Looking for thoughts on Upgrading

Hi all,

The usual question around here - trying to work out what (if anything) is worth to do to upgrade my PC to increase DCS World performance.

Am currently running a the following:

4930K at 4.6Ghz under water (custom loop) on an X79 motherboard

32GB DDR3-RAM at 2133Mhz (Quad-channel is working)

nVidia 2080Ti video card under water

HTC Vive Pro VR Goggles

and a bunch of SSDs, on which DCS and my Profile are all residing.

General performance is good, but it does bog down at times, especially with certain types of aircraft on the screen (looking at you DCS F/A-18C 3D model) Admittedly running with PD at 1.3 on top of SteamVR at 150% resolution, but the video card is often sitting at 65-70% use, while the CPU is pushing into the 30-45ms frametime range according to fpsVR. Also running at PD 1.0 has similar performance issues.

Is there any benefit to DCS World at this stage looking at either an Intel 9700k or 9900k CPU upgrade (and all the associated motherboard, RAM etc. bits) or an AMD Ryzen 3800 or 3900 (any new processor will be running under water) compared to what I'm running currently?

Hi Formski,

Check with msi afterburner or windows task manger if you are hitting the limit of (1 Core) of your CPU.

DDR-3 / 2133Mhz is also a bit slow for the 2080ti I'm guessing here.

Not this extreme below tho, you are possibly missing out on 15% or so of your 2080ti etc.

"but the video card is often sitting at 65-70% use" Check GPU vs CPU with msi afterburner to see.

EDIT

It's also in the optimization that ED is working on. I was only getting 70% GPU and low cpu. This was on the ramp at Nellis AFB in the F/A-18 and seeing 40 fps in the rift @ 1.6 PD

High graphic settings to really test it, msaa x2. View distance to high. Not playable at this, I generally roll back just a few settings like shadows med etc, to hold a solid 45 all the time.

All I know when it comes to VR every little thing helps.:huh:

It will cost tho, for that little bit more.

Hey Formski,

I wish I had kept some data from some real benchmarks, but last year I upgraded from a 7700K/Titan Xp to a 9900K/2080Ti. Before I sold it, I threw the Titan in my new build and got about a 10% performance bump in framerates. So I can say pretty confidently that your GPU is bottlenecked.

In between the faster CPU, newer CPU architecture, new chipset, and faster DDR4 Ram with the XMP profile enabled, you should see a pretty nice bump in performance especially for VR. How much and if it's worth the money for you I can't say.

9900K will have better singlethread performance than the 9700K but unless you are using some kind of productivity software or editing video with Adobe Premiere or Blender the extra 8 logical cores won't be used as the DCS engine doesn't use hyperthreading. If you are familiar with overclocking even better as the custom loop will give you nice headroom for OC. DCS will take all the CPU you can throw at it. Settings like Visibility Range, Trees Visibility, and Shadows are heavily CPU bound. Resolution and AA setting are more GPU limited.

I use the Reverb and with the WMR diagnostic tool I either get CPU bound, CPU/GPU bound, but rarely GPU bound by itself.

If you want to try AMD I believe 3700/3700X has the fastest singlethread for a reasonable price last time I checked but be wary of 3rd party vendors scalping on Amazon and Newegg.

Looks like the 3800 is actually in stock. I would defer to Bitmaster for an AMD build, I've never overlclocked an AMD chip before.

I just saw that you are down under. I feel bad for Aussies and Kiwis. You guys have it worse than Canucks, Brits, and Euros. There's a pretty steep premium for this stuff.

I would probably be breaking some kind of Australian import regulation but I wish I could just mail the stuff to you guys as a "gift". I live about an hour's drive from a Microcenter. It's a beautiful place. My state has to charge sales tax for online sales now so the price difference between Amazon or Newegg is negligible.