CPU upgrade: hedging my bets

[O5BEASTMODE76]

I would actually look at the reviews/comparisons on how Forza benefits from the x3D since it looks like 2024 is not currently impacted by them. Personally I am planning on staying on 2020 for a while until the bugs are out of 2024 so I am building to the x3D. I also think that as more people complain there will be more that 2024 is going to have on the hard drive and may well benefit from the x3D architecture in the future, this is just my opinion.

Here is a review that compares different processors at different resolutions with Forza. Page 3 | AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review: obliterating the competition | Eurogamer.net
As you can see in this, Forza has them both about neck and neck, but MSFS 2020 has the 9800x3D with almost 30% more frames.

[Fling2783]

First I want to say thank you for all the extensive testing. It’s very insightful for us who are trying to determine our next CPU upgrade. I would support your belief you are GPU limited as that’s what 4K does, puts the strain on the GPU, not the CPU. I suspect it’s why you aren’t seeing that much of different results in your Vcore vs. non-Vcore results. The only CPU thing you can somewhat suss out is 1% and 0.1% lows when doing a 4k test.

If you really want to test the CPU you need to make sure you aren’t GPU limited by running your tests in 1080p. Sure it’s not a test which is realistic as in you won’t want to game with that resolution, however it will answer your question on what is going on with your CPU.

[PJKGames]

I’m weirdly now also considering the 265k (obviously post microcode/windows update, whenever that drops). Better power consumption (at idle at least), $100 cheaper (than the x3d) atm, far more threads, better for productivity for the most part.

This is very funky lol, I wrote those Intel chips off entirely but I apparently missed all of the productivity benchmarks. Puget has this thing sitting higher than the 9800x3d in almost all of their tests by some margin… and yeah it’s got much better idle power performance which is nice

[BegottenPoet228]

@Fling2783

If you really want to test the CPU you need to make sure you aren’t GPU limited by running your tests in 1080p.

I can do that, if for no other reason than I love to test and tweak.

I did test the different core assignments using TAA, DLSS DLAA, and DLSS Quality. The latter renders at 2K and to upscales to 4K on my system, and I saw a median 30% FPS increase, and a 20% 1% Low increase. That definitely points to a 4K GPU bottleneck.

TAA and DLAA were pretty even, but they were rendering at full 4K.

[Fling2783]

I hear you, part of the fun of MSFS is all the tweaking to make it work for your setup. You may want to wait until this week’s patch drops, and then may even want to wait until the patch next week too. They are likely going to address some things around performance which may make testing right now moot.

[BegottenPoet228]

Good advice. Thanks.

[PJKGames]

So I ended up getting a backorder for the 9900x for $100 less… I figure I’ll see how this all pans out since I’ve got a long time for returns and then choose between the 9800x3d and the 9900x

[SlabsFly]

It is done! Spent basically the whole day building my new computer. Then at around 8pm I crossed my fingers hit turned it on.

Would you believe it: booted up fine first time around. Initially Outlook had some issues connecting to the server but that cleared itself up in a short while. As always, sound was an issue. I have an old Asus Xonar card so I had to jump through some hoops to get everything speaking with everything else.

Otherwise:

• Before I started building anything, I used Flashback to bring the board (ASRock X670E PG Lightning) to the current BIOS version that works with the 9800X3D
• Once booted up, I immediately installed the appropriate chipset drivers
• Installed the latest nVidia drivers: went painlessly.
• Restarted and went into the BIOS and selected the 6000 profile 30 CAS latency of the 2x32GB G.Skill Flare X memory. Accepted it fine, rebooted and it booted fine and seems stable.
• Boot times are fine. Even the initial memory training boot wasn’t that slow.
• Did a quick, short test with MSFS2024. the first load seemed “off” as it was stuck on loading language for some time. After I got into the menu I immediately quit, rebooted and loaded the sim again. this time it loaded in less than 2 minutes: quite a bit better than before. Quickly just spawned in at KSEA and everything seems OK

So far so good: will be testing it out more tomorrow: now I am going to bed!

[SlabsFly]

Right, time for a bit of an update.

My initial testing showed performance to be very nice indeed: I was generally happy.

But

This is the first time I have used an AIO cooler, so it was a bit of a learning experience for me. And in checking out the temperatures, I was a bit concerned. The RTX4080 Super GPU was great: nice and cool and quiet. But the CPU… not so much. Initially the CPU idled at around 42°C and under full load it went up to 95°C! This was WAY too high I thought.

To get a better handle on the issue, I decided to run Cinebench 24 to see if/how the performance was impacted. Single core came out fine at 133, which is exactly the number Tom’s Hardware got in their review of the 9800X3D. However, the multi core score came out at 1282 vs the review number of 1340. And in looking at the HWInfo numbers while the test was running, the CPU was pegged at 95°C while the clock frequencies hovered between 4,800 and 5,000 MHz, so not the full 5,200.

This all tied back to a concern I had when installing the cooler. I bought a Noctua NT-H2 “kit” for AM5 CPUs. this included a thin plastic “shield” that fits around the IHS to cover up the gaps on the side to prevent thermal paste getting squeezed in there. When I first installed the cooler, I did not line up the screws properly and had to move the cooler slightly. After I did that, a nagging question came into my mind: what if I lifted the plastic shield and a small part of it was now trapped between the CPU and the cooler?

Anyway, this worry plus the temperatures convinced me to reinstall the cooler. And when I took off the cooler, verily the shield had moved and a small bit was trapped, preventing the two surfaces from fitting tightly together. Redid the paste and put the cooler back and all was great! Maximum temperature I have now seen is 76°C. The multi core Cinebench score has also gone up to 1,358, which is a tad above the review numbers. The frequencies of all the cores were also pegged at a hair over 5,200 MHz.

A quick check in MSFS2024 showed around 40FPS with the A320 NEO V2 on the ground a KJFK with essentially all settings maxed in 4K. I am completely happy with that.

I also did a low pass over New York at about 1,300ft and 175kts:

I have actually had very good results with MSFS2024 so far. With this concern out of the way, I think I can now focus on some fine tuning of the sim and start enjoying the ride!

[SlabsFly]

Slowly coming to grips with 2024 on my new PC. I have virtually everything on Ultra, 400TLOD, 200 OLOD and things are beginning to look decent. I think I overdid the traffic: I did a flight from SeaTac (KSEA) to Friday Harbor (KFRH) and at both ends the traffic was over the top. Both the decently detailed big airport (KSEA) and the very nicely done small airport (KFHR) looked very good and had good framerates.

Unfortunately I messed up the on the ground shots at KSEA but the traffic was crazy: probably 20+ aircraft taxiing and/or waiting to take off. Some screenshots:

this gives you some idea of the hold. there were as many or more aircraft lined up to the right. I was VERY naughty and just breezed by them and took off without a word to ATC.

Once airborne of 34R I turned to port to head to Friday Harbor. I paused the sim to take a screenshot and was almost run over by an Airbus that had taken off from 34C! Between my undisciplined taxiing and takeoff and after takeoff pause I am expecting a call from the FAA…

I thought the photogrammetry in the area was fair.

Finals for Friday Harbor

Lot of aircraft on the ground there as well. Unrealistically many I think.

I thought this looked particularly nice

Still a few more tweaks to go but I am happy so far.

[PilotJedi668]

And how does the latest FS24 run on your 5800X3D?

[Vibstronium]

Not half bad. I’d get better fps with a 9800X3D in busy scenery areas (low level in big PG cities / at big airports, mostly testing Los Angeles) but I’m getting acceptable performance with the 5800X3D by bumping the dynamic settings frame rate target to 40 or 45.

I use a TrackIR head tracker so smooth motion is appreciated to keep up with camera motion, and render at 4K native resolution with approximately Ultra settings. I’m only bothering to check smoothness and frame rate at low altitudes over large cities and on the ground and takeoff/landing at medium and large airports. Performance in the middle of nowhere is always good and doesn’t interest me as an optimization case.

I mostly fly GA planes, mostly with G1000 or G3000 systems, and have a Radeon 7900XTX which spends most of its time somewhat under capacity (and often not even fully clocked up), waiting on CPU. A common starter airport is KSNA with UK2000’s scenery; KLAX with the default from MSFS2024 is a bit tougher on the cycles.

Still have it on my list to update to AM5/9800X3D in the future but I’m happy enough sitting on the money.

In general MSFS2024 seems to do better about splitting up tasks over multiple threads, and shows a more even CPU usage graph over 8 or 16 logical cores. With SMT off (8 logical cores) I can max out all CPU cores flying low over Los Angeles with settings cranked up to max, whereas with SMT on (16 logical cores) it floats around 55-60% usage, which tells me there’s still diminishing returns on extra cores, and ultimately it’s still bottlenecking on the main thread.

That is, a 9800X3D is still going to be a good choice with “only” 8 physical cores for MSFS2024.

[PilotJedi668]

Thanks for the info.

Using 8 cores is a great achievement and 40 to 45 in 4K with approximately Ultra settings would suit me fine.

My retired DELL Xeon server does a reasonable 30-43 on a 2K monitor using ASOBOs dynamic rendering, the gtx1080TI 11GB is under utilised and I reckon I need at least 2x speed. Switching off V-Sync made a huge fps improvement.

The Xeon is quad core 3.3GHz, for its age it runs very well. I was good friends with our IT manager when the servers got replaced with remote servers - mainly to avoid the tedious backup tapes. So it was free!

I’ve had my eye on the 5700X3D for sheer value for money.

PCs are like a fairground roundabout - there’s always somebody ahead and always somebody behind.

[Vibstronium]

@PilotJedi668

I’ve had my eye on the 5700X3D for sheer value for money.

Not a bad way to go if you’re bargain hunting! It won’t be top of the line, but it’s quite serviceable and a good way to use existing or discounted AM4-compatible hardware. Should be a big step up from an old quad Xeon, and going to X3D keeps you in “big cache” territory which is good for MSFS both 2020 and 2024.

[Geealf]

I’m sitting out on the 5800X3D for at least another 2-3 generations of CPU’s, I don’t see the point in upgrading, really. Never had such a strong performing CPU!

[PilotJedi668]

@Vibstronium
@Geealf

I’m interested in the motherboards you have, it’s always good to know which combinations work well.

[PilotJedi668]

Cooling modern chips is getting harder, so well done for experimenting and fixing the high temps. Somebody will benifit from knowing the fix.

The heat slows down a CPU core; it cannot sustain the boost clock forever.

Each core has logic to reduce the clock speed to keep the temperature “safe”; at extreme temperatures the core can shut down completely. Then some code crashes.

I quite like the DIY copper pipe water cooling systems. We might see more in the future

[Vibstronium]

@PilotJedi668

I’m interested in the motherboards you have, it’s always good to know which combinations work well.

mine is: ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi)

I’ve got 64GB RAM 3600 MHz, storage on an NVME SSD; current Windows 11, SMT on, SVM off; GPU is Radeon 7900 XTX; monitor is 4K & DisplayHDR 1000 compatible with HDR enabled.

Generally pretty happy with the setup, gonna wait until I get a real good deal to bump up to AM5.

[Geealf]

Gigabyte X570 Master. Overkill, but I planned to overclock my ram, then I dropped the idea as it would have been too much trouble for my workflow