I've upgraded from 2600K to 8700K did some performance tests...

I've been flying DCS in VR for a few months and came to the conclusion I'm CPU bound, and Coffee lake CPUs gave me enough excuse to upgrade. I also wanted to try and document the performance and see if it was actually worth the money.

Unfortunately for us none of the computer hardware media benchmarks flight sims :)

It's somewhat long (and also covers another popular military flight sim). So I'm linking to my blog.

https://pit.uriba.org/uriba/upgrading-from-2600k-to-8700k/

Uri

Very professional and super interesting test. Thanks a lot ¡¡

Interesting tests and conclusion. Thanks for your efforts, very insightful.

Interesting stuff, thanks.

Great review.

Maybe one thing is a bit missed. For games which are CPU hungry like DCS, Arma3 etc, the CPU effect is more visible during complex missions/scenarios and even during multiplayer. I think in those cases the 8700k will show better its muscles.

My opinion is that upgrade is 100% worth it!

Anyway great standing points on your presentation which I am sure took a considerable work time to complete and share with us. Thank you!

Great job. I have one on order too and could not find any benchmarks from games I play, so this was great.

I recently bought a i9 7900X with 1080TI, and was a bit disappointed with DCS despite the superhigh benchmark scores and overclocking to 4.8GHZ. It is great, but still cannot run max settings in VR.

Thanks everyone!

Glad I was able to help

Great job. I have one on order too and could not find any benchmarks from games I play, so this was great.

 

I recently bought a i9 7900X with 1080TI, and was a bit disappointed with DCS despite the superhigh benchmark scores and overclocking to 4.8GHZ. It is great, but still cannot run max settings in VR.

The i9s (any of them) would not have been my choice for gaming regardless of budgetary considerations.

I've played on "high" with VR only once on the rig, just for the heck of it. and it was fairly the same as doing the same flight on my custom VR settings with the 2600k

However, now that the writing is done, I can start play around a bit.

I'm using pterry much the same settings, only had shadows up to Medium and Default. and I get a fixed 45fps with the hog over Vegas. or in a instant action.

I will do a followup with more complex playbacks. I've already had a request to do something with the hog with TGP and MAV on and units and stuff..

Great review!

i just got my 8700K too!!

running burn in tests now.

congrats to your new build.

it was tough catching this CPU!

Hey, nice job writing up the review! Well done.

Excellent review! Thank you!

Since you have alredy upgraded, I think it is unrealistic to expect the comparison of 2.x, right?

The thing is 1.5 is pretty much dead and 2.x is completely different beast regarding cpu/gpu requirements so the results might be different.

I couldn't help but think that the improvement was potentially less about the CPU, and more about the move from DDR3 to DDR4, thus enabling throughput of data for the CPU to address.

Is it just me thinking this?

I couldn't help but think that the improvement was potentially less about the CPU, and more about the move from DDR3 to DDR4, thus enabling throughput of data for the CPU to address.

Is it just me thinking this?

In IPC there is not that much to gain to explain the smoothness and overall benefit from 2nd gen to 7th or 8th gen i7/9.

My 2600k was roughly 90% of the ipc of my 7700k, both at 5G. Just my ddr4 is almost twice as fast now, my PCIe lanes are better with better PCH..etc.. those are the things that i think make the difference.

I can play at 4.5G/stock and be lower in ipc than my old 2600k at 5g and still have a smoother scene.

+1

Having read lots of reviews and researched the topic to death it seems to me, at least for DCS, that the majority of the gains from SB to the newest I7s/Ryzens are due to faster RAM and better optimised platforms. The IPC gains are minimal:(

Its a little dissapointing. I want to upgrade my 2700k@4.8 but im having a hard time justifying it.

Indeed. The world decided about 10 years ago that the way forwards is more cores rather than faster cores. Unfortunately, DCS and to a lesser extent, IL2 have yet to adjust to that decade old trend.

Regardless, I've ordered an i7-8700k to replace my R5 1600x. The 1600x is an excellent CPU, no question about that and it is faster than the i5-4690 it replaced in DCS (faster RAM mostly + modest IPC gains). But it isn't fast enough in single thread for DCS in VR at more than 45 fps. It's close, running at about 12-13ms instead of the required 11ms. But it just doesn't make it. That's mostly an issue with DCS being badly coded, but nothing I can do about that. I'll give a report of the 8700k vs 1600x once it arrives. I expect it to be a couple of weeks though, as it's effectively a pre-order (retailer only has a delivery date, doesn't actually have them).

On a related note, I will be selling the R5 1600x + MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard + a basic CPU air cooler once the new setup arrives.

@Beasty

Try making a similar test on your rig, before and after the upgrade.

as both systems are DDR4 (and probably be using the same memory sticks, it will one less factor to take into account. I'm curious to see how a better IPC of the intel will look compared to the almost identical core count/clock speeds.

BTW are you running it stock or OCed to 3.9? (the standard silicon lottery result)

Indeed. I'd be very interested in a 1600x vs 8700K DCS comparison!

Fantastic!! Thank You for sharing your findings:thumbup:

I'm continually dumbfounded by the lack of progress in CPU power year over year. Every time I have researched the topic I have found myself sicking to my CPU.

Worth upgrading from a 4770k now?

I'm continually dumbfounded by the lack of progress in CPU power year over year. Every time I have researched the topic I have found myself sicking to my CPU.

 

Worth upgrading from a 4770k now?

NO

modern cpu are designed for server farms first and desktops second.

its like try to put the engine from a container ship, into a sports car...

yes they are both oil burning engines but...

No, it's designed to run everyday apps that can use multiple cores. Intel hasn't tried to make a game-optimized CPU. Why would they when the # of users are paltry. And the incremental upgrade happens.

@Beasty

Try making a similar test on your rig, before and after the upgrade.

as both systems are DDR4 (and probably be using the same memory sticks, it will one less factor to take into account. I'm curious to see how a better IPC of the intel will look compared to the almost identical core count/clock speeds.

 

BTW are you running it stock or OCed to 3.9? (the standard silicon lottery result)

I plan to do just that. Main focus will be 4.0 GHz on Ryzen vs 5.0 GHz on the i7-8700k. But I'll take a look at underclocking to 4.0 GHz too. There are a few youtube videos doing that in some artificial benchmarks. The IPC of Ryzen and sky/kaby/coffee lake are almost identical. The only real difference is the raw clock speed. So I expect the performance difference to be within margin of error for such a test.

As far as other hardware, the CPU, mobo and cooler are the only things being swapped. So same ram, GPU, nvme and so on. Cooler shouldn't be too relevant so long as the new one can keep the i7 cool with maybe 2 of 6 cores running full tilt. Ryzen is not a hot chip, even with a max overclock and so a cheap air cooler is all that's needed for it.