After numerous issues with VR i decided to make the switch to Intel. Out went the Ryzen 5 5600x and in came an Intel 10900k. A switch also from a ASUs b550 to ASUs z490. The result is slower performance within FS, by about 5fps. I’ve a 3090 FE and whole lot is water cooled. FS is constrained by the main thread. That’s at 4k. Fiddling with the FS settings didn’t seem to make a whole bunch of difference.
Oddly the bench marks so a significant improvement in CPU, perhaps because of the extra core and higher clock speed, but significantly poorer GPU performance by about 15%
The new MB is not pcie 4, but I had that turned off to try and get VR working with the G2. I’ve left the bios to auto overclock. I wondered if there was some contention between GPU and disk as they’re sharing the same bus.
I’m fairly sure FS was constrained by a mix of GPU and CPU in my tests performed before the switch.
Any ideas where to start on optimising the processor end of things?
Thanks
Why would you switch out a 5600X for a 10900k? You can’t compare clockspeeds directly between AMD / Intel or even between different generations from the same manufacturer.
You’re likely seeing the 5600X was doing more work per clock cycle due to the higher IPC (instructions per clockcycle) of the AMD CPU. The Ryzen was probably the better choice due to main thread limitations.
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There is a famous saying if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. You should have kept the 5600x,good CPU and you must not be doing something right.
10900K is superior to the 5600x in every way maybe except single thread performance but you win performance OC that 10900k.Even the 10700k is better than the 5600x but only with an OC.
What frequency do you have the i9 set to?
Seems a bit of pointless upgrade. The 5600X was already one of the best CPU’s currently available for the sim. Any upgrade was only at best going to win you back marginally more FPS. Certainly nothing worth the expense and hassle I’d say.
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It’s not though. Clock for clock 10th gen intels perform worse than any 5000 series AMD CPU. With the IPC the AMD will do better than a 10th gen, even if the intel clocks slightly higher.
Here’s a comparison between the 5800X and the 11700k. The 10700k will be even worse.
I agree with the notice that it would only be a sidegrade either way if you have a 5000 AMD CPU, or an 11th gen intel. Certainly not worth the hassle of swapping out the entire system, and getting a much more expensive motherboard to run the intel on. Downgrading to a 10th gen makes zero sense to me at all though.
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Actually, before I’m shut out of the forum or taken out and shot, I’ve got both sets of components, and so can compare, and won’t lose much when I let the other go.
3dMark shows the 10900kf to around 20% better, maybe because of the extra cores, but the 3090 runs slower by 15%.
But for some reason the performance within FS is not great at all with the 10900. 20fps slower, with the constraint wholly the CPU.
My real interest is VR, but the G2 has issues with the USB of AMD, hence the switch.
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From what I’ve heard the USB issues were solved with a recent BIOS update. Can’t tell you 100% for sure though, since I didn’t have those issues (Quest2 on my system).
Anyways, the sim doesn’t really use cores over 6 or 8. Single threaded performance is king for the sim, and the 5000 series CPU’s do pretty well on that (due to the high IPC).
What might be happening is that the main thread limitation is more severe on the 10900, and thus less frames get pushed to the GPU to be processed. So the 3090 has less to do (and will show 15% less utilization).
About 3Dmark; it’s a synthetic benchmark, and those are fairly limited in what they can show (they test for a specific scenario). I prefer real game benchmarks for that reason.
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I’ve been building PCs for more than twenty years. Over that time I’ve come to the conclusion that benchmarking software can lead you astray. I’ve also been rather addicted to flight simulators for the PC since FS98, and X-Plane since the early days (for the Mac.) It seems that Flight Sim and X-Plane both have the capacity to bring an otherwise robust system to its knees, and make grown men cry. 
Your testing, and posting the results here in the forum, is much appreciated and supremely helpful to those of us trying to make either a new build or an upgrade decision.
At this point in time - IMHO - the only reason to select an Intel part is price and availability. AMD has made great strides the last couple of years, and the 5000 series Ryzen parts are both difficult to find and often priced above MSRP. I’ve made the choice to simply wait out the supply/demand equation and get a 5600X when they are available at MSRP. (Currently have a 3600 that seems to run Flight Sim just fine!) After that, I’ll wait for the next gen parts to sort out, and keep fingers crossed that prices for GPUs will finally settle back down to earth.
Thanks again for posting your results! That’s “real world” testing… far more valuable than a benchmark score as far as I’m concerned.
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Looks like I’ll be reversing the process from yesterday then !
But I’ve read the 10900k provides decent FS frame rates. I’d like to try and tune the 10900k, before giving up on it
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In that case, try to get the single core frequency as high as you can manage (along with DDR speeds). Do keep in mind though that MSFS is extremely sensitive to overclocks, and will crash on the slightest instability (even when it seems stable from testing outside of the sim). A solid PSU is a must have.
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Are there tools to make that happen?
AMD has Ryzen master so you can mess around with it outside of BIOS, not sure if intel has anything like that.
Otherwise it’s just going to have to be trial and error in the BIOS.
Probably worth looking up some guides on the internet if you’re new to overclocking, or just don’t do it if you’re unsure.
Thanks. I feel I might be refitting the Ryzen tomorrow !
The 5600X is superior to Intel in single core performance. So MSFS will run better with a Ryzen 5000.
The only thing is that the 5600X is a six core, and the i9 is a ten core. Instead of going back to the 5600X, get the 5800X instead. Since you are packing a 3090, 4K and all the bling, I’m pretty sure you have money to get the 5800X.
Then you have the extra cores to render, stream, etc.
Ah, yes, but that doesn’t quite explain why the 3090 performs worse on the Intel platform than the AMD. Both are ASUs boards and it was the same OS
Very interesting comparison because not many people are testing MSFS extensively on the best gaming CPU from both AMD and Intel.
I’m wondering the poorer performance for Intel, is it on airliner jets or also the same for GA planes? I want to upgrade to a 5600X and I want to make sure it works well for the glass-cockpit high refresh which tanks FPS on my old 2700X.
As for the VR, my game play is quite stable on the Oculus Quest 2, only the FPS a lil low due to CPU. Can see the GPU isn’t max out yet. I specifically plug it into the USB 3.0 port which connects to the CPU, not the motherboard chipset if that matters. And my old X470 combo doesn’t seem to suffer from the USB bug.
Unfortunately this is normal and expected. The 10900K is slower in single thread operations than the 5600X. It has 4 more cores and 8 more threads which certainly makes it a better CPU than the 5600X but unfortunately MSFS is unable to take advantage of them, being still tied to DX11 and single thread speed.
Things may change with DX12, we will see.
MSFS doesn’t like a overclocked CPU or GPU.
It gets instability problems and makes the overall experience worse, so forget about it.
Just have a bit of patience, MSFS will be better and better, especially with DX12 coming…
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I’ve never had any issues with overclocking and msfs. So I disagree completely on this. However proper overclocking is not something you can easily do without really understanding every single aspect of your system.
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