Computer recommendations

Howdy

I have an Alienware X51 R3 and would like to play Flight Sim 2020. Specs are: Intel core i7 processor, 8GB of SDRAM, Nvidia GTX 970 4GB video card. Do I need to upgrade and if so what do you recommend? Thanks

Hi, you haven’t said what speed the i7 processor is, but I’m guessing it’s an i7-6700?

MSFS should certainly run on this system, but you could do with upgrading the ram to 16mb if possible (32 would be better) Personally I’d also upgrade the graphics card.

But.. you’re well over the minimum specs.. so get the sim and try it first.

Better still.. sign up for the Xbox game pass. You can try it for a month for just £1 (or $1)

Regards

Steve

For the price of an RTX 3070, it's good value and runs it well. I'd go for 32Gb ram, I've seen the sim using over 20gb with addon scenery running.

It wouldn’t be worth getting an RTX3070 for the moment, as the processor would be a bottleneck (not to mention the RAM) Also there’s a good chance the PSU would also need upgrading.

If you’re going to do that, then you’re going to end up buying a new motherboard too.. basically a new pc.

Regards

Steve

Ok, sounds like I will add RAM and see if I like the game....what I would really like would be a realistic WWII European theater game....thanks!

No worries Biff

I’d try MSFS via the game pass though. It’ll mean you can pay just $1 and try it for a month (then cancel game pass) of course it’s not a WWII game, but it is still excellent.

Adding more RAM is still a good move, whatever you decide to do.

Regards

Steve

I'm using an I7-2600K that is running at about 4 gig and the results are not bad at all. It does bog down in some cases where the scenery has a lot of detail. My settings are mostly at mid point.

I started with a Radeon RX 590:GTX which seemed to be OK but I was having a lot of crashes to dark screen (not CTD) so I bought a GTX 1080 Ti which seems to have solved the crashing problem.

While trying to solve the crashing problem I replaced 32 gigs of slightly slower single channel ram with 24 gigs of dual channel ram and it made no difference. Reducing CPU speed didn't help either.

Currently I have an I7-10700 system almost ready to replace the 2600K machine. That should eliminate the stalling under high loads.

My assumption is that the bottlenecks when either the graphics or the CPU gets overloaded is what causes most of the crashes.

I still have a problem where if a flight ends badly (crash) a restart causes MSFS to terminate when it gets to the ready to fly screen. Restarting the program then works OK. It is an annoyance to be sure.

“My assumption is that the bottlenecks when either the graphics or the CPU gets overloaded is what causes most of the crashes”

I have a high end cpu & a good GPU but I would regularly get CTDs - a couple of weeks back I reduced the ram speed by one notch (from 3600mhz to 3400) - I haven’t had a single ctd since

(Reducing the speed by more than that didn’t help)

Regards

Steve

g7rta

Your crashes were due to your ram being overclocked, you were trying to make the ram run faster than it could run. Your system would have failed using any software that worked memory hard. MSFS became stress test software for you.

This reverts to the old question "is the failure hardware or software"? It could be that all the crashes associated with MSFS are due to CPUs and ram that are marginal to begin with, and the heavy use demanded by MSFS causes failure. I doubt it though.

In my case, I doubt that there was a hardware failure in my Radeon RX-590; I suspect it performed correctly and if I would have had other 590 cards available, swapping them out wouldn't have fixed anything.

When logjams in data flow occur, unusual conditions of the software, things that can't easily be anticipated or be tested for in advance can rear up to cause problems; things like buffer overflows tend to happen, pointers go awry, etc.

I suspect that after some future update, most of these crashes will go away.

You maybe right about my ram. They were designed to run at 3600mhz, but I suppose there a tolerance and not all modules will be the same. Reducing the speed slightly certainly helped.

As for your crashes, I hope you sort it & as you say, we should (hopefully) see less crashes as the sim is updated.

Regards

Steve

That's why I'm no fan of overclocking. From what I read, people are running their CPUs / ram right up to the bare edge of working - all to gain 10 or 20% faster throughput. A 20% increase in CPU speed is too small to even be noticed (there are other things that affect throughput). Others are spending thousands on exotic cooling for their CPUs, just for trivial performance gains.

I bought my current system used, (for MSFS) the guy I bought it from had the CPU clocked at 4.7 Gig and I had some unexplained system crashes outside of MSFS. I backed it off to 4.0 Gig and I'm sure I've saved myself a lot of problems.

Howdy

 

I have an Alienware X51 R3 and would like to play Flight Sim 2020. Specs are: Intel core i7 processor, 8GB of SDRAM, Nvidia GTX 970 4GB video card. Do I need to upgrade and if so what do you recommend? Thanks

Hi Biff. I am not going to be specific on what you need, there are a lot of real good suggestions already, but I will tell you this, buy the most powerful computer you can afford because in the long run, it will save you money. It will take longer to have the need to upgrade your components. I bought my RTX 2070 a year and half ago for my new rig and now I am looking into upgrading again. I wouldn't have that problem if I had bought the 2080ti or even the 2080. I don't play in 4K, I prefer my Wide Screen monitor. People were also telling me that there was no need for more than 16 gigs of RAM, and that was true "at the time" but now we know that MSFS recommends 32 Gigs. I am good, I got 64 Gigs of RAM . They told me I was wasting my money because I bought a Corsair 1000 Watts Power Supply, that I didn't need that kind of power if I wasn't going the SLI route (2 video cards simultaneously) . Glad I did because now we know how power hungry these new Nvidia 30 series are.

If you can, don't buy or built a PC with specifications that are good for todays games/applications, buy one that will be good for the next three years or more.

Gil

g7rta

Your crashes were due to your ram being overclocked, you were trying to make the ram run faster than it could run. Your system would have failed using any software that worked memory hard. MSFS became stress test software for you.

You are right. I've overclocked all my systems, when possible, for years. But one thing I never overclock is the RAM. It's very, very tricky, and if you are using four sticks instead of two, chances are they will not be able to take the extra clocks/voltage. Besides that, there is very well documented studies that shows overclocking your ram will not give any significant advantages on your FPS. If your Mother Board have XMP option in the BIOS, turn it on, that's all you have to do.

Gil

Spook, what you're ignoring is that right now prices are elevated substantially for two reasons:

COVID has increased demand because everybody is staying home and there have been very recent and quite dramatic new releases of hardware both CPUs and graphic cards. Even flight controllers, Yokes, rudder pedals and such are now at the highest prices ever.

Biff has a motherboard with an LGA 1155 socket already so if he doesn't have a fast processor now he can get a pretty fast one for cheap on E-Bay, and DDR3 memory is dirt cheap. He could get an RX-590 for less than $200 if he shops around or get an even better graphics card used for that price, but his computer may already have something workable for the short term.

By early summer, prices for what is now high end equipment are going to plummet after AMD and NVIDA ramp up their deliveries.

Spending a lot of dough right now is not be the cost saving way to go, assuming that is an issue.

That's why I'm no fan of overclocking. From what I read, people are running their CPUs / ram right up to the bare edge of working - all to gain 10 or 20% faster throughput. A 20% increase in CPU speed is too small to even be noticed (there are other things that affect throughput). Others are spending thousands on exotic cooling for their CPUs, just for trivial performance gains.

 

I bought my current system used, (for MSFS) the guy I bought it from had the CPU clocked at 4.7 Gig and I had some unexplained system crashes outside of MSFS. I backed it off to 4.0 Gig and I'm sure I've saved myself a lot of problems.

There is nothing wrong with overclocking the CPU if you know what you are doing. Even CPU manufactures know that. That is why many of the newer processor are "unlocked" so they can be overclocked. It's advertised on their packaging. An example. the CPU I have, an Intel i9-9900K (k = unlocked)

If you have a good motherboard, a good CPU, because not all of them are built equally, we call it the silicon lottery, liquid cooling, and the most important thing of all, a good stress test software (I use AIDA64 , commercial software) there is no reason why not doing it. I could OC a PC run simulator for hours without problems, but as soon as I start AIDA64 stress test, within two seconds my PC would freeze. That shows you running games or video loops is not a stress test. While a 20% increase in clock speed may not make much of a difference on some video games, because remember, most games, including FS don't use all the cores of the CPU (not yet), but when using software that do, like when I encode 4k videos, having all my 8 cores/16 logical cores running at 5,003.1 MHZ instead of 3,600 MHZ makes a huge difference. Just wait until MS releases a patch that will enable all cores in MSFS (Direct X 12) and you will see what I mean.

My CPU while running FS2020 hits a MAX of 72-76C deg. While it sounds like a lot, for an i9-9900k it is perfect!. While I type this, the temperature is 47C deg on one core, less on the others.

And like I wrote on the other reply, I don't mess with the RAM.

Gil

20% speed improvement in a CPU is unnoticeable to the user unless he's using a stopwatch to time something specific. And that last 20% is what puts the system on the edge of stability.

As I said, my 2600K is running at about 4 gigs, I could up it to 4.5 and probably never have any adverse effect (except a tad more heat) but why should I do that, it's only a 12.5% gain in speed? I'd rather have the headroom and never have to question the CPU if I have a system crash.

The multi core stuff is a different subject.

Spook, what you're ignoring is that right now prices are elevated substantially for two reasons:

COVID has increased demand because everybody is staying home and there have been very recent and quite dramatic new releases of hardware both CPUs and graphic cards. Even flight controllers, Yokes, rudder pedals and such are now at the highest prices ever.

 

Biff has a motherboard with an LGA 1155 socket already so if he doesn't have a fast processor now he can get a pretty fast one for cheap on E-Bay, and DDR3 memory is dirt cheap. He could get an RX-590 for less than $200 if he shops around or get an even better graphics card used for that price, but his computer may already have something workable for the short term.

 

By early summer, prices for what is now high end equipment are going to plummet after AMD and NVIDA ramp up their deliveries.

 

Spending a lot of dough right now is not be the cost saving way to go, assuming that is an issue.

His PC can take u up to an i7-6700 3.4 GHZ than can hit boosts speed of up to 4 GHZ. Its 4 cores, and like most intel's, cannot boosts all cores at the same time (unless unlocked and OC or an i9+ right out of the box).

There was a very thorough article on this site about MSFS and its hardware demands, in particular the CPU. I learned something from it too, because I though that my all cores @5 GHZ was more than what I needed to run it at max, well that was until the author replied to me and made me realized that I was looking at the wrong numbers. My benchmarking app showed that FS was using 99% of my CPU Power, not all CPU cores, but the ones used by the sim.

He can really end up losing money, lots of it by buying upgrades. Everyone's financial situation is different, I am aware of that. MSFS is a monster and it requires a monster PC if you want to take advantage of the beautiful scenery, which is the main reason most people bought this game to begin with. I hate to see people wasting money. Sometimes is best to wait a little, especially now. Like you said, because of COVID and so many people staying/working from home, it has created an increase in the demand for computer hardware. Plus, you can't go on vacation, can't go to restaurants, movies, etc, think of all the money you are saving, money that many folks are using to buy PC gear. I bet you that no many people have a wife who tell their husbands to get the good stuff. Mine does because she knows me better, that I end up upgrading sooner than later, wasting our money.

I have a PC with VERY strong specs and still can't get past the 30 fps most of the time. Sometimes it drops below 20 FPS. I would hate to see Biff spending more money and not being happy with the results.

As I said, I'm currently running with a I7-2600K and MSFS runs fine. Right now I have the settings cranked up high so it bogs down at times, but a 2600K does the job with more moderate settings. The real question is if his current BIOS will work with a 2GB or more video card (I have an old Dell with a I7-2600 that won't recognize an NIVDA card.)

In the late spring or early summer he won't upgrade, he will replace. Going to a AMD socket or an Intel LGA 2066 socket means getting a new Motherboard and new DDR4 ram, his current DDR3 won't work. It also means getting a big video card then because what costs a thousand dollars now will be $250 then - the video card market is undergoing a big change. Or the other way of seeing it is that there will be even faster video cards available for reasonable prices then.

In any event, he's going to want a new motherboard with a socket for a modern AMD or Intel processor and DDR 4 memory for future expansion. Now is not the optimum time to buy any of that.