Potential CPU bottleneck?

[Sweet&Dandy]

Happy Xmas

I will be back in Saudi next week and installing the shiny new 2080ti my lovely wife got me
Currently though the Saudi PC sports an i7-5960x (watercooled) CPU.

Bought this in Oct. 2014 and, looking at the benchmarks, it looks like it might need upgrading. Not sure how much of an improvement I would see though, so any insights by those more knowledgeable would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Stephen

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

Your CPU is a 1000$ 8 core beast that "only" reaches 3.5 ghz stock. If you have it overclocked its even more than that.

I am pretty sure you will find the gameplay in ED smooth as silk. And I dont even think you need to dial down any settings.
At this level you will most likely be GPU bound. A change of CPU at this point will most likely not gain you any significant performance boost and will in some cases be a direct downgrade.

Remember, Rifts and Vives only run at 90 hz. Resolution scaling is GPU work only.

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

Your CPU is a 1000$ 8 core beast that "only" reaches 3.5 ghz stock. If you have it overclocked its even more than that.

I am pretty sure you will find the gameplay in ED smooth as silk. And I dont even think you need to dial down any settings.
At this level you will most likely be GPU bound. A change of CPU at this point will most likely not gain you any significant performance boost and will in some cases be a direct downgrade.

Remember, Rifts and Vives only run at 90 hz. Resolution scaling is GPU work only.

Even after four years?

 

[Nagual]

I'm still using a i7 4770, and it works fine. Yours will be good for a while yet.

 

[Milner]

I'm still using a i7 4770, and it works fine. Yours will be good for a while yet.

I'm using an i5-4690k and it's the bottleneck even with overclocking. For you presumably elite takes full advantage of the additional threads on the i7? What kind of usage do you see across the cores / threads?

 

[88flak]

i9 9900k
evga ftw 3 2080ti
asus maximus z370 10 hero
3200 coarse air mem
vive pro

I absolutely love this game but im finding that im spending more time tweaking on settings then actually playing .

My number one question to you all is can anyone out there run a consistent 90 fps in rez/conflict zones? is it possible?

i get 90 fps everywhere else but when im in one of those zones i get about 10 t0 20 minutes of 90 fps play and then the cpu will late start on the steam vr graph and carries through to the gpu and causes frame rate loss and stuttering this happens only when there are npc ships around . if i fly away from the ships battling the frame rate is perfect when i fly back and am around ships fighting it stutters and will stutter worse the closer i get .

This happens no matter if im on low vr settings or high.
Is this still cpu bottleneck? cpu load while in these zones are 40% gpu 60% and temps are below 60c.

so is this normal ? does the cpu bottle neck when theres a lot going on in the instance. or is it possible to get an hour or two of game play in those zones without have to deal with bouts of intense studdering.

thanks for reading.

 

[Bombcrater]

Even after four years?

One of my machines is using a 6 core / 12 thread Xeon X5660 overclocked to 4.5GHz. That chip is 9 years old now and still runs ED exceptionally well; enough that in VR I can't tell any difference between the Xeon and the i7-4790K in my main rig. By contrast, I have a third system with an i5-4460 and that one does visibly struggle sometimes. I find that once you have more than four threads at a decent clockspeed, ED in VR is all about GPU performance.

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

One of my machines is using a 6 core / 12 thread Xeon X5660 overclocked to 4.5GHz. That chip is 9 years old now and still runs ED exceptionally well; enough that in VR I can't tell any difference between the Xeon and the i7-4790K in my main rig. By contrast, I have a third system with an i5-4460 and that one does visibly struggle sometimes. I find that once you have more than four threads at a decent clockspeed, ED in VR is all about GPU performance.

Ok thanks

 

[A D]

I'm using an i5-4690k and it's the bottleneck even with overclocking. For you presumably elite takes full advantage of the additional threads on the i7? What kind of usage do you see across the cores / threads?

What I know about CPU's you could write on the head of a pin with a crayon. Obviously GHz speed of the CPU which will be important, but the number of cores seems to be a huge factor. I recently upgraded my i7 from 4 core 600 to 6 core 800 and the performance difference is like night and day, even though both had a similar factory speed out of the box.

 

[Full_Ninja]

i9 9900k
evga ftw 3 2080ti
asus maximus z370 10 hero
3200 coarse air mem
vive pro

I absolutely love this game but im finding that im spending more time tweaking on settings then actually playing .

My number one question to you all is can anyone out there run a consistent 90 fps in rez/conflict zones? is it possible?

i get 90 fps everywhere else but when im in one of those zones i get about 10 t0 20 minutes of 90 fps play and then the cpu will late start on the steam vr graph and carries through to the gpu and causes frame rate loss and stuttering this happens only when there are npc ships around . if i fly away from the ships battling the frame rate is perfect when i fly back and am around ships fighting it stutters and will stutter worse the closer i get .

This happens no matter if im on low vr settings or high.
Is this still cpu bottleneck? cpu load while in these zones are 40% gpu 60% and temps are below 60c.

so is this normal ? does the cpu bottle neck when theres a lot going on in the instance. or is it possible to get an hour or two of game play in those zones without have to deal with bouts of intense studdering.

thanks for reading.

I have never seen any hardware configuration that can achieve 90fps everywhere. I've seen many people claim that but when ever you ask for quantifiable evidence of that it is never true.

I've said from the beginning I think it is a net code issue and not a hardware issue

 

[88flak]

I have never seen any hardware configuration that can achieve 90fps everywhere. I've seen many people claim that but when ever you ask for quantifiable evidence of that it is never true.

I've said from the beginning I think it is a net code issue and not a hardware issue

thanks for the response ninja . i guess im just frustrated that i can get a taste of good performance for a bit so i want more for a longer period of time .

 

[Milner]

What I know about CPU's you could write on the head of a pin with a crayon. Obviously GHz speed of the CPU which will be important, but the number of cores seems to be a huge factor. I recently upgraded my i7 from 4 core 600 to 6 core 800 and the performance difference is like night and day, even though both had a similar factory speed out of the box.

Thanks that's interesting and fits what others have said - more than 4 cores is a big benefit for elite. I could upgrade from an i5 to an i7 4770k, anything higher than that is a new motherboard and socket...

Looking at benchmarks that i7-5960x looks an absolute beast!

 

[Morbad]

Even after four years?

Four years of IPC stagnation and moderate clock speed increases.

Your main render thread might be CPU limited in some scenarios, but a modest OC would fix that. ~90% of the 5960Xes will do 4GHz on all cores, 24/7 stable, if you can keep it cool, which is enough to push you into GPU limitations almost everywhere.

I'm using an i5-4690k and it's the bottleneck even with overclocking.

Too few logical cores.

Game seems to have one primary and one secondary render thread with a single view port. Multi-threaded drivers can add another. VR's second viewport will add at least one more. That's four render related threads, that all work best on their own physical cores, and we haven't even gotten to the half-dozen (by default) worker threads that, while being individually lower load, handle everything else and still need a fair bit of aggregate CPU grunt.

 

[dunno]

Open a CPU GPU monitoring utility, see what the core/thread usage is of your CPU and GPU that way you'll be able to determine where the bottle neck is, if any with your current setup.

According to Gamers Nexus only Sniper Elite 4 is well written and optimised to use a CPU's full core/threads. The general consensus seems to be that most games are not well written, they barely use 4 cores to max potential let alone >4 cores.

If cores and threads were the primary consideration then AMD should be trouncing Intel in gaming but it isn't, clock speed is a important factor and here Intel is ahead, along with their ridiculous thermals. I had to delid my 7700k to bring the temps down for overclocking.

I've a 7700k @ 4.9GHz 1080Ti; the graphics in CV1-VR is beautiful Max/Ultra everything except Blur; Shadows; Ambient occlusion. My max CPU usage is 72% at core number 1, not all cores are fully utilised, one or two cores always do more work. Within stations my frame rate drops considerably and GPU usage is maxed out, CPU approx 45%.

Elite could do with some serious optimisation at stations, Orbitals, and planetary stations.

 

[dunno]

some relevant information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rOVfeujof4

 

[TorTorden_VR]

VR tends to like everything multi-threaded AND fast.
Even RAM.

I noticed great improvements going from an i7 4790k to an i7 8700k.

Now that said, Op's rig is probably a touch closer to the latter than the former, especially if he has the ddr-4 setup.

Personally if I had the cash, I would keep the old rig, build a new i9-9900k for the 2080ti

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

VR tends to like everything multi-threaded AND fast.
Even RAM.

I noticed great improvements going from an i7 4790k to an i7 8700k.

Now that said, Op's rig is probably a touch closer to the latter than the former, especially if he has the ddr-4 setup.

Personally if I had the cash, I would keep the old rig, build a new i9-9900k for the 2080ti

The 2080 ti is in and the odyssey+ is setup. I’m currently updating drivers etc. but had a quick look at the first tutorial as the keybinds needed setting up again. I played a lot of ED on the old Samsung Odyssey over Xmas and the first thing I noticed today was that the screen door effect is noticeably minimised on the Odyssey + ... you really have to look for it.

I’ll do some performance tests tonight and see how far I can push the graphics with the 2080ti, but am still open to upgrading the CPU. Im having so many issues with this rig and just getting past the windows loading screen has become a voodoo ritual in its own right! I’ll take the pc to a shop I found recently and see what they think is going on. I think I might need a new hard drive or power supply, but at this point I’m tempted to upgrade the motherboard, cpu and ram just to be certain I’ve taken it as far as it can go.

Keep you posted!

 

[dunno]

I’ll take the pc to a shop I found recently and see what they think is going on. I think I might need a new hard drive or power supply, but at this point I’m tempted to upgrade the motherboard, cpu and ram just to be certain I’ve taken it as far as it can go.
Keep you posted!

First establish whether you have a hardware or software problem. I would do a clean install of windows before spending any money on hardware, after windows clean install don't install any anti virus/malware software, disable windows defender. Install relevant software to get VR going.

If its a hardware issue;
chipsets differ, why waste moneey on a new mother board for your current CPU if you're possibly going to upgrade your CPU.
Your current chip will only support a specific RAM speed, determine what RAM speed your current CPU can support before replacing it, but again if you're considering upgrading the M-Board and CPU why replace identical RAM.

If you decide to upgrade your CPU you'll need a new motherboard, RAM speeds above 3200 have little benefit and is pricey. go for low latency RAM.
Minimum RAM is 8gig, its preferable to have two sticks of RAM rather than one.

I've 32GB of RAM (two sticks), I've disabled the pagefile to disk which forces the OS to use RAM for pagefile, I've no issues and no crashes with this.

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

Turns out it was the hard drive...

 

[Benji85]

Ok so I'm sick of 45 asw with my aging 2700k @4.7 (like most of the time except some super cruise) and have ordered a new CPU mobo.
Don't tell the wife... It's 9900k bundle from scan pre over clocked to 4.9 on water cooling (my first time with water very worried tbh but they didn't do any 9900k bundles in air)
Will let you know what sort of gains I get