Before I pull the trigger and update my current pc I would like to share some points which I still cannot foresee.
My current PC:
Motherboard: MSI MEG Z490 Ace
CPU: Intel Core i9-10900X
GPU: RTX 2080 ti
PSU: 850W be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4
SSD: :1TB Samsung SSD 860 EVO
PC Case: Corsair CC-9011189-WW
CPU cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
Monitor: Benq pd3200u - which is a 4K 60 Herz Monitor selected also for my photo work
My plan:
Only to update the following components:
GPU: RTX 4090
PSU: 1.000 Watt Corsair RM1000x 80 PLUS Gold (due to higher power consumption for 4090)
PC Case: Asus ROG Strix Helios (due to bigger size of the 4090)
My first doubt is if I should rather aim for a 4080 due to the fact that my monitor will give me max 60 FPS in 4K. On the other hand, I fly also VR and the 4090 would be probably the way to go…
My second doubt is the bottleneck I would have with my CPU which cannot support PCIe 4.0 but currently PCIe 3.0. I could update my CPU only to a 9-11900K (my motherboard only supports until 11 gen) and then update my BIOS so that it supports PCIe 4.0. However, it seems that my current CPU (i9-10900X) is very similar if not a bit better (at least in cores) than the 9-11900K. Would this update be worth?
I think the 4080 is enough and this would run with your current PSU. I have a 4080 and 13900K and it runs fine with my 850W.
Sure the 4090 is better, but 4080 has frame generation as well and the bottleneck will anyhow be the CPU.
It’s more like are you going to be able to get 60fps in the first place. MSFS is not forgiving to anything over 1080p.
That’s not saying you won’t get 60fps, but if you take a look on the forums there are a good deal of people who are very confused as to why their 4080-90 isn’t running at 4k as well as they thought even after the all the tweaking they do.
bing bang boom. you are very much bottlenecked in your GPU and your storage currently. Def recommend getting a pci-e 4.0 compatible CPU and motherboard (if the latter cannot be updated to handle the extra lanes). I had a Ryzen 2700x and when i updated to the R7 5800x i immediately noticed a big difference in my load times and graphics performance all around. Granted it’s not an Intel, but the extra lanes from pcie 4 help all the same
I have a similar use case to you (4K60 and VR) and first upgraded to a 4080 late last year. While the 4080 easily achieved 4K60 @ Ultra settings, my VR experienced, while improved, could have been better so I upgraded again to a 4090 two months ago and VR improved significantly.
Re your CPU, I had a similar CPU to yours when I upgraded to the 4080, namely a 10850K. I was going to upgrade to a 7800X3D when it came out but ended up getting a 5800X3D. While I had to get a new motherboard, I was able to reuse my RAM and AIO cooler, so this kept the upgrade cost down.
Interestingly, upgrading the CPU had the opposite effect to upgrading the GPU whereby 4K60 performance in previously CPU bound scenarios improved significantly but VR was still mostly GPU limited. Of particular note was how much smoother MSFS was in both 2D and VR, thanks to the 3D cache.
To summarise my experience, if you want to improve 2D upgrade your CPU, if you want to improve VR upgrade your GPU to the best there is, and if you do both then upgrade both and make sure your CPU has 3D cache if you like smoothness all round.
Just upgraded my old laptop to new Desktop PC, beast machine, works fine in MSFS and X-Plane. Intel I-9-13900K and Nvidia 4090; 32GB ram, and 1000w PS.
Still testing but so far, only small hiccups in PMDG 737, cannot pin down if it’s the plane or the way it interacts with the Sim. X-Plane works excellent, no issues.