Hardware upgrade for FS !?

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Hi folks,

as you can see in my sig, my home PC is quite old, around 3 years now, and I feel it very slow at some heavily loaded airports with FS2004. Now I got a brand new dual-core PC with a 8600GT superb graphics card at the office. It was time to make some benchmarking. The software setup is almost the same (XP-SP2, DX9c, .net2&3) ...

According to web benchmarks, the new CPU is nearly 2 times faster, and the new graphics card is nearly 3 times faster than my current system. I expected an enormous raise in the FPS. But no...

At a given extreme scenario (EHAM payware, 100%PAI, PMDG-747) I got 7 FPS at home and only 11 at the office !! Around 60% increasement on a 2...3 times faster PC !? What is happening here ? Anybody can show me some light on this matter ? Do you have similar comparison of your old and new PC ?

What is also freightening, that in both PCs, CPU is running at 50% useage, while FS is eating nearly 800MB RAM. I thought at least the dual-core CPU will have less load, but no... It seems that FS2004 relies more on the CPU than the graphics card ! Is that true ? Also, it seems the dual-core CPU cannot give its best under XP. Probably Vista would be a better environment for it.

I am planning to buy a new computer soon, but if I get only 60% increasement for a hill of money, I will not change it. :{

Thx for comments.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

FS9 only utilises a single core mate... Basically if it is a E6600 cpu with fs9 it is like using a P4 3ghz cpu.... You can overclock core duos very well though so long as your motherboard allows it, that is where you see the improvement in FPS scores.

FSX is now patched to use both CPU cores so this works better than FS9 on dual core machines....

Both FS9 and FSX are CPU intensive. Spending more on your CPU will gain better results than buying a top of the range Graphics card. Although if you want to use FSX then I suggest you go with a Nvidia 8800 GPU as the 84/85/8600 series cards do not perform very well on DX10 benchmarks. I would seriously suggest getting a 8800GTS graphics card as it gets good benchmark scores and is half the price of the GTX and a thrid of the price of the Ultra.

For a CPU I would recommend the new Intel Q6600. It is the entry level Quad core and highly overclockable. It is also not badly priced for its power! It is getting great results on FSX.

As for FS9, sorry but the beast is dead, you will not see great performance improvements by getting a dual/quad core CPU's and DX10 Gpu's! Sorry mate

EDIT* BTW, Vista will gobble up as much memory as you let it so be warned, the more RAM you throw at it the better!


Hope that helps...

[EHM-0654 Jean]

Just a couple of agreement/clarification points:

Multi-[core] processors in FSX: If the "interview" with one of the FSX team that Phil previously linked to is to be believed, FSX will be good no matter how many cores/processors you can give it (at the time, they could only publicly say it works with duals, and it had been tested with the early quads... and I'd give you good odds that it's been run on the one eight core that Intel have been quietly testing lots of FSX things on...) The Q6600/Q6700s will be dropping in price RSN (end of this month) and will be excellent value for money when they do. My new gaming rig will have the biggest quad that the Shuttle mobo can support...

nVidia 8800 GPU: Currently, everyone in the BF2142 clan I'm a member of that knows about these things is saying 8800GTS is more than good enough for current generation games/DX10/monitor resolutions, there is very little reason to spend the extra on the GTX, and absolutely no reason to spend the extra on the Ultra - DX10 will be the make/break of the GTX/Ultra and even then we're talking ultra-high resolution before you'll be stretching it's legs. I'm planning on getting a factory OCed/watercooled GTS myself...

Memory: *IF* you're going Vista, don't bother with less than 2GB (2GO for the French among us) and 4GB would be better. The main reason people *think* Vista uses a lot more memory is that the memory management in Vista is TOTALLY new - it will claim as much memory as it can at boot time and then manages it for itself, XP took only what it needed then grabbed extra when it needed/could. Vista is far better (and faster) with memory than XP. Your "sticking point" will likely be cost, as the DRAM cartel has decided that prices have been too low for too long and have throttled supply to push prices up.

I can't yet speak for FSX (not running it yet) but just in terms of XP/Vista/FS9, as long as your GPU is "middle of the road" capable, the CPU will have more bearing.

(Murray still...)

EDIT: The other thing I really ought to say is, if you can wait another couple/three months, AMD should finally have Phenom parts available. The Phenom is the desktop version of the Barcelona marchitecture (AMD's Core 2 killer if the hype can be believed, but having said that, Intel are sitting on their 45nm technology waiting to see how the Barcelona marchitecture really performs) If you feel you can wait until Xmas/1st Q 2008, you should be in a position to make informed choices about the Intel/AMD multi-core battle.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Thanx for answers, I thought about similar things in the background, but I was worried if I am right.

What I still not understand is, FS9 still not uses more than 50% CPU at home, and the game is slow. Can it mean, the game will never give more task to the CPU ? If it was true, and the CPU have only a certain amount of job to do (which my new dual-core handles fine) and the rest is up to the graphics card, then why the game still slow with a fine graphics card ? I even added added 4xAA on my new 22" widescreen monitor (1680x1050) and frame rates did not dropped at all. It seems both components are getting bored under the load of FS9 on my office PC, while the game is struggling and lagging...

That is something I will never understand. It would be even more important to understand, as it seems our core design software in the office struggles from the same phenomenon: we can put any fast graphics card and CPU into the machine, it just do not want to speed up as expected from the new components.

About the graphics card issue, I made a small comparison, and now speaking about Hungarian prices, I found that probably the best bet is to use double 7900GT or 7950GT cards in SLI mode. You will get the 8800GTX performance at 70% price. Of course you will lose DX10 compatibility. If I want to still stay with FS9, and I do not care the lower quality graphics with FSX, then do you think it is a good choice for graphics card?  Any thoughts on this ?

Thx mates

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Robert

Firstly.... STOP.... Put Your Wallet firmly back in your pocket!!!!!  If you search for FS9 or FSX benchmarks for SLI cards you will find that there is absolutely no benefit for SLI as it not supported by MS. Please do not explore the SLI idea if FS is your main reason for buying these cards as there are NO benefits with SLI or even PhysX Processors. I made that mistake on my old PC but fortunately managed to get my money back on one of the 7900 cards I bought.

Now as for your CPU issues...... Well I am not sure how it is done but there are ways of manually assigning tasks to cores on your CPU. Therefore you can assign FS9 to its own core and all other background tasks and OS overheads etc to the other core/s. The reason it is only showing 50% usage is because the software is not designed for multi threaded or Hyper Threaded CPU's therefore it will only use one core of the CPU but it will max that one core out! (so you have 50% of your entire CPU being used in theory!) The software is not able to assign Scenery to one core whilst Traffic and flight data is assigned to the other core, it is not written in a way that this is possible. FSX on the other hand is and will take advantage of multiple cores. They say up to 4 cores will be used but some of the FS forums are reporting that Intel are using FSX to test their upcoming 45nm CPU's! (and a touted 8 core)

Now the benefit you have of the newer Core 2 Duo or Quad processors is that they are massively overclockable. I have an E6700 with a stock CPU speed of 2.66ghz. I have this overclocked safely to to 3.4ghz! That gives me almost a 33% increase in performance and because it has a larger 4mb level 2 cache it is much more efficient than the older P4 CPU's when executing instructions. Make sure you get a good Motherboard that is Overclockable from the BIOS, it makes it so much easier in the long run. I also suggest that when you look to buy, make sure you get a "Conroe" (E6600/E6700) or "Kentsfield" (Q6600/Q6700)  CPU and steer clear of the "Alendale" (E4400/E4400/E4500) models. (Your local computer store will be able to tell you which is which) as the Alendale only has a 2mb Level 2 Cache and is severely hampered by this.

Much as I don't want to disagree with Murray, playing the waiting game is not always the best idea when it comes to CPU's.

We are currently seeing the fastest period of CPU advancement ever in the PC market. In the last 12 months alone, Intel have released 26 different CPU's across their Core 2 families! (including the Xeon, Celeron  and Mobile markets) Admittedly AMD have been far slower to release, but a little research will show that Intel already have next gen products in testing that will keep up with if not outperform the Phenom! (The Phenom is touted as 2 core and 4 core whilst Intel currently have 8 more cpu's in testing for release before the end of the year!)

You will not see a benefit on FS9 with Phenom either as MS will not patch this. Also the Next SP for FSX (DX10 patch) is heavily hinted to be the last as they will then be concentrating solely on the new train sim and then maybe a new Combat Sim. This patch is due before the Phenom release so the chances of its complete support are limited especially as MS have put their eggs in the Intel Basket.

I am not against AMD but they have dropped the ball and the ATI take over has hit them for six. Both companies are currently struggling to compete therefore we can not believe the "Hype" surrounding their new products! (Lets face it they really dropped a B*!!%ck with the 2000 series GPU's)

My advice is when you are ready to buy, get the best possible CPU & GPU you can afford. Yes it will be out of date in 3 months, but unfortunately that is the way of the market for the foreseable future again.

I hope that this clears some of your concerns up mate!

*Edit* Some interesting reading if you are serious about updating!
PC World
Tech.co.uk

[EHM-0654 Jean]

Originally posted by EHM-1703 Philip
Robert

Firstly.... STOP.... Put Your Wallet firmly back in your pocket!!!!!  

Much as I don't want to disagree with Murray, playing the waiting game is not always the best idea when it comes to CPU's.

(Bugger...)

First off, I'll agree with everything Phil said. Intel deffo have the ball firmly in their court, and to be honest it'll have to be them making a royal balls up for AMD to get it back now. And again, SLI is a total waste of money right now, there's nothing out there that needs it (even FSX); when the add-ons market catches up, then maybe, but right now RAM/CPU will get you way more performance benefits in FSX.

*BUT*, wait until the end of the month at the very least before commiting to a processor/system... Intel have announced their end of month price cuts, hang on just a couple of weeks and you'll be able to purchase at these (in some cases, significantly) lower prices:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/15/intel_desktop_d-day/

and slightly in advance of the cut "going live":

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-143-IN

Shame I want a Q6700 really ...

Admittedly AMD have been far slower to release, but a little research will show that Intel already have next gen products in testing that will keep up with if not outperform the Phenom! (The Phenom is touted as 2 core and 4 core whilst Intel currently have 8 more cpu's in testing for release before the end of the year!)

Weeellll... Barcelona as a technology is roadmapped out to 32 cores already, and socket-wise, Phenom will be backward compatible well into 2009 (Socket AM2, AM2+ and AM3 are pin layout identical, the only thing that's changing is power requirement) The "big thing" about Barcelona (or more specifically, AMD's multi-core methodology) is that it is ground-up symetric multi processor - the current Intel technology is a series of dual-core units "stitched together" on a die - hence "Core 2 quad"; a pair of Core 2 processors cores yielding four cores total. Intel has shared memory between the cores in a single dual-core unit, but not between core units; AMD share memory between all cores (or, true SMP if you prefer). AMD have always enjoyed a faster FPU than Intel, but Intels integer math unit stomps AMDs (and they can push their core technology to far higher clock speeds)

If, and it's a huge if at this point, AMD have got it right, their solution should be as fast for significantly lower core speeds (and reduced power usage/cooling requirements), but until August (at the earliest) you've no way of knowing for sure... I'm keeping an open mind since I'm not buying CPU/Shuttle mobo until Xmas, but I fully expect to be going Intel with this one (and yes, I do consider myself an AMD fanboi)

Oh, and I doubt FSX will need any additional tweaking to work with Barcelona/Phenom, it's the underlying OS that deals with the processors; especially in Vista MS have got it thread optimised now, so it should see performance gains on all multi-thread/multi-processor systems.

(Murray)

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Well,

I can tell you that I do not plan to buy a new computer this year. My little big dream is a fine 32" LCD TV instead I opened this thread only, because I got a new PC in the office and I was dissapointed with its performance.

I am not a professor and not so open minded in the new technologies as you. What I see (and believe) are the forums and benchmarks on the net. What I red, that at many games, SLI did increased the performance, at 60...80%. But not at FS9 !!! Although I  believe too, that the programmer of OS and game should work in harmony to use the hardware as much as possible, it seems there are even 2 worlds. I mean, we can see from benchmarks, that SLI or duo-core technology does not help on FS9, but it helps at many other (usually the run'n'gun) games. Perhaps the situation is different with Vista+FSX ... or later will happen at FS11

I have an electric engineer colleague who is also a talented programmer, and he said, that the Intel duo-core processors came too fast, and neither the hardware or software surrounding can support it as it would need. This means of course less performance as we expected. Probably that is what we can see in the office on our design software. And that is why I will try to install the program on Vista and 4GB RAM. I will tell you about the results later

Thank you for the detailed descriptions

[EHM-0654 Jean]

Originally posted by EHM-1703 Philip
Now as for your CPU issues...... Well I am not sure how it is done but there are ways of manually assigning tasks to cores on your CPU.

One last one before I leave for the airport... this mechanism is called "Processor Affinity" by MS. No idea how you tell XP/Vista to do it, but on the server OSs (2000 and 2003), there was a wee program that came with the resource kit that allowed you to set affinity.

EDIT: Ugh... Vista comes with WSH scripts to perform affinity:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2056395_set-windows-vista-processor-affinity.html