CPU Advice Please (Is it worth it?)

[AppleUK]

Budget (including currency): around £600 

Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Avid flight simmer, so will use PC for MSFS 2020 and Prepar3D - both heavily dependent on single core performance. Even though P3D uses DX12, single core performance matters as alot of the physics etc is still run on the main thread only - at least that's what I've read! Like to play COD Warzone. No productivity use. But I would like to multi task during cruise

Other details

Currently I have the following:

 

i5 7500 (4C/4T) 

16GB 2400mhz DDR4 RAM (Will be the next upgrade)

2070 Super OC

SATA SSD for Windows, HDD for games

 

I am definitely constrained by my CPU at the moment, so I have looked around at prices and have selected the following possible options:

 

CPU:

• i9 10900KF          £380
• i9 10850K            £350
• i5 11600KF          £225
• i7 11700KF          £380
• i7 10700KF          £290
• Ryzen 5800X       £390

 

Cooler:

• Noctua NH-U12S    £53.79
• Noctua NH-D15      £77.13
• AMD Wraith Prism  £40

 

Motherboards:

 

INTEL:

• MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK Motherboard      £173.84
• Gigabyte Z490 VISION G Motherboard            £171.38 

 

AMD:

• Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard         £178.55

 

Questions:

Is a 5800X, at the same price as an i9 worth it?

What CPU would you choose out of those options, based on my use case?

Is more important to have fewer cores at higher clock speeds or more cores at lower speed?

 

Many thanks

[Chris Pratt]

This is an interesting one. Normally, I'd say hands down the 5800X. Short of that, a 10900K, but Digital Foundry has actually found that this is actually one of the few uses cases for the 11900K, which is otherwise almost useless, often getting walloped by it's 10th gen counterpart. I think they're still investigating it, but nothing right now is getting more FPS out of MS Flight Sim.

 

That said, this could be an anomaly, or something may get fixed that's preventing the Zen 3 chips from matching it. It's also just MS Flight Sim, so YMMV with other similar games. 

 

Overall, you probably still want to stick with a Zen 3 or 10th gen Intel. More just interesting than anything else.

[Tegneren]

13 minutes ago, AppleUK said:

 

 

Questions:

Is a 5800X, at the same price as an i9 worth it?

What CPU would you choose out of those options, based on my use case?

Is more important to have fewer cores at higher clock speeds or more cores at lower speed?

If you dont need it for productivity, go for a 5600X (if available). it gives you basically the same gaming performance for cheaper and lower temps, an are wery good for multitasking.

I have the 5800X myself, but only because its the one that was available and bad impulse control when it comes to PC stuff. It runs a little hot, but are otherwise exellent.

 

The 11600K is also good, but dont waste your money on other 11th gen intel.

 

Edit:

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Digital Foundry has actually found that this is actually one of the few uses cases for the 11900K

I wasn't aware of that with my reply, but I still wouldn't buy it.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Tegneren

[curiousmind34]

7 minutes ago, Tegneren said:

 

 

The 11600K is also good, but dont waste your money on other 11th gen intel.

11400 is also not that bad

[AppleUK]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

This is an interesting one. Normally, I'd say hands down the 5800X. Short of that, a 10900K, but Digital Foundry has actually found that this is actually one of the few uses cases for the 11900K, which is otherwise almost useless, often getting walloped by it's 10th gen counterpart. I think they're still investigating it, but nothing right now is getting more FPS out of MS Flight Sim.

 

That said, this could be an anomaly, or something may get fixed that's preventing the Zen 3 chips from matching it. It's also just MS Flight Sim, so YMMV with other similar games. 

 

Overall, you probably still want to stick with a Zen 3 or 10th gen Intel. More just interesting than anything else.

Thank you Chris, benchmark comparisons between the 10900K and 5800X in MSFS, generally do show the 5800X beating Intel (around the 5-15% mark) I don't mind having an AMD system, my only concern would be my RAM which I would have to use for a few months before I can upgrade it. 

Would 2400mhz cause reduced performance with AMD? If so, wouldn't that make any differences between the i9 and 5800X even smaller?

 

Many thanks  

 

[AppleUK]

56 minutes ago, Tegneren said:

If you dont need it for productivity, go for a 5600X (if available). it gives you basically the same gaming performance for cheaper and lower temps, an are wery good for multitasking.

I have the 5800X myself, but only because its the one that was available and bad impulse control when it comes to PC stuff. It runs a little hot, but are otherwise exellent.

 

The 11600K is also good, but dont waste your money on other 11th gen intel.

 

Edit:

I wasn't aware of that with my reply, but I still wouldn't buy it.

Thank you for your reply. The more I think about it, I think it would be best for me to jump straight from 4 to 8 cores and bypass 6. Given MSFS is due to receive DX12 this year and given that I may want a few tabs running (Youtube) during my flights, I worry that 6 won't be enough.

So then the question now becomes:

Will my 2400mhz RAM reduce performance on the 5800X so much so that it results in the i9 (10850K or 10900KF) being faster?

[Chris Pratt]

15 minutes ago, AppleUK said:

Thank you Chris, benchmark comparisons between the 10900K and 5800X in MSFS, generally do show the 5800X beating Intel (around the 5-15% mark) I don't mind having an AMD system, my only concern would be my RAM which I would have to use for a few months before I can upgrade it. 

Would 2400mhz cause reduced performance with AMD? If so, wouldn't that make any differences between the i9 and 5800X even smaller?

 

Many thanks  

 

Well, yeah, slower RAM is going to be slower. Ryzen can still handle it. I'm not sure what the cost in performance will shake out to be, but I suppose Intel could take the edge. However, that's fixed by eventually upgrading the RAM for Ryzen, but it would still be an Intel.