Upgrading CPU, please help

[Shibbyland]

Hi All,

I'm upgrading my CPU sometime in the next couple of weeks but I'm having a hard time deciding between an i7 9700k and an i9 9900k.

At the moment I'm running the following:

i5 6600
Geforce RTX 2060 super
32GB RAM
Flight sims are on SSD with other games on HDD.
750w power supply

I suspect the RTX 2060 is beyond my old i5.

So here's the thing. When I upgraded by i5 to a newer i5 a few years ago, the advice was "don't get an i7, you just don't need it for gaming, save your money". Well now I'm finding that the i7 is becoming the new go to for what I'm doing and the advice is "don't get an i9, you just dont need it for gaming, save your money".

Is the i9 worth the extra money if I'm trying to future proof a little?

Bearing in mind, I don't intend to upgrade my cooling or power supply.

[BroDimm]

Messaggio originale di FriendlyKebab:

Don't waste money on Intel, those are terrible, wait for ryzen 4000 or get a 3700x. If you already bought the motherboard with the 9th gen socket for some reason then get the i9, the i7 has only 8 threads, that willget you nowhere

They said the HT and num of threads in i9 can cause trouble in games such as lesser fps and heat issues

[Chip Ahoy]

I am running FS2020 with i7 9700F with 16gb RAM. So far, I haven't experienced any issues and it runs smoothly. Although I am concerned that in task manager, it says that the CPU total processing is nearly 100%. I need more RAM I think. So I'm waiting for my tax refund.

[HoboCop]

Just ordered a 10850k and msi gaming carbon atx board. It arrives today. At that price point the intel is the better choice unless you need to do video encoding (and I don't). Everything I use it for will be faster on the intel than the AMD. Will be grabbing an RTX 3090 too as soon as I can. I game at 3440 x 1440 and also use VR. I do use Blender too, but the advantages for AMD diminish once you throw an RTX card in to the render mix - plus I can stay with my current ram for intel without it affecting performance. I'd have had to drop another ~£250 on ram plus get another high end cooler if I went AMD.

[[ATP]Flo]

Messaggio originale di Brodator:

They said the HT and num of threads in i9 can cause trouble in games such as lesser fps and heat issues

Nah. HT is always better.
Windows will always chose the fastest thread for the game and it doesn't matter how many threads the game can handle. FPS will be higher when the CPU clocks higher. When both CPUs clock the same, both will probably be same fast.

And temperature is actually never a performance problem for a CPU.
CPUs don't care if they run at 60°C, 75°C or 90°C.
They may degrade faster, but everything below 85°C in games is totally safe.
Notebook-CPUs often run at these temps.

i9-9900K's TJUNCTION is 100°C and below that it will boost as high as it can. Same TJUNCTION is at i9-10900K. Ryzen3000-CPUs throttle at 95°C.

So temperature is no problem.
When CPUs reach TJUNCTION they will throttle and clock down.
Nothing will happen.

By the way:
Shutdown temperature should be between 102°C and 105°C or so.
But they never reach that due to very fast thermal throttling.

[Kosmozuikis]

10600k is pretty good for the price. Performs the same as 10700k or 10900k in games. 9700k is obsolete, it's a waste of money. Wait for zen3 and see what it offers.

[mdd136]

I was playing with an I 5 6600k, 16 ram and a 1080 ti.. In 4k high I was between 20 and 25 with a lot of fps drop.

I upgrade my cpu and my ram to an I7 10700 and 32 ram..

Now I get 30 fps and no drop. With the scaling resolution down to 8o I get 40 to 50 fps on high. Still pretty Nice graphics even with 80.

Im planning to buy the New 3080.

[CobraA1]

Messaggio originale di Skybird:

I use an i7 8700K, 32 GB RAM and a GTX 1080Ti (13 GB, factory OC), and at full HD single screen resolution I have fluent, smooth frames. Thats 12 threads, and they all are full, the thing gets hot and needs good cooling though. I have not the latest Windows build, but an older 1903, intentionally (they said you need 1909 at least, but that is not true). GFX drivers also are older, I tend to replace stable GFX drivers only when I must. I could run ultra, but stick with high and in very dense areas mid, to keep temps down a bit. The visual difference betwene low and med is huge, but between mid and high, or high and ultra, are not that monumental anymore.

Just for orientation. If you update only to get signficiantly more performance in FS20, I would wait another year or so, and then buy not the latest but second-latest technolgy generation. saves you an awsome lot of money.

I have a similar setup, my 8086K (essentially an anniversary edition of the 8700K) seems to run fine, my GTX 1080 seems to be the bottleneck most of the time. (I will note this is at an overclock to 5 GHz on the CPU side).

I would get the latest nVidia drivers, though, they have per-game optimizations and at the time of this writing the latest drivers added optimizations for MSFS 2020.

I will note that this game is definitely all about tailoring your settings to your system, push everything to Ultra on a 4K monitor and even a high end rig will complain. I'm personally using a 1080p monitor so it's not as taxing.

[toolpusher33]

Messaggio originale di Tonco:

I am running FS2020 with i7 9700F with 16gb RAM. So far, I haven't experienced any issues and it runs smoothly. Although I am concerned that in task manager, it says that the CPU total processing is nearly 100%. I need more RAM I think. So I'm waiting for my tax refund.

I was running with i7-9700F and 16meg of ram as well, I upgraded my ram to 32mb the difference is amazing. The CPU is running at least 15 degrees lower now not sure why the CPU might have been writing to the virtual memory I think as the game seems to use 17-18 GB now with 32gb. The game does not load much quicker but I never expected that. Think the ram upgrade is a must.

[HoboCop]

Messaggio originale di ATPFlo:

And temperature is actually never a performance problem for a CPU.
CPUs don't care if they run at 60°C, 75°C or 90°C.
They may degrade faster, but everything below 85°C in games is totally safe.
Notebook-CPUs often run at these temps.

i9-9900K's TJUNCTION is 100°C and below that it will boost as high as it can. Same TJUNCTION is at i9-10900K. Ryzen3000-CPUs throttle at 95°C.

So temperature is no problem.
When CPUs reach TJUNCTION they will throttle and clock down.
Nothing will happen.

By the way:
Shutdown temperature should be between 102°C and 105°C or so.
But they never reach that due to very fast thermal throttling.

This isn't completely accurate. They have a small thermal throttle on the 10900k and the 10850k (and others too, but possibly at different temps) at 70c which then knocks 100mhz off of the boost speed. So staying under 70c actually gives optimum clock speed potential.

[Neo King Arthur]

Go with either: AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 3990X Processor
Or: Intel® Core™ i9-10900K Processor

[HoboCop]

Messaggio originale di Neo:

Go with either: AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 3990X Processor
Or: Intel® Core™ i9-10900K Processor

If you go intel, you might as well go for i9 10850k. There's a chunk of money to save, there's more in stock, AND the performance difference is within a margin of error and also overclocks to the same too.

[Phat Monkey]

I would wait, save slowly, be patient, the new PCI GEN 4 mobos with new INTEL CPU's are rumoured to rear their heads after Xmas...

[Crunchmeister]

Right now is the worst time to upgrade if you're intent on the Intel path. PCIe Gen 4 is the future that's already been available with AMD for some time now since Zen 2. It won't be available on Intel until next year. If you get an Intel system right now, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot.

So either wait out till 1st quarter 2021 if you want to go Intel, or get an AMD system with an X570 board and future proof yourself.

[UnHoly Xander]

Right now....as it stands, the game is HEAVILY CPU limited. Check out all the reviews and benchmarks. They confirm this.

Everyone saying 'go with Ryzen' really don't understand this. The game requires fast IPC clocks and right now Intel has the faster processors. The game is DX11 so it doesn't matter how many CPU cores you throw at it. Faster single core performance is more important. Ryzen doesn't have faster IPC than Intel.

Secondly. If you were to get an Intel 400 series get a motherboard that has PCIE Gen 4 forward compatibility. Alot of the 400 series motherboards have the functionality built in but it won't be till 11th Gen Intel CPUs launch that you can take advantage of that.

Also...PCIE Gen 3 will not be a problem with the next gen GPUs as even a 2080TI can't fully saturate a GEN 3 bandwidth bus.

[Patches]

I just changed to an i7 9700 with a little overclocking. 32 gb ram and for now a 1080ti. Everything was on sale I bought through Amazon.

On straight Ultra (no tweeking) at 1080p. I'm getting between 35 and 65 fps except for the little loading lags. My Internet connecting is 150 MB/ps it that matters much. I also use Live AI and Live weather.

The 35 fps is over NYC at low altitude. Most of the time I'm running between 40-65 fps. It's really smooth and the TrakIR is real smooth. I couldn't be happier with this build. With my other games the fps is off the chart. Time for 1440p ..............................

g