I'm looking at upgrading my i7-6700 to the I9-13900 in preparation for a GPU upgrade later in the year. My question is, what kind of OC can I expect as factory turbo OC, as opposed to manually tweaking and testing, as I'm not that savvy with all that procedure? There also seems to be a plethora of different CPU options available to purchase and I'm wondering which CPU version do I need to get a good OC, without the need to engage in manually testing and tweaking? Advice appreciated, thanks.

Edited June 1, 20233 yr by Rockliffe

Does one really need an overclocked processor in 2023? 

My Win+G performance monitor says my 12700k is running at 4% during MSFS. 

Recently upgraded i5 9600k to i5 13600k at stock and not above 20% usage, so I would say expect great things with i9 and no overclock required.

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

I'm looking at upgrading my i7-6700 to the I9-13900 in preparation for a GPU upgrade later in the year. My question is, what kind of OC can I expect as factory turbo OC, as opposed to manually tweaking and testing, as I'm not that savvy with all that procedure? There also seems to be a plethora of different CPU options available to purchase and I'm wondering which CPU version do I need to get a good OC, without the need to engage in manually testing and tweaking? Advice appreciated, thanks.

You'll be much better off with one of the X3D CPUs, preferably 5800X3D or 7800X3D, the higher ones have diminishing returns for MSFS due to the split CCD. You'll see more benefit out of the massive cache the X3D CPUs have as opposed to the higher clock speeds from the 13900k.

However to specifically answer your question, the 13900k boosts to 5.8Ghz at factory. bear in mind this is not the stable frequency, only in particular circumstances which is difficult to manually force.

Just now, St Mawgan said:

Does one really need an overclocked processor in 2023? 

A good point. We carry over a lot of bad habits (addictions 😀?) from the world of FSX and P3D, overclocking, tweaking the refresh rate, manipulating CPU cores etc.  the usefulness of which has become questionable in a rather well optimized MSFS.

 

 

In my view, overclocking the 13900 is not worth it. 
Mine is already on the edge at stock frequency and that is with a decent water cooler, decent thermal paste, and the CPU slot mod (height adjustment). 

I have simply lowered the voltage down a touch to make it run cooler, but obviously you have to watch not to lower too much or it can affect stability.
Generally, at stock, it is fine at 60Hz, 4k, no stuttering, apart from a few combined really big airports / cities.  I am certainly happy with it anyway.

All these reporting low CPU usage during MSFS are not looking at it properly, as it simply reports an average of all the 32 cores (power and eco), and it doesn't use them all, or some of them very sparingly. 

If you go to task manager > performance > right click on the graph, and change graph to 'logical processors', you will see exactly what it is doing, and in general you will see two threads worked hard while the others are coasting - multi-threading performance in MSFS is still not perfect, but it is a lot better than it used to be in FSX/P3D etc.

DX12 appears to share the CPU burden a lot more, but that then brings other problems for me with missing textures etc.

Edited June 1, 20233 yr by bobcat999

As previously stated, overclocking can result in high temperatures which can lead to thermal throttling, increased fan noise, and unstable performance causing stutters. Many 13900 users have found that under-volting improves performance and eliminates stutters even when using ultra settings. At this time, it would be best to avoid using DX12 as it is still in beta and may cause visual issues in certain cases. After the upgrade, you will actually see what is all about. This individual provides helpful information. By making minor adjustments in CMOS, you can achieve similar results without needing to delve into excessive detail.

 

 

2 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

I'm looking at upgrading my i7-6700 to the I9-13900 in preparation for a GPU upgrade later in the year. My question is, what kind of OC can I expect as factory turbo OC, as opposed to manually tweaking and testing, as I'm not that savvy with all that procedure? There also seems to be a plethora of different CPU options available to purchase and I'm wondering which CPU version do I need to get a good OC, without the need to engage in manually testing and tweaking? Advice appreciated, thanks.

You do not need to OC a 13900 cpu. The default OC is more than enough.

My 13900kf is running MSFS at 5.3 GHz most of the time and sometimes it is 5.5 GHz depending on the load. Default Turbo OC.

The 13900k is a little more expensive than the 13900kf as the last one does not have a built in graphics processor.

I'd rather ask differently -  is there any difference in FPS between 13900K with OC and without OC in MSFS, granted that all other items (GPU, RAM, etc) are the same? 

1 minute ago, G-YMML1 said:

I'd rather ask differently -  is there any difference in FPS between 13900K with OC and without OC in MSFS, granted that all other items (GPU, RAM, etc) are the same? 

No, only if you OC at least to 6.0 GHz compared to 5.5 GHz.

Those 3-4% more fps in situations where the cpu will be taxed a lot aren’t worth it. Intel did a good job with the 13 series cpu.

Just an observation, I have 13900K on my PC, and also I have access to a 13900KF. From my observation (4K monitor with RTX 4090 water cooled) with KF I can notice a +5 FPS and a few lower temps (between 4 to 6 degrees), but again I find overclocking unnecessary. In my case, I'm looking for fluidity and stability. As an example at JFK with ultra settings using PMDG or the Airbus I can get 55-60 FPS without any issues at all. Temperatures wise K will give me 65 C while KF will be around 60 C.

2 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

A good point. We carry over a lot of bad habits (addictions 😀?) from the world of FSX and P3D, overclocking, tweaking the refresh rate, manipulating CPU cores etc.  the usefulness of which has become questionable in a rather well optimized MSFS.

No bad habits--this sim and the others before it are always main thread limited, especially w/ current GPUs.   Any bump up in clock speed translates linearly to that much better main thread performance.  So I guess the question really is are turbo speeds, non manually overclocked speeds, essentially the same as one gets w/ judicious overclocking on the most recent chips?  I don't know if that's true with current high end chips. I know my 9900K needs every increase it can manage, and as there is a point of diminishing returns vis a vis voltage and temp it's 5Ghz on all cores, all the time here.  Being able to cope w/ lots of AI traffic, and increasing TLOD requires as much main thread as I can muster on my 3y/o hardware, and in fact most of the time I really need to keep TLOD at 100-120 w/ the hardcore planes, and FSLTL is setup with very modest settings in order to retain stutter-free animation.

I look forward to a new build somewhere in the next 2 years.  Here is the reality of what I will get for buying top end parts then:

• Will be able to increase AI traffic and fixed location substantially from where it is today.  Is it satisfying today, w/ limited numbers of AI traffic?  Absolutely already is, but it's on the edge in terms of impacting performance even w/ modest settings.  I don't like crowded skies nor airports in the RW, so it works.
• Rapid panning will visibly improve--and rapid panning occurs probably less than 0.1% of block time in how I use the sim.  Is rapid panning bad now? Nope.
• The TLOD will improve in terms of what number it's set to, but the reality is it really makes almost no difference visually, from 100 to 300.  I've looked quite carefully at this because for sure w/ GA planes can already set to 300 easily, and it's just hardly noticeable, rather unfortunately in some ways. 

Here's what I won't get as new w/ this hardware upgrade:

• Stable, ultra smooth stutter-free animation--I already have it now. 

So why upgrade?  Well, it will be nice to have so much more headroom, a little better visuals, and that's about it.  I will do it also to accommodate for increases in cloud resolution which may come I hope, or other bumps up in quality of scenery, etc.

Edited June 1, 20233 yr by Noel

You can expect lock ups, freezes, screwed up drives, resets, headaches and the chip self cooking itself.😃

33 minutes ago, LRBS said:

Just an observation, I have 13900K on my PC, and also I have access to a 13900KF. From my observation (4K monitor with RTX 4090 water cooled) with KF I can notice a +5 FPS and a few lower temps (between 4 to 6 degrees), but again I find overclocking unnecessary. In my case, I'm looking for fluidity and stability. As an example at JFK with ultra settings using PMDG or the Airbus I can get 55-60 FPS without any issues at all. Temperatures wise K will give me 65 C while KF will be around 60 C.

I have 45-50FPS with the same settings at the same airport and same planes with my [email protected] and 2080Ti. Add AI traffic into the equation and your 55-60FPS will be slashed at least by 50%.

With that being said, I'm not impressed with the performance of stock 13900k vs. overcloked 9900k. 

Also, what level of TLOD you have set in Inbuilds KJFK? I run it at 140 and I hoped that with 13900 I can raise a bar up to 200 at least.