I’m looking for some thoughts on this spec please. I will be playing at 1440p.
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D Eight Core CPU (3.0GHz-4.1GHz/100MB CACHE/AM4)
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4070 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 2950MB/sW)
CORSAIR 750W RMe SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Try to budget a bit more for a 5800X3D. The 5700X3D will save you money, but it’s 30% lower performance might not make you happy.
Try to budget a bit more for DDR4-3600/CL16 RAM. 3200MHz is OK, though.
12GB VRAM should be ‘OK’ but it seems like the general consensus is that 16GB should be the minimum. We don’t know what changes FS2024 will bring for VRAM usage.)
Good luck getting support from ASUS if you need it. I’ve sworn off them because of their horrendous support policies, and so have some leading industry pundits.
Power supply and SSD are fine.
Overall, be aware that you’re investing in a dead technology (AM4.) I have an AM4 system, and I’m happy with it, so it’s not the worst thing to take advantage of older tech in an effort to save money.
3d v-cache has been great for MSFS particularly. Additionally the frame gen on the 40 series is an absolute game changer. Keep in mind, frame gen and dlss 3.1 are two separate things. It is possible to run frame gen in TAA mode with native 4k or 2k. I would recommend trying those two native resolutions first. Also, you must enable DX12 within the sim and reload the sim before frame gen will become available to turn on. I would also recommend going to the nvidia control panel and selecting “perfer maximum performance” on the power management setting for your GPU.
One last thing that is commonly neglected and overlooked… UPDATE YOUR BIOS! Go to your motherboard manufacturer’s website, make sure you know your motherboard model name/number. Download and install the latest update for your bios. If you are running secure boot, you need to disable it before updating your bios. Don’t know if you are running secure boot? Go to your windows search bar and type in “system information”. Open that, it will be in that list of settings and specs. If you need to disable it, find a good youtube how-to. After bios is updated, enable XMP or EXPO within your bios settings. Otherwise you are not getting the full potential and speed of that 3200mhz ram. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! if you are building this PC, DO NOT INSTALL THE 2 RAM STICKS SIDE BY SIDE IN RAM BANKS RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO EACH OTHER! It should be ram, empty, ram, empty… or empty, ram, empty ram. This is assuming your motherboard has 4 ram slots.
For sure!
READ THE MANUAL. It will tell you exactly which slots to use for various RAM configs.
True! There are some exceptions. Vast majority of ram banks are configured a1 a2 by b1 b2. Manual is definitely the best way to go. At the end of the day. Do not put both sticks in A1 and A2 or B1 and B2. Should be one in A and one in B. A1 B1 or A2 and B2
I used to have 3rd parties build my client computers. EVERY SINGLE ONE was misconfigured in some way. So your advice holds true even if OP is buying a custom pre-built.
CPU guidance may change some as MS/Asobo spread more tasks over more cores. Until now for the most part you wanted the fastest single core performance CPU. As the load gets spread out over more cores, different CPUs may be better able to handle the load.
Something else to keep an eye on is heat load. As more CPU cores get used at the same time, power dissipation in the CPU will likely go up significantly. Some cooling solutions may need an upgrade.
Something else to watch is where and how many m.2 drives get added in. There tends to be one “golden” slot that doesn’t share mobo resources but loading up other slots can cause the PCIe bus to drop in speed (e.g. GPU bus speed) and they can cause SATA ports to be disabled.
All also in the manuals. Which physical slot m.2 drives use can have consequences and they are kind of hidden. Most stuff will still work but just slower. Anyone with all their m.2 slots full should really take a beat and check their manual to see what they might be giving up.
There seems to be a regular assumption around the forums now that this will happen, and that there will be a dramatic performance improvement in 2024 because of it. I honestly think we’ll be disappointed.
I’ve had a great deal to say about this in previous threads so I won’t repeat myself, but concurrent programming is very hard and many tasks simply cannot be parallelised.
I’m not getting my hopes up, and TBH at this point I’d wait for 2024 to come out and then make a decision about the spec for a new build, when we know how it actually performs. My advice to the OP would be to wait.
Might be good advice. Buying on hopes and promises is a way to be disappointed. It will all hinge on how much they can do in parallel. We’re running FSX core code which was written back when 2-4 cores was all there was.
I don’t know how much we’ll see this update but 2024 should see at least moderate improvement. It really shouldn’t be that hard to get some parallelism going and anything is better than what we have now, but who knows what Microsoft and Asobo have planned? It might be a high priority with them having these issues with XBox. Obviously using more cores can improve performance. At least they have motivation.
But even if they can only sort how to get one additional core running hard it can almost double the performance (and heat output) while also favoring different CPUs.
Ultimately we don’t know and have been disappointed a bunch so far. I have more hope for 2024, though. I just thought I’d mention that ideal CPUs for FS may change. The OP can do whatever they want to about it. And it might not change much in choosing CPUs. They’ll still have multiple cores should FS start supporting multiprocessing properly.
30% slower? In reviews that I saw it was about 10%. This makes sense to me, because it also clocks about 10% slower (4.5 GHz vs. 4.1 GHz). Everything else remains the same.
But, I agree with the rest of your comments.
You’ll quickly want more than 1TB of NVME drive.
It’s hard to quantify, since there are so few (if any) MSFS benchmarks out there comparing the performance of these two particular CPU’s. It’s true that less granular tests show around 10%, so perhaps I shouldn’t state 30% without having sim-specific numbers. 
But the 5800X3D has an extra 64MB of cache (96MB vs. 32GB.) I personally I think it’s important to steer people to the 5800X3D if they can afford it, and 3 times the Layer 3 cache is a big deal in this sim.
No I’m pretty sure the 5700x3d also has 96 MB of cache, see below.
The only reason I know is that I’m planning an upgrade myself and weighing up wether to go with 5700x3d or 5800x3d. On a personal note, I would likely go for the 5800x3d, because it will always bug me that I didn’t get the best one and the cost savings would lose its significance over time.
Out of curiosity… an upgrade you say? What do you have currently?
I am thinking too about to upgrade to a 5800X3D.
Currently I am hooked with a 5900X.
Not sure yet though.
Maybe better to wait and do a entire new build after a few years.
Mark
Yeah, I screwed up. I looked at a comparison of the 5700X3D and the 5800X3D, and didn’t read this carefully enough:
“The 5800X3D has the same core architecture as the 5800X but it runs at 11% lower base and 4% lower boost clocks. The lower clocks are in exchange for an extra 64MB of cache (96MB up from 32MB.)”
Confirmation bias skewed my visual cortex, I guess… 
Thanks for pointing it out.
Yep, it happens to the best of us…
I currently have:
Ryzen 5 3600X
Radeon RX 5700 XT
16 GB 3600 MT/s
1080p Ultrawide
Step by step, I plan to end up with
Ryzen 7 5800X3d
Something in the 3080 / 6800XT range
32 GB 3600 MT/s
1440p Ultrawide
But I don’t have nearly enough money to do it all at once. So I’m starting with the CPU first, since I’m often CPU limited during critical stages of flight (big airports, big cities, lots of traffic, high LOD, etc.).
Regardless, I’m a few months out at least. What GPU are you using?
Wait until 2024 and you won’t nearly be so bound as you are now in an 18yo game engine.
Apparently we’re going to get more info in June. I’d tow the line and save until 2024 releases and revisit the upgrades. The game itself is likely to ‘upgrade’ your computer. A 7900/4090 is CPU limited in 2020.
Nice upgrade plan. You will really see massive improvements with that in mind.
I have a RX6800XT. Very happy with it.
With a native resolution of 3840X1600 my fps are ranging between 30fps at busy/large airports and anything close 50 - 60fps once airborne.
Good luck with your upgrade 
Mark
