Hello. I want to buy a complete new upper mid range PC for mostly MSFS 2020. I dont play other games, only Flight Simulators or sometimes a Rally Car Simulator… At the moment, the MSFS runs with DX11 and mostly with single core usage on the CPU. When the MSFS get the DX12 function, the CPU should works better with multi core… So is it very important, to buy a big multi core CPU for the MSFS future, or is a CPU with less cores still ok for this simulator? Which mid range CPU is a very good choice?
Don’t worry about Intel v. AMD. Get what fits your overall budget and performance targets.
I would say start no lower than a 6 core modern CPU. Intel i5-10600 or Ryzen 5 3600 would be the floor, and those are pretty affordable now. Start there and only consider going up.
I personally got an i7-10700 new in box for $220 and couldn’t pass that up.
DX12 is the graphics API used by the video card. Agree your upgrade should be as a minimum a six core CPU; eight is better but more than that isn’t always better. Regardless, this has nothing to do with DX11 vs DX12.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. The difference on multicore utilization between DX11 and DX12 is significant, exactly as OP has described it. You will no longer be limited to a single thread as currently implemented in DX11, and having more cores starts to have a measurable performance impact with DX12. Whether or not the better multithreading capability of DX12 would significantly increase performance on MSFS is yet to be seen, but I wouldn’t discount 12- and 16-core processors so readily.
Yes of course! But i need/want it now, not mid 2022 And i think, all the new components for DDR5 (RAM, CPU, Mainboard…) will be very expensive and rare after release.
My personal preference is AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU. AMD’s performance and price:performance has been very good lately, and Intel is becoming less competitive for gaming. Ultimately, you’ll probably just want to check benchmark scores for the processors in the candidate computers you’re looking at, though. At a mid-range price point, AMD is more likely to provide the most bang for your buck, but Intel may have some options out there as well.
The first generation DDR5 modules will be significantly more expensive with worse latency than than current DDR4. This is exactly what happened during the DDR3 to DDR4 transition, where early DDR4 performed worse for gaming. If gaming is your primary concern, I’d stay away from DDR5 for the next year or two.
According to the Microsoft Developers Blog, DX12 will provide a performance boost using the same hardware so it begs logic to believe that more CPU is needed for DX12 compared to DX11. DX12 provides a richer and wider low level control for developers to control and optimize their applications. Not only will frame rates increase with DX12 using the same hardware, but when the application would be offering the most load to the hardware (ie. DX11 frame rate drops) DX12 in comparison will maintain performance due to it’s increased efficiency. Just google “dx11 vs dx12” for many more examples.
I’m confused why you’re giving me the overview of DX11 and DX12 - this is essentially what I said in my initial reply. I’m saying that with DX12, there could be a measurable performance difference of a 12 or 16-core processor. The “more than that isn’t always better” remark may not necessarily hold for DX12.
Here is some info on my system to help you with your decision. As I mentioned, I have an i7-10700. Not overclocked. 32GB DDR4 3000MHz RAM. 512GB NVMe. GTX 1080 8GB. I have dual monitors. I play on the 1440p monitor at primarily high settings. The other monitor is a 4K monitor that I do not use for any game windows. I’ll have a browser window up or I’ll be looking at approach charts on it. Last time I looked at FPS, I was usually getting around 45 FPS with this setup.
Attached are two images. One shows my CPU load flying towards downtown Chicago. I have photogrammetry on, real-time weather, AI traffic (low density). The second image is the game’s screen capture at the same time as the task manager capture. In the extreme lower left corner, you can see the Astros beating the White Sox
This will give you an idea of how hard my CPU is being driven. If I had an i5-10600, I’d probably still be about the same, but there’s no way I’d go lower than that.
I would strongly recommend waiting just a little longer and see how things pan out with intel’s new Alder Lake cpus before pulling the trigger on a new system. You won’t have to wait long either, they should be launching them in early November. They could potentially be a much better bet than any of the available AMD cpus, based on a variety of leaked benchmarks (grains of salt required!)… or they could be a bit of a flop if the Windows 11 scheduler turns out to be less than stellar. Hard to say right now.
As others have said though, I would forget DDR5 for the time being. It’s going to be hugely expensive and will likely perform slightly worse initially than good DDR4 available today. Most of the better alder lake motherboards will support both though, so you could put in some decent and affordable DDR4 to start with, and replace them with DDR5 in a couple years when prices drop and performance improves. Sims generally benefit more from lower memory latency than higher throughput, and good DDR4 can do both right now. The latency on the first round of DDR5 is looking pretty ugly, but it could be fine. Again, hard to tell right now.
If you absolutely can’t wait then an AMD 5800x, 5900x, or Intel 11900k would probably be your best bet right now. 8-10 physical cores is pretty much ideal for a dedicated flight sim machine, enough to handle the sim and VR and anything else you want to throw at it. I don’t see it scaling well past 12 cores, regardless of DX12, since the core sim is shared with Xbox (8 cores), and more than that is only really useful for heavily multithreaded graphics/media applications.
On the GPU side the Nvidia 3080s and 3090s are your best bet. AMD’s 6900 is also good, but AMD tends to have more driver issues and in real world use tends not to run as smoothly in the sim for some reason.
Indeed it will be at min 60 percent more expensive. Not worth it given the performance boot (compared to DDR4)would be negligible in games. I would not consider an upgrade of any sort until the supply issue is resolved and prices drop big time.
And i think, all the new components for DDR5 (RAM, CPU, Mainboard…) will be very expensive and rare after release.
