PC upgrade for FSLA320?

[Luca vom Bruch]

Hi!

I currently run an Intel Xeon E3 1231 v3 it is a 3.4Ghz Quad core, 8 thread CPU. It is basically the same as the i7 4770 (non K and without GPU).

As a GPU I run a GTX 1060.

I run games at 2560x1440p

I rarely still play anything, only open world titles when they are new, like GTA5 and Mafia 3. I find the GTX 1060 sufficient.

And of course mainly Prepar 3D.

Do you guys think it is worth it performance wise to upgrade to coffee lake i7 8700? it would be 3.2ghz but 6 core, 12 thread with higher turbo than the xeon.

I don't really want to compromise on settings much. P3D runs fine with the more basic GA aircraft, but with the FSLA320 at addon airports it is usually around 15fps.

I don't know if the i7 8700 would be worth the investment, do you guys think it could bring an additional 5 fps? it is after all 2 more cores, 12nm instead of 22 and 4.3 Turbo I think on 1 core.  I have never seen my Xeon do more than 3.8ghz.

Also is there even any benefit for P3D to go to a 1070? According to the new task manager update, CPU can hit 100% but GPU is rarely above 50% in P3D.

[J0hannes Butz]

Hi Luca,

I upgraded my CPU to the Kaby Lake generation earlier this year with an i5 7600K, overclocked to 4.5 Ghz. I've used a GTX 970 with it and had some reasonably high settings (1080p) with the A320 at around 30-40FPS in dense areas like New York with all add-ons Drzewiecki offer for that area. With the 970 my CPU load was usually around 60-80% whilst the GPU "bottlenecked" it running 92% minimum load but mostly at 99-100%. I'm currently waiting for a GTX 1080 Ti in the mail, but this upgrade was only to get dynamic lighting working without dropping into the 5FPS territory.

My settings were as follows:

 

With these settings I ran around 25-30FPS in dense areas. Further I tweaked my settings to achieve as described above:

World: LOD to ultra, Mesh Resolution to 1m, Autogen vegetation density to very dense

Lighting: Dynamic Lighting to off, shadow quality to low, shadow draw distance to high and unticked buildings to receive shadows

 

On my system I experienced an overall fluid running A320 but it had some 1-2sec. stutters that were not as noticeable in PMDG's 747/777 airplanes.

If you really want to upgrade I'd recommend first finding out which one of your CPU/GPU is running at the highest load, then balancing the settings to the AVSIM settings guide and only then reconsider upgrading your hardware. For me there was an extra 5-10Fps in just carefully adjusting settings, so I strongly recommend first doing this!