CPU or GPU Update more useful?

[WhteRbt]

Dear IL-2 friends,

 

I am in the process of updating my rig. Currently, I am using a ASUS Hero VII WiFi with 16 GB DDR4-3200, AMD Ryzen 5 2600X and GTX-1070ti. As I am a proud Valve Index owner, I exclusively fly in VR and need the maximum performance.

 

I was thinking to update to an used 1080ti (as the new 3080 series will be released soon) or an 2080ti (and don't hop on the 3080 train). But then I red that the CPU performance for IL-2 is much more important than the GPU performance. Can you confirm that?

 

Would upgrading my rig to an Ryzen 7 3800X or an Ryzen 9 3900X make a noticeable (!) difference?

 

Thanks a lot and best regards!

 

Marcel

[RedKestrel]

5 hours ago, WhteRbt said:

Dear IL-2 friends,

 

I am in the process of updating my rig. Currently, I am using a ASUS Hero VII WiFi with 16 GB DDR4-3200, AMD Ryzen 5 2600X and GTX-1070ti. As I am a proud Valve Index owner, I exclusively fly in VR and need the maximum performance.

 

I was thinking to update to an used 1080ti (as the new 3080 series will be released soon) or an 2080ti (and don't hop on the 3080 train). But then I red that the CPU performance for IL-2 is much more important than the GPU performance. Can you confirm that?

 

Would upgrading my rig to an Ryzen 7 3800X or an Ryzen 9 3900X make a noticeable (!) difference?

 

Thanks a lot and best regards!

 

Marcel

The last couple updates have shifted a lot more of the processing burden onto the GPU, even in VR. So a 1080Ti would probably do you some good and might be worth it if you can get it used or cheap.

 

That said, you really need to figure out for yourself what your bottleneck is through testing, using MSI afterburner or a similar logging software to track the usage of different components. If your CPU is topping out before your GPU does, then going to a 1080TI won't help you much. 

Also might want to post this in the VR controllers thread, there are a LOT of experience people here with a multitude of headsets who could help you pick out the best way to upgrade. VR has its own black magic to it I think.

[Bernard_IV]

They've improved the CPU usage in IL2 with the last update but the Intel CPUs with their higher clock speeds are better for the weak CPU optimization.  1070ti could run at really low settings OK.

[Jaws2002]

11 hours ago, RedKestrel said:

That said, you really need to figure out for yourself what your bottleneck is through testing, using MSI afterburner or a similar logging software to track the usage of different components. If your CPU is topping out before your GPU does, then going to a 1080TI won't help you much. 

  

This is the answer.

You have to test your system, using some monitoring software, like MSI afterburner, to figure out what upgrade path would have the biggest impact.

 If you go the CPU path, 3800x and 3900x will most likely be withing two three frames per second from eachother, so I'd say 3800x would be just fine. 

If you want a bit more performance than what 3800x can offer, I'd better get the new 3800XT, that's going to be released on July 7, than the 3900x. The XT line brings around 200MHz boost advantage over the old X line. The 3800XT will boost to 4.7GHz.

  But then again, if i was looking for a CPU upgrade, I'd wait for the Zen 3 launch, sometimes in fall. 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by Jaws2002

[SeaW0lf]

15 hours ago, RedKestrel said:

If your CPU is topping out before your GPU does, then going to a 1080TI won't help you much. 

 

That's not really true when talking about ROF, Il-2 Series. My old i7-3770K was never stressed in both games (around 20/30% or something like it) and the improved performance was significant with overclock. The same here with my i5-9600K. Overclocking it makes the game run smoother, and the CPU seldom goes up 20% usage, some 15% overclocked. In other words, these games are not really optimized and clock / IPC is still king. You have to have a high clock / IPC processor to milk everything you can from that 15% the CPU is using.

 

I could have kept my i7, since I could run ROF three times over, but I would miss out on the new IPC / clock of my new i5-9600K. The difference is blatant even running it stock compared to my old i7 overclocked.

 

I'm not sure how the new patches are, but VR required Intel preferably in the past. The 2000 Ryzen series is likely a contributing factor in the bottleneck. You could overclock it to the limit as well to see if there is any improvement.

Edited June 27, 2020 by SeaW0lf

[LLv34_Flanker]

S! 

 

WhtRbt has a X470 mobo, which supports both current Ryzen 3000-series and also coming 4000-series. So basically if he could wait it out until fall when the new CPU and GPU come out, it would save some moolah. 

 

Newer Ryzen 3XXX likes low CL memory and 3200Mhz with good CL is better used on it than on 2000-series. 3600/3733Mhz is the current sweet spot, but difference over 3200Mhz is not big. 

 

In short I would save any upgrade money now and wait for the new hardware coming out this fall. 

[Jaws2002]

On 6/27/2020 at 7:47 AM, LLv34_Flanker said:

In short I would save any upgrade money now and wait for the new hardware coming out this fall.

 

 

 This is the best way to go. A lot of stuff is coming out in the fall. There is a new generation of CPUs from AMD. Both AMD and NVIDIA have their next generation graphics cards coming out  in the fall, as well. All of this promised a very solid boost in performance.

 Even if you don't want to get the new components, the prices of the parts you want to buy now, will drop dramatically. 

[Alonzo]

On 6/26/2020 at 2:07 AM, WhteRbt said:

I am in the process of updating my rig. Currently, I am using a ASUS Hero VII WiFi with 16 GB DDR4-3200, AMD Ryzen 5 2600X and GTX-1070ti. As I am a proud Valve Index owner, I exclusively fly in VR and need the maximum performance.

 

I was thinking to update to an used 1080ti (as the new 3080 series will be released soon) or an 2080ti (and don't hop on the 3080 train). But then I red that the CPU performance for IL-2 is much more important than the GPU performance. Can you confirm that?

 

Would upgrading my rig to an Ryzen 7 3800X or an Ryzen 9 3900X make a noticeable (!) difference?

 

Get FpsVR. It's a small, cheap tool that will show you, while you're flying, the CPU and GPU "frame times". To get 80 FPS out of your Index, you need the frame time for each to be below 12.5 milliseconds. Fly around a bit and see what your current frame times are. Try changing the settings a bit, maybe Balanced to High, or the other way around, and look at what it does to your CPU and GPU frame times. Try a simple flight, and a 4 vs 4 quick match with the Ai.

 

I would guess that you would get some improvement from upgrading the 2600X. If you truly want to see if it's a bottleneck, drop your SteamVR supersample below 100% (this will make the game look like crap, but that's ok - we're trying to see what the bottleneck is). In a very approximate way, changing your supersample below 100% simulates the effect of a more powerful graphics card. According to a very dumb benchmark on UserBenchmark, the 2080ti is 82% faster than your 1070ti. So it's 1.82 times as fast. So set the supersample to 1 / 1.82 = 0.55 = 55% to 'simulate' the effect of a GPU upgrade. Does the CPU hold you back?

 

As with any upgrade, wait as long as you can, because things always get cheaper and faster. Is your 2600X overclocked? Could you buy an AIO liquid cooler for it for $60 and overclock it a bit more? That might be enough to keep the CPU going strong enough for a GPU upgrade (or it might not -- depends how much of a bottleneck the CPU currently is).

[WhteRbt]

Dear IL-2 friends,

 

first of all, thanks a lot! I have to apologize, my reply took longer than planned…

 

First of all, I will not switch to Intel CPUs. I invested a bit more money in the past to go with the X470 platform, as I wanted my board to be more future-proof. I did not know that even the new 4000-series will be supported by my mainboard. In this case, I will wait and go for the 3000XT-series or the new 4000-series.

 

I've got fpsVR and noticed hat my GPU operates at around 90-95 %, it seems that my CPU does not hold me back at the moment, with the current settings. I will do a few more flights this afternoon and keep an eye on the benchmarks. I have no gut feelings about the current workload of my whole system at the moment, but I will keep monitoring.

 

tl;dr: I will not do any updates at the moment. I will stay with the GTX-1070ti and the Ryzen 5 2600X for now and try to do some tweaks here and there. I think it will be okay until autumn when I will check out my new options…

 

@Alonzo: Great explanation about the simulation of a better graphic card. I will absolutely do a test flight and take a look how my system performs. My 2600X is not overclocked, as I have absolutely no experience with overclocking. Only my GTX-1070ti is slighty (!) overclocked with Afterburner.

[Alonzo]

4 hours ago, WhteRbt said:

My 2600X is not overclocked, as I have absolutely no experience with overclocking. Only my GTX-1070ti is slighty (!) overclocked with Afterburner.

 

I did a super quick search, and Asus themselves have a video on overclocking the 2600X. I suspect it's fairly easy -- when I got started overclocking I was very nervous, but the CPUs have lots of built-in limitations that stop you doing anything too crazy. The two biggest things to watch for are temperature and voltage (and they are related, more voltage = more heat). Some 'auto' settings on motherboards pump a lot of voltage into the chip, and that's not always a good idea. If you're overclocking for IL2, you should do some short stability tests to find a candidate overclock - maybe 20 minutes tests of a CPU stress tool. But once you have a setting you'd like to keep, do an overnight run of Prime95 using the "large FFT" option. That will stress your system in a similar way to IL2 (well, it will make it run hotter than IL2 will, but you get the idea).

 

I've had instability in my system in the past. It looked ok with most CPU testing tools, but an overnight run of Prime95 found the problem. And IL2 loves to tickle whatever that instability was.