What Cpu for 1080ti.

[Justin781]

Just got a grant from my school to build a racing simulator. As of right now, we've decided on using 3 27" 1080p 60hz displays. So we need a system that can power this. But the system should also be able to do VR (to be honest, I don't really know much about what you need for VR). It needs to be able to run racing games (iRacing, Dirt Rally, Project Cars 2, etc.) on max settings at a stable fps, never dipping below the 60hz of our monitors. It doesn't really matter if it averages at 160fps or 110fps in certain games, all that really matters for us is consistency and that it'll always always look smooth, staying above the 60hz refresh rate of our monitors along with whatever we might need for VR. The VR demand is only a side thing tho, it only needs to be playable for VR.

As for budget, it needs to be as cheap as possible without compromising any of what I mentioned above. So anything under 2k will be fine, but the lower the better. I was thinking 1080 ti with 16gb of ram. But I'm not sure about what cpu I should go for. From what I've seen, the latest intel chips seem to get the higher frame rates than the amd chips. But, I've heard that the amd chips are still capable and are very stable and smooth for gaming. For what I need from the system, what cpu would you guys recommend (will not be overclocking)? Also, it should be future proof for the next 5 years or so.

i5 8600k?
i7 8700k?
Ryzen 7 series?

Thanks!!!

 

[Zerk2012]

I would get the 6 core i5 8600K.

 

[geofelt]

The key to your project is first to buy a top graphics card. That would be a GTX1080ti.

For racing sims, you want the fastest possible single thread performance.
Today, that will come from a 8th gen intel processor.
sims will rarely use more than 2-3 threads.
I3-8350K@4.0(4 threads), I5-8600K@3.6(6 threads) , or I7-8700K@3.7(8 threads).
One does not overclock a non K processor.
The speed is set in the bios by selecting the appropriate multiplier.
Each of the above processors will run at 4.7 and sometimes more, depending on your luck in getting a good chip.

Ryzen is good for many threads. 1700@3.0(16 threads) is very good for multithreaded apps, but not so good for single thread performance. The top overclock for ryzen is around 4.0.

No such thing as futureproofing.
What we see today will be outdated in 5 years.
Today, I think the I5-8600K is about the best gamer around, and will be very viable for a long time.
Is the i7-8700K better?? yes, but I think the extra $100 price premium is better used to pay for a stronger graphics card.

 

[derekullo]

Do note that 3 monitors at 1080p is a resolution of 5760 x 1080 or a total of 6,220,800 pixels.

A 4k resolution would be 3840 x 2160 or 8,294,400 pixels

The 4k Dirt 4 benchmarks that I found shows the average fps being near 60 fps with a minimum fps of 51.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1425-dirt-4-performance/

Due to 25% less pixels that need to be rendered, we can multiply the fps at 4k by 1.25 to get a rough estimate of the fps at 5760 x 1080.

This comes out to an average of 75 fps average and a minimum of 63.

A 75 average and 63 minimum is perfectly acceptable for normal usage, but is far from the 110fps - 160fps predicted earlier.


VR will be playable but with the "non-vr fps" being so close to 60 fps it may not comfortable to play.

Nvidia is releasing the next generation, 2xxx series, in the beginning of 2018 if you can wait.

 

[J_E_D_70]

1080ti with i5-8400 or better will be butter smoother with a Rift or Vive in any of those racing games.

 

[zyh1987]

i think 8700 will be a better option, since you are using it for school project, reliability and warranty actually matters.

i also disagree with just taking 3/4 of 4k resolution. likely the simulation shows front and two sides vs just front in higher definitions, meaning that the field of view will be from 90 degree to something like 270 degree, which means, you have to render a lot of objects. many of these calculations are CPU work, and i think 8700 will be a better option.

turbo boost on 8700 for single thread application is higher, plus a stock cooler, since we are not running cpu benchmarks i think the CPU temperature will be reasonable.

cost wise, 8700 cost similar to 8600k with a decent cooler, but you get a bit more stock performance.