Certainly but an i7 7700k brings its own challenges especially for complex airliners which still can offload some tasks to alternate cores.
Synthetic FHD third person benchmarks are pointless. What we need are 4k/VR airliner comparisons with cockpit view.
Anything’s else is for the trashcan. Even an refrigerator will run it at FHD/tpv (literally).
12600k seems to be a nice piece of silicon btw.
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True, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of genuinely complex airliners to chose from at this point just lots of flying candy. Also pretty difficult to do actual VR benchmarking as such.
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My understanding, based on actual benchmarks, is that there is not a lot of difference between the two in terms of single core performance and thus gaming experience.
Maybe a couple of FPS? A little OC would mitigate the delta.
However I do not know whether VR specifically would benefit from a higher core count. My hunch is that it would not, but I have no data to back it up.
Bottom line, I think it is worth investigating, whether 12600KF suffices, the price difference could be pocketed, or used for better DDR5 or a better MB for instance 
If you were planning to use your PC as a workstation, for video editing and such, then the higher core count would be a no brainer.
Just my 2 cents
Source: Eurogamers review, flying low over London in glass cockpit jet, just after take off at London City airport.
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It should, because W11 ships with a CPU scheduler that is intended to optimize the use of Intel’s HW based scheduler, specific to Alder Lake.
The benefits of the special sauce scheduler may require an MSFS patch though. And MS may decide to patch W10 with that scheduler as well, down the line, mainly to satisfy enterprise customers not willing to migrate their computers to W11.
In the meantime, for gamers equipped with Alder Lake, upgrading to W11 makes sense.
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Yea i will try win11 with 12900k and Aorus Elite with my old 32DDR4 4000CL17.
Artived today , but i am waiting for the Noktua Adapter.. 
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Congrats and good luck, my upgrade from W10 to W11beta was as smooth as it gets.
Thanks for that. I will look at that, DCS however is still limited by fastest single core performance although they too are switching to Valkan one day.
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And the temps are off the charts if all being used…which only hapoens in synthetic benchmarks of course. Temps are hitting 100 degrees C even with expensive AOIs.
Most prof reviewers are saying the i7 will be more than enough and the i5 best bang for buck.
I’m guessing MSFS won’t be able to implement many cores anyway. Clock speed will be more important. It is pissible MSDS may be tweaked to use P and E cores efficiently ?
Same with DDR5 ram. The timings are really high. May be better to go with 4000 DDR4 with lower CAS timings … than 5000 5, with much higher timings.
But it will be interesting to see the benchmarks.
I got my 12900k yesterday and wanted to share some first impressions regarding MSFS.
Previous system:
11900k @ 8x51, HTT=on
Asus Z590 Apex
2x16GB Gskill 3800-C14 @ 3866-16-16-16-36-2T Gear 1
RTX3090 Aorus Xtreme +50/+500
CPU cooling: Alphacool Eisbaer Extreme + 420mm radiator
Win10 latest updates
NVidia 496.49
100Mbit/s
New system:
12900k @ 54/54/54/53/53/53/52/52, TVB+2, HTT=on
Asus Strix Z690-A Gaming D4
2x16GB Gskill 3800-C14 @ 3600-16-16-16-36-2T Gear 1
Rest of the specs see above.
I’m using a Reverb G2 with WMR + OXR 1.07, Motion Repro Off. Nvidia Control Panel everything at default except Power Management = max. and Texture Filtering = Performance.
Benchmarking was performed using a CapFrameX and a pre-recorded 6min test flight over photogrammetric city, rivers+lakes and dense forests with a DA40 TDI in cockpit view at a fixed start time & date. During the flight, the headset was resting untouched on the table, view centered. Dev mode overlay was on, which usually gives a penalty of 1..2 FPS. Results are average over 3 runs. In-game settings are a mix of high+ultra plus a few medium settings, see below. Standard ist OXR=100%, TAA=100%, but I also compared 200/50.
Edit: I’m fully aware of the fact that I was running GPU limited pretty much all of the time, but that was on purpose because it will reflect what most of us are experiencing in VR. Still, the CPU may have an effect on minimum and low FPS.
As expected the gains over the 11900k are pretty small, though the increase in min FPS is very welcome. The CPU is pretty much maxed out, the MEM isn’t but that won’t make much of a difference. Things could change, however, if DDR5 matures and we see RAM kits with 6000+ and CL36 or less at a reasonable price. But that’s probably gonna take another half year or more and until then, at least for me DDR4 is the way to go. Enabling/disabling E-cores did not affect performance directly, but it is obvious that one is losing a bit of O/C headroom for P-cores when E-cores are active. So if you want to max out the P-cores and Ring, leave the E-cores off.
So bottom line: If you’re coming from a 11900k the upgrade is certainly not worth it if your aim is improving MSFS performance. I use the PC mainly for work and here the 12900k delivers. The +1..4 FPS in MSFS are a welcome side effect. If you’re still on an older gen CPU, you may consider the upgrade, but then again I would wait until decent DDR5 is available. I came from 10900k before the 11900k and compared with the 12900k I’d say I’ve gained something like 6..7 FPS - roughly, considering performance at equal settings but also differences due to SU5 & 6.
Happy flyin! 
VR Settings
TAA
TLOD 200
PRE-CACHING ULTRA
TERRAIN VECTOR DATA ULTRA
BUILDINGS HIGH
TREES ULTRA
GRASS MEDIUM
OLD 200
CLOUDS ULTRA
TEXTURE HIGH
ANI FILTERING 16X
TEX SUPERSAMPLING 4X4
TEX SYNTHESIS ULTRA
WATER WAVES HIGH
SHADOW MAPS 1536
TERRAIN SHADOWS 512
CONTACT SHADOWS HIGH
WINDSHIELD MEDIUM
AMBIENT OCCLUSION MEDIUM
CUBEMAP 64
RAYMARCHED REFL LOW
LIGHT SHAFTS HIGH
BLOOM ON
COCKPIT REFRESH HIGH
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Thanks for your report. Highly appreciated!
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This is excellent, thank you. Maybe I missed it somewhere, but what resolution is this? It looks like it’s 4K based on the numbers.
It’s the G2 native resolution, which is 3160x3096, so roughly 18% more pixels than 4K.
Edit: I was a bit sloppy here - this is of course the actual render resolution of the G2 to correct for lens distortion. As @PianoArrow61382 pointed out, the native HMD panel resolution is 2160x2160.
Thank you! The first valid comparison. Why do you have HTT on?
I’ve compared HTT on vs. off with the 11900k and found that HTT off would not give me any FPS or frametime gains outside margin of error. I first expected to gain some O/C headroom but this did not pan out either, so I switched it back on. To be correct, I gained 100MHz OC with HTT off, but this did not change my FPS/frametimes. However, I did not test with the 12900k.
Thanks for this! I guess you were GPU limited in these cases though? I run 250 lod and am still GPU limited with 10850k and 3090. Would be great to see if these CPUs can manage much different lods before becoming CPU limited.
PS I’ll gladly take the 12900k off your hands when you upgrade to the 13900k 
Thanks very much for the comparison, I feel we need to all pitch in a few bucks to subsidise your rig(S) there. That’s some high spec gear you’ve got.
I have some really stupid questions because I find understanding settings is a whole game in itself, forgive my ignorance:
-
My understanding is that the Reverb has a resolution of 2160 by 2160 so you’re obviously talking about something else there, can you explain please?
-
When you say AOURUS extreme +500/+50 are you talking about your GPU clock speed? I am still looking for a 3080ti and trying to determine the clock speed and to what extent it will make a difference to FPS with my Reverb (G1)
- You say OXR 200/TAA 50, do you mean that open XR developer tool is set to upscale resolution of 200%? If so, don’t most people then take the in game VR resolution down to 50% rather than TAA? (I haven’t yet read a good definition of how TAA works, I’m sure that a good explanation is out there, I just haven’t read one yet)
Again, thanks for showing VR ‘benchmarking’ results, looking at everything else is virtually pointless.
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Hi,
thanks for your feedback. As I previously wrote, these are only partially leisure rigs. What’s more - adopting new hardware early usually has the benefit that I am able to sell my previous gen gear with pretty decent returns compared to their resale value after 3 or 4 years. But that aside, here are my answers to your questions:
Ad 1. I’m sorry if I was imprecise in my above posting. You’re absolutely right about that native HMD panel resolution of 2160x2160, but for a decent visual experience, lens distortion has to be corrected. And this happens by rendering at approx. 1.5x higher resolution, see for example
WMR Scaling and Dev Tools - Some Explanations.
Ad 2. Yes, these are +50MHz for GPU and +500MHz for VRAM, which is as far as I can go stable on my already factory-overclocked 3090. These give me roughly 2 FPS higher MIN/1% in MSFS at no cost (except from the monthly energy bill).
Ad 3. I was a little imprecise here as well, using that wide-spread but incorrect nomenclature of “TAA resolution” - thanks for pointing that out. So basically in that second test I was running OXR resolution at 200%, in-game VR resolution at 50% and using TAA.
Cheers,
K.
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For VR the problem is still the same or even worse, GPU limitation. Any comparison has to be mainthread limited and that basically means completely offline at higher LODs than in the menu. Even then for MSFS I’m not sure there is a single GPU out there that can show off the full potential of the new CPUs although I guess twinned 3090’s might.
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This is true but I wanted to do a comparison under actual usage conditions, not synthetic benchmarking. And I guess this is also what most simmers are interested in.
By the way - twinning 3090 would be great - but aside from the price point(lessness), multi-GPU is simply not supported with current-gen GPUs and I doubt it ever will. I’ve done some tests with a pretty unstable NV CFR setup and two 2080Tis, but performance was below that of a single 3090.
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