Question Is it Wise To Pair A i9-10850K With A 7900 XT Instead of 4090?

[Heat_Fan89]

I went to a website that calculates CPU/GPU bottlenecks and according to them, if I pair my 10850K with a 6950XT, it will produce over 10% CPU bottleneck at 4K. I thought that was a little high since it was released in the same generation as my RTX 3080. My 10850K is essentially a slightly downclocked 10 core 10900K.

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What do you guys and or gals think about a 4090 with a 10850K? How severe would the bottleneck be in 4K.

 

[mjbn1977]

The problem is the size. The card is downright massive. Three slots wide and over 17.5" long.

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-Graphics-IceStorm-Advanced-ZT-D40810J-10P/dp/B0BKK371SB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HIU1M0I7BCKS&keywords=rtx+4080&qid=1673986651&sprefix=rtx+4080,aps,320&sr=8-1

Not fitting in you case?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Not fitting in you case?

It would be real tight if it fits and currently the PSU is just below the GPU fans. The other factor is price for the 4080. If it comes down to a more reasonable price in the $700-800 range that is something I might consider but the 7900 XTX performance is pretty close if not on par with the 4080. I don't do RT so for me it's rasterization. The MSRP for the 7900 XTX is $999. That price should come down in the next 3-4 months, especially since the PC market has slowed down considerably.

 

[mjbn1977]

It would be real tight if it fits and currently the PSU is just below the GPU fans. The other factor is price for the 4080. If it comes down to a more reasonable price in the $700-800 range that is something I might consider but the 7900 XTX performance is pretty close if not on par with the 4080. I don't do RT so for me it's rasterization. The MSRP for the 7900 XTX is $999. That price should come down in the next 3-4 months, especially since the PC market has slowed down considerably.

I thought you looking for one right now. Because right now the 7900XTX and the 4080 are about same price, and in that case the 4080 is the better choice. At $999 the 7900XTX is the better choice, if you don't care about raytracing.. Still doubt you will get one for that price anytime soon.

But if you mostly interested in Flight Simulator, even the 4070Ti will be a better choice (and that you can get between $800 and $900. It will give you over well over 120 fps in 4k with DLSS3. AMDs not going to do that....

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I thought you looking for one right now. Because right now the 7900XTX and the 4080 are about same price, and in that case the 4080 is the better choice. At $999 the 7900XTX is the better choice, if you don't care about raytracing.. Still doubt you will get one for that price anytime soon.

But if you mostly interested in Flight Simulator, even the 4070Ti will be a better choice (and that you can get between $800 and $900. It will give you over well over 120 fps in 4k with DLSS3. AMDs not going to do that....

Yes and No. Yes I am looking for one right now but NO i'm not paying that kind of money and encouraging these prices. I will wait for the prices to drop hopefully in the $700-800 range, preferably $700. I was on Amazon last night and they are both available, both starting around $1300.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I finally got a chance to try out X-Plane 12. Yeah the GPU is getting hammered with HIGH settings. I was getting a ton of stuttering when I upped AA = 4 and AF = 8. I dropped AA = 2 and AF = 4. That got me in the 60FPS in 4K. Bit the GPU load is around 72% and the CPU load is between 9-15%.

VRAM is around 8GB and Sys RAM is around 11GB.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I finally got a chance to try out X-Plane 12. Yeah the GPU is getting hammered with HIGH settings. I was getting a ton of stuttering when I upped AA = 4 and AF = 8. I dropped AA = 2 and AF = 4. That got me in the 60FPS in 4K. Bit the GPU load is around 72% and the CPU load is between 9-15%.

VRAM is around 8GB and Sys RAM is around 11GB.

The 72% on the GPU suggests a CPU bottleneck. There are still lots of games that are not very effective at taking advantage of multiple cores, so even though the CPU usage is low, it's possible to be bottlenecked by the performance of a single core.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

The 72% on the GPU suggests a CPU bottleneck. There are still lots of games that are not very effective at taking advantage of multiple cores, so even though the CPU usage is low, it's possible to be bottlenecked by the performance of a single core.

Is there a way to get around that such as assigning certain cores as priority over others? I remember doing that in the past in task mgr by going to the running process and changing the core priority. Sometimes it helps.

 

[mjbn1977]

I finally got a chance to try out X-Plane 12. Yeah the GPU is getting hammered with HIGH settings. I was getting a ton of stuttering when I upped AA = 4 and AF = 8. I dropped AA = 2 and AF = 4. That got me in the 60FPS in 4K. Bit the GPU load is around 72% and the CPU load is between 9-15%.

VRAM is around 8GB and Sys RAM is around 11GB.

I don't know about Xplane, but in Microsoft Flightsimulator 2020 you can activate developer mode and it shows you exactly for each situation in what limit you are. you will notice that most of the time you will be Main Thread Limited (CPU limit, one core). For this limit a faster video card can not give you more FPS....only better graphic details. But not faster fps. Only a faster CPU (not more cores, but faster single core performance) can help to improve framerate. The only thing that can improve framerate besides that is Nvidias Frame generation technology (DLSS3)

 

[Nighthawk117]

Is there a way to get around that such as assigning certain cores as priority over others? I remember doing that in the past in task mgr by going to the running process and changing the core priority. Sometimes it helps.

No it's not something you can fix. Not sure if you mean changing the process priority or setting the process affinity to restrict what cores it can use. Neither of these things are likely to have any meaningfully positive impact.

The game would need to be reprogrammed so that more of what is currently done sequentially is broken up into tasks that can run in parallel on sperate threads and as a result separate cores.

This is challenging to do which is probably why it's use of high core count processors is limited.

A CPU with faster single threaded performance would help but that's a lot of expense for one game.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

No it's not something you can fix. Not sure if you mean changing the process priority or setting the process affinity to restrict what cores it can use. Neither of these things are likely to have any meaningfully positive impact.

The game would need to be reprogrammed so that more of what is currently done sequentially is broken up into tasks that can run in parallel on sperate threads and as a result separate cores.

This is challenging to do which is probably why it's use of high core count processors is limited.

A CPU with faster single threaded performance would help but that's a lot of expense for one game.

Yeah that's what I was referring too. Oh well, it was worth a try. The X-Plane team is a small developer group and they typically release a new version every 4-5 yrs. Microsoft releasing the brilliant MSFS 2020 surely caught them off guard. Each version of X-Plane looks slightly better than the previous version but it's nowhere in the same league as what Microsoft has done with their flight sim.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Allow me to throw a spanner into the works. Hopefully someone can explain this to me. Every game I now try looks exactly the same way. Every game runs with 70-80% GPU and 8-15% CPU. Each game runs ultra smooth and hits 60FPS but here's the weird part. These games are old non demanding games like Little Nightmares I and II. Ziggurat II which is a FPS that should not bog down the CPU.

I tried to OC my HP Omen 30L and I got a message that VBS was enabled and it recommended to disable it. It also mentioned Core Isolation was enabled. I left that alone as well since it defends against malware and viruses.

So my question is, is it Windows 11 that is bogging down the CPU with all of its security features which pretty much started with the Meltdown malware a few years back?