What CPU to replace i7-7700

[Bluecat]

What would be my best option to simply replace the i7-7700 (no k) with maximum improvement & minimum hassle? I'm not really into over-clocking and I don't want to mess with fancy cooling systems. I'm not tech savvy enough to trust myself on that stuff. Or is simple replacement not an option? My budget is probably ~$500.

 

Current system:

CPU: i7 7700 (no k)

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

Mother: ASRock B250M Pro4-IB

Ram: 32G @ 2400

Power Supply: 750W

 

 

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Bluecat

[DevPreach]

Ryzen 7 3700X + decent B450 motherboard should come in about $450.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[apolloace]

Your CPU is pretty good.

 

Why do you want to replace it?

 

DCS is not a CPU hungry game.

[Bluecat]

Your CPU is pretty good.

 

Why do you want to replace it?

 

DCS is not a CPU hungry game.

Running VR, and I feel like I can get a better experience by upgrading, and I have the idea that my CPU is the weakest link.

 

But maybe that's not the right way to think. Do you think I could get more improvement by upgrading my ram to @ 3200?

[Svsmokey]

I do think you are on the right track re: CPU . Even at stock clock , the K offers substantially better performance . Stock Intel cooler won't cut it though . Figure $50-$75 dollars for a decent air cooler .

Upgrading the memory later would also prove beneficial .

[DerFangzahn]

If you have no real pressure...

 

Wait till fall/begin 2021 when Ryzen 4000 is available. Now is the worst time to upgrade. Intel 10th Gen. is still stupid expensive and next Gen. AMD is not out.

 

Otherwise a decent X570 board and a 3700X with 3600MHz RAM. Best bang for the buck option at the moment. Intel 10th Gen. makes no sense if you dont want to upgrade your GPU to something like at least a 2080 Super. And buying 2000 NVidia at the moment is not a good idea. Nvidia 3000 cards are comming soon.

 

So like I said. At the moment I would not upgrade anything. Your system is still decent.

[Mars Exulte]

Your CPU is pretty good.

 

Why do you want to replace it?

 

DCS is not a CPU hungry game.

 

His CPU is indeed pretty good, no real need to replace it, I agree. Your last comment is 100% wrong, however. DCS is EXTREMELY CPU intensive. Flight model, avionics and systems modeling, all that is done by CPU.

[Bluecat]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

[BeastyBaiter]

His CPU is indeed pretty good, no real need to replace it, I agree. Your last comment is 100% wrong, however. DCS is EXTREMELY CPU intensive. Flight model, avionics and systems modeling, all that is done by CPU.

 

 

True and false. DCS is extremely CPU intensive on a single CPU core, and nearly all of that is feeding draw calls to the GPU for the graphics engine. The system and flight models are completely trivial for the CPU. On topic, I recommend waiting. For DCS specifically, I don't think an upgrade over an overclocked 7700k exists yet. There are vastly more powerful CPU's out there but they get that through more cores, which DCS won't use and so it's irrelevant.

 

 

The next big leap in single core performance looks like it might be the next generation of Ryzen CPU's coming later this year. But it's too early to tell and so I recommend waiting.

[SVgamer72]

Try to get the RAM up to 3200 (or at least above 2400).

 

DCS needs high single thread CPU performance, but you also need to move data between the CPU, RAM, and GPU. Any gains you can make between these components will help FPS.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Aluminum Donkey]

What would be my best option to simply replace the i7-7700 (no k) with maximum improvement & minimum hassle? I'm not really into over-clocking and I don't want to mess with fancy cooling systems. I'm not tech savvy enough to trust myself on that stuff. Or is simple replacement not an option? My budget is probably ~$500.

 

Current system:

CPU: i7 7700 (no k)

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

Mother: ASRock B250M Pro4-IB

Ram: 32G @ 2400

Power Supply: 750W

 

 

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

 

Your CPU is a pretty good match for your graphics card and overall system. There's not a heck of a lot for you to gain by blowing a big pile of cash on just a fancier CPU.

 

However, DCS uses 2 program threads and your CPU only runs at its best speed (4.2 GHz) when running a single thread. More threads (DCS and various Windows tasks), and it's probably going to run at 3.6 GHz, which is not bad, but not great.

 

Instead of replacing anything, you can get substantially better performance by going into your BIOS settings and enabling "Sync All Cores". Make sure all 4 of your CPU cores are set to run at their maximum multiplier (42).

 

That way, your processor will always be able to run at its highest speed (4.2 GHz) when it's working with more than one thread, instead of slowing down on you when you put a load on it. It'll give you a nice bump in performance and won't cost you a penny.

 

The rest of your system looks fine.

 

AD

[Beirut]

Amazon Canada has the 7700 for $500. That's more than the cost of a 3700X. It's so strange.

 

 

On the plus side, they have a 6700K for the low low price of only $400. What a deal.

[Vertigo72]

However, DCS uses 2 program threads and your CPU only runs at its best speed (4.2 GHz) when running a single thread. More threads (DCS and various Windows tasks), and it's probably going to run at 3.6 GHz, which is not bad, but not great.

 

Instead of replacing anything, you can get substantially better performance by going into your BIOS settings and enabling "Sync All Cores". Make sure all 4 of your CPU cores are set to run at their maximum multiplier (42).

 

No thats not how it works. His CPU will boost one core to 4.2 GHz anyhow, provided there is enough thermal and power headroom. It doesnt matter that DCS uses a bunch of threads, there is only one thread that is really intensive and windows will schedule that to a core that will be boosted to 4.2. Unless the overall CPU load of all other background (or even DCS) threads is too high for the cpu to boost to its maximum, but then changing bios settings isnt going to solve that.

 

@OP as others said, even the highest end cpu's available today do not provide substantially better single thread performance than what you already have. However, I found that increasing my memory speed made a completely unexpected and dramatic difference (linear FPS increase from DDR4-2133 to DDR4-3200 on a ryzen 2). Intel cpus tend to respond less to memory speed decreases or increases than ryzens, so I dont know if the effect would be as dramatic, but then again no hardware review/ game benchmark I ever saw even for ryzens showed anything like what I measured on my system; so the outlier may well be DCS, not so much my CPU.

 

Your cpu does not support DDR4. But that might be a valid reason to want to upgrade. And you could keep costs down by going for a low core count but high clocked cpu. Even if intel and amd are increasingly forcing us to buy more cores than we need to get the (single core) clockspeed that we want. A core i3-10320 or Ryzen 3300X would make for a nice upgrade, despite being sold as "budget" cpu's, especially if you can overclock them. CPU performance will not be much better, but you'd have modern platform again with support for fast DDR4 and from which you can upgrade later.

 

Is that worth the cost? I guess it depends solely on how DCS performance scales with DDR speed on intel cpus, and I couldnt tell you that. Maybe you can get a feel by downclocking your DDR3 and seeing if performance drops (close to) proportionally to your dram speed. If it does, its a good sign that DDR4 will also help you a lot on intel platforms. If you notice only a marginal difference, Id hold off.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Strong05]

Agree with others that there isn't much room for improvement single core wise from a 7700k that has been overclocked.

 

 

 

With that in mind, since you have a 7700, if you have a motherboard and cpu cooler that can support it, it might be worth it to try and find a used 7700k and overclock it to 4.7-4.8Ghz. That with some good high speed DDR4 ram at 3600 or so should be a pretty good bump in performance.

 

 

 

I actually think you would be way better off with a 3300X if you go for a new cpu/AMD for DCS. No sense in paying for cores you aren't going to use (unless you do video editing or other productivity stuff). Keep in mind, that a 3300X is on par with a 7700k in performance.

[Mr_sukebe]

For DCS, I’d say wait.

DCS is primarily single code, and even the fastest core CPUs are not massively better.

Probably best to hang on for your CPU until DCS genuinely benefits from more cores, by which time we’ll probably be one or more CPU generations forward.

In the meantime, blow your cash to ensure at least 32GB of ram and the best GPU you can afford