I’m glad they haven’t launched the deferred rendering just yet, so I can get a before and after feel for it.

 

I did manage to put the new card through it’s paces today on Combat Box. I left the settings the same  and flew for about 3 hours. Only a couple of stutters and they were softer and shorter than before. Zooming is smooth instead of choppy. Even on the heavy duty bodenplatte missions I had no problems. I forgot to turn on Afterburner to see what the GPU usage was but the card definitely did not appear to be struggling at all. Considering the full server and the rather complex maps CB tends to have, this is probably the hardest use case for the card, so it looks like it will suit my needs for a long time to come.