TBH, that comparison is a little unrealistic. While DDR5-4800-C40 is pretty much current standard, I guess no one will be running DDR4 as low as 3200-C22. There are several benchmarks out there that show that with a 12900K a good DDR4 kit easily competes with the currently available low-end DDR5. The game may change as we see DDR5 with frequencies north of 6000 and tighter timings, but until then DDR5 will give an advantage in very selected scenarios only.
Having watched and read a few reviews of Alder Lake itās gotta be saidā¦
āI was hoping for moreā
I think Iām going to wait see what AMD release with their next socket and move to DDR5 support. Intel have cranked up the power draw by a huge margin, thrown ddr5 at this and still only achieving a fairly small increase in performance.
I agree, and thatās probably why some games respond well to DDR5 while others donāt with almost no performance difference.
Take a look here for specific 12900K/MSFS numbers.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-intel-core-i9-12900k-i5-12600k-review?page=2
At 4K, you are GPU bound. Upgrading to a 12900k would give you a few FPS more and more uniform frametime.
The question is if this is worth the $1.5K the CPU, motherboard and DDR5 will cost you.
I am running a setup similar to yours (9900k, 3080ti, LG 48" C1) and I will wait until next year before considering upgrading my CPU. Zen 4 should be coming out in the first half of 2022 and DDR5 should be more affordable by then.
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9900K is fine for another year at least, raptor next Autumn brings 24 core 36 thread CPUās. I feel the 8700K is now severely limited with only 6 cores 12 threads and users should be looking at upgrading who havenāt yet but the 9900k is an 8 core chip 16 thread chip which will be absolutely fine at 4K for the next 12 months relative to spending over $1100 on a new chip.
Not mentioned yet is the 10nm architecture lack of efficiency. This chip consumes a LOT of power and generates a lot of heat. Intelās Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: Itās a barn burner | Ars Technica
Probably not if it is mainly used for MSFS. Another important point is the whole P/E core topic. Proper thread handling will have to mature so critical threads wonāt be assigned to E-cores etc. Depending on whether Win10 or 11 is used, it might even be wise to disable E-cores for MSFS to maximize performance, as 8 P-cores with a total of 16 threads should currently be enough unless running MSFS at 720p 
Given all the $$ Iāve spent on flight sims, hardware & addons over the last 4 decades I should have just gone out and bought a dam real airplane. 14nm is where I draw the line.
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The thread scheduling should be mostly handled by Windows 11, but I would imagine thereās further optimization required from game developers to make better use of the E-cores. One example is Hitman, where Alder Lake has a significant performance bump over prior generations and competing AMD line. I believe this is because the developers assigned low priority tasks, like the physics engine, to the E-cores.
Agreed, itās a discussion thatās probably not getting enough attention it deserves. Intel recently renamed their 10nm design as āIntel 7ā because of the same transistor density as TSMCās 7nm node. Some people argued this was justified, others declared this as an easy way for Intel to disguise 10nm as 7nm. Seeing the power consumption of Alder Lake, I think it still raises some important questions about what exactly Intel 7 is.
Linus`video showed pretty messy results in MSFS. Would be interesting to see a real MMSFS benchmark soon.
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one was posted above in this thread:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-intel-core-i9-12900k-i5-12600k-review?page=2
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My Bās still looking good then. Same timings as their PC3200 xmp2 jedec but 400MHz faster 
Theyāre also solid @ CL16 4000 and CL18 4400 but with looser timings I donāt really gain anything extra.
Thatās a Ryzen system? If so, youāre running your Infinity clock outside 1:1 and getting hit with a latency penalty. Anything above 3600 will require you to specifically set the infinity clock speed in the BIOS - just keeping it at Auto will break the 1:1.
Thanks for explaining and itās probably why Iām happy to stick with 3600 
My only complaint is that latency is a few nanoseconds down with Windows 11, 70 instead of 60 but I think AMD are still looking to improve that.
Yes, my memory latency is also ~5ns higher on Windoes 11 than 10. Itās small, but measurable.
Just to clarify, if you want to run at 3800, you can set your FCLK in your BIOS to 1900 Mhz and MCLK speed to 1900 Mhz and see how it goes - this would be 1:1. Thereās a pretty hard wall running 3800 at 1:1 - most people canāt cross it without errors, but can run 3733 fine. I tried pushing my memory to 3800 at 1:1, but was getting errors, even with adjusting VSOC to 1.15v. Setting it to 3733 Mhz worked fine with no errors, so thatās where Iāve kept it.
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Thanks, Iām sure Iāll get around to it but Iāll wait a month to see if AMD come up with a better fix. Then I intend to do a serious ram OC but as it is Iām basically just using a MSI profile (with a tweak or two).
Hey, itās no i9-11900K!
As to the OP, itās only worth it if you can really afford it. As an example before my current rtx3060 I was happily flying around in the Sim on a tiny and unsupported 2GB GT1030 (passive). For sure the graphics were rubbish in comparison but to be quite honest having paid far more than I wanted to for the 3060 I canāt really say I am enjoying the sim any more than I did before, in fact previously getting better performance than some got with supported cards actually gave me quite a buzz.
Itās not that I regret my current card, Iām actually very happy with it but I do wish Iād have waited a little longer for prices to drop because that hastily spent ā¬600 is now heavily impacting on my choice of vacation.
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A dedicated 2gb card? Luxury. I played for almost 1y on integrated graphics provided by a cheap business computer (Ryzen 3400g) before getting my 3090 VR machine. Oh yes, like you I know the dark end of the render scale slider only too well. And also like you I had a great time even on that setup, with sharpening etc the sim scales really well and I probably had 60% of the enjoyment for 10% of the price 
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