Mid-life PC upgrade questions

[kirk66]

My current rig is an i7-7700k, GTX 1080ti 11gb, 32gb (2x16) DDR4-3200 RAM, all SSD drives, and a 750 W PSU. I Mainly play SP in VR on a Rift S. Thinking of a mid-life upgrade while waiting for next gen of VR headsets/CPUs/GPUs/magic.

 

Looking at upgrading the GPU to a 3080ti, and bumping RAM up to 64gb by adding two additional sticks of the same 16gb RAM.

 

Question: will my CPU be a bottleneck (it is mildly pushed to 4.8), and will my PSU be big enough?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Vulture

[jollyjack]

PSU might not be with a 3080ti? In the fall NVDIA comes with the 40xx series ... a price dump is expected for the older ones.

Even more power hungry LoL. PS for a 3080 you probably will need a case that fits a 32 cm long GPU too. Get a support for the weight might be wise.

I just went for an i9 and DDR5, but you'll need a new MB too ...

[Jaws2002]

The PSU may be enough, depends on quality.  It would be a very good idea to undervolt the GPU after you install it. My 3080Ti was sucking  450W of power at maximum load, so it's undervolted right now. 

About the rest of the upgrade, I'm not sure it's worth it. This game is fine with 32GB of memory. The memory upgrade will make zero difference in game. 

Also yes. The CPU will be the bottleneck. I think, except the GPU,  the rest of the computer doesn't have an upgrade path, that would be noticeable. 

Anything else that you throw in there won't make financial sense. 

 As long as you keep the CPU and Motherboard, you won't get worthy performance jump from that.

 I'd say swap the GPU and undervolt it, then leave everything else alone until you plan to replace the CPU/Motherboard.

[1Sascha]

4 hours ago, kirk66 said:

and will my PSU be big enough?

This calculator is pretty good IMO, although it doesn't seem to be able to handle undervolt settings for the GPU.

https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

 

I used to use my Rift-S with a 2070 Super, just upgraded to a 3070 but haven't tried that one in VR yet. For the Rift-S, the 2070 was just about right. I had to turn off a few bells and whistles but did manage to get stable 80 FPS in IL-2 pretty easily. It was at its upper limits driving the Rift-S with a bit of super-sampling, but totally playable - especially since visual quality isn't all that great in VR anyway in some respects (like planes at medium to long distance). So I'm guessing the 3070 should be more than enough to drive that thing, but it might struggle a bit with higher res VR-sets. 3080 Ti should have no problems with the Rift-S and would also be great to drive a Reverb G2.

 

I would hazard a guess that 750W should be enough for the 3080Ti, especially if you undervolt the card. But I'm not quite sure I'd plop such a high-end card into a fairly old PC. Maybe wait for the 40xx series to come out. If the performance jump between generations will be like they were before, the 4070 will probably be as powerful as a 3080 or 3080Ti but will, hopefully, be less expensive. Save up a bit more until then and use that money and the savings from going with a 4070 to upgrade the entire PC? Could probably reduce cost even further by selling the old system or at least parts of it.

 

S.

[jollyjack]

Stupid Q: what is 'undervolt' an NVDIA GPU?

[Jaws2002]

You basically reduce slightly the power available for the card. That will lead to lower heat and the card will be able to boost longer. 

Typically you end up with a very slight reduced overall performance, (and sometimes similar or better performance), but big reduction in power draw, heat and noise.

 

 

[Irishratticus72]

20 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

This calculator is pretty good IMO, although it doesn't seem to be able to handle undervolt settings for the GPU.

https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

 

I used to use my Rift-S with a 2070 Super, just upgraded to a 3070 but haven't tried that one in VR yet. For the Rift-S, the 2070 was just about right. I had to turn off a few bells and whistles but did manage to get stable 80 FPS in IL-2 pretty easily. It was at its upper limits driving the Rift-S with a bit of super-sampling, but totally playable - especially since visual quality isn't all that great in VR anyway in some respects (like planes at medium to long distance). So I'm guessing the 3070 should be more than enough to drive that thing, but it might struggle a bit with higher res VR-sets. 3080 Ti should have no problems with the Rift-S and would also be great to drive a Reverb G2.

 

I would hazard a guess that 750W should be enough for the 3080Ti, especially if you undervolt the card. But I'm not quite sure I'd plop such a high-end card into a fairly old PC. Maybe wait for the 40xx series to come out. If the performance jump between generations will be like they were before, the 4070 will probably be as powerful as a 3080 or 3080Ti but will, hopefully, be less expensive. Save up a bit more until then and use that money and the savings from going with a 4070 to upgrade the entire PC? Could probably reduce cost even further by selling the old system or at least parts of it.

 

S.

I use a 550w with an R7 5800, and an Rtx 3070, seems good the last 10 months.

[kirk66]

Thanks for all the replies, just what I needed to make my mind up. I went ahead and added a couple of sticks of RAM to get up to 64 gb, not so much for IL2 but for "that other" sim that seems to like it. It was cheap so why not...

 

Otherwise I'm going to wait for the i7-13700KF, DDR5, and 4080 to show up and build a new system - hopefully the dollar will still be up!

 

Sure would like to see some movement on another VR headset with a bit more FOV (yeah, I know, PIMAX). Or a realistic consumer-grade Varjo - I was lucky to play with Varjos in some development flight sims at work before I retired and they sure were nice...

 

Cheers,

 

Vulture

[1Sascha]

On 8/17/2022 at 8:07 PM, Jaws2002 said:

You basically reduce slightly the power available for the card. That will lead to lower heat and the card will be able to boost longer. 

Typically you end up with a very slight reduced overall performance, (and sometimes similar or better performance), but big reduction in power draw, heat and noise.

I was kinda reluctant to do it, but if my results (linked below) are any indication, I don't really see any downsides to doing this. It's also quite simple to do... all you really need is Afterburner and some standard benchmarks.

 

 

Just got Doom Eternal on sale (basically just to see what an RTX card can do, not a huge Doom- or FPS-fan) and it runs great. At 1440p and with everything turned on (except HDR which gives me that weird "color-drained" look) and all details set to "high" or better, the game runs at a solid 165 FPS (my monitor's max refresh rate). And that was both with target FPS set to 60 and to 165 - FPS counter never really budges. More importantly, the system seems completely stable - not a single glitch or crash after hours and hours of demon slaying.. ?

 

Here's how the undervolted card did in Doom:

 

 

Typical power draw while in-game (and as reported by Afterburner's OSD) is even lower than that max value reported by HWMon. I'm usually seeing 120 to 150W while actually playing the game.

 

S.

 

[SCG_Redcloud111]

I can tell you I just upgraded from an i7 8700k to an i7 12700k. I have a 3080 and I was CPU bound. And I can say the mobo/CPU upgrade has been great. I can hold 5.1ghz with very good temps. From my initial testing in game, I can maintain 90fps with no problem now. I still haven't tested this on a full multiplayer server, but I am confident I will see much improvement on what I had before.  

Edited August 19, 2022 by SCG_Redcloud111

[LVA_Picard]

Right now I have a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz   3.50 GHz  , and to make thing even more bad I use a VR Reverb G2 , card is a 3060TI 

 

Still with almost max settings I reach a 40 fps and no stutters . 

 

I can buy from a friend a second hands PCU processor called the Intel Core i7 10700F and because Il2 is more CPU related I keep the 3060TI , of course fore VR it would be nice if you use a 3080TI buy hey its al about the coin he haha 

 

what I also reading  is under volting your GPU card . 

 

That's 1 of the reason I bought this 3060TI , in use its only 180 watt and in these days with high energy cost these high end GPU cards are simply to expensive , not only in buying  but also in using energy usage . 

 

and by adding on this topic called : Mid-life PC upgrade questions my question is fore now will the  Core i7 10700F in combination with the 3060 TI will do its work in this IL2 simming fore the coming years ? 

 

Robin 

 

 

 

[jollyjack]

i think the Core i7 10700F might give you a better working system, as will a 3080ti.

Check if your PSU is strong enough, you'll need to feed a 3080ti also with two 8pin power cables.

 

I bought latter, but have an i9 now, and ddr5 ram.

I must say my old 2080ti was not that bad, and probably sells quite cheaper.

Grapevine; when the 4000 RTXs come out in a few months prices will drop quite a bit.

 

PS:

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/80030-undervolting-a-rtx-3080ti-how/

Edited September 7, 2022 by jollyjack

[cardboard_killer]

So I have an old card, an 8gig RX580 that's been soldiering on for awhile. I upgraded to a Ryzon 7 3700X (on a MSi B550) last year and intended to upgrade the GPU shortly after, but prices . . . Anyway, now that prices are down a bit, what would people recommend for a budget/mid-level GPU? Any recommendations on the used market (I'm in the USA). Thanks, CK.

[kestrel79]

What's the best cpu I could get these days for my socket 1151 motherboard? Is it worth it to upgrade from a 9600k? I still need to attempt overclocking, but I'm afraid of messing something up.

 

GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS PRO LGA 1151