I've had my ASRock B360 Pro4, i3-8100 and AMD RX 480 4GB for a long time. A reliable pair which served me well, but since starting at sim racing on April this year, Assetto Corsa really made my CPU work 100% all the time on a 3.8Ghz clock speed, making my FPS drop hard on races with lots of players, which is often the case.
I'm on a budget, so a friend of mine suggested I upgrade to a B550 w/ Ryzen 5 2600X, I felt they could do a lot better under heavy load since CPU is a lot less stressed, but i also have the i7-9700 to consider upgrading without changing the MB, since its 5.0Ghz clock speed is nice and the original post said it's the best.
How is AMD vs Intel doing Budget sim racing wise? Should I make the change to AMD, or stick with Intel? I want something that can run all current sim racing games at 75fps with Discord, SimHub, and Firefox running and not reach a bottleneck. Don't care much about the graphical quality.
Hi,
for CPU related FPS, there are 3 things that are important:
1. Enough cores for the specific game (Overall CPU load):
If you don't have enough cores, the performance will have massive hiccups whenever you're hitting FULL load since there won't be a "Free CPU core for Windows' stuff etc".
So that's the most important thing!
-> Currently you don't need more than 5 physical cores. 4 cores + HT/SMT are okay, but not ideal. So currently, since there are no 5 cores CPUs, buying
a 6 cores CPU will give you the best performance vs price.
2. Single thread performance (You can't see it but if you have enough cores, the single thread performance will directly give you more or less FPS!)
-> You want the highest single thread performance that is available but at some point price vs performance won't make sense anymore. For example 9700k vs 9900k -> 9900k can often be overclocked higher due to better chip quality. But it's like 100-200 MHz for 200-300€. Doesn't make sense!
In fact, a 9600k will be the best bang for the buck for that generation!
3. Ram Speed and Cache size: These two simply boost your performance in general, but not by much so it's only a factor AFTER the first 2 points.
-> Statistics I've done myself and found on the internet suggest that you definitely want 3200 MHz memory and 2x 8GB for best dual channel performance without stressing the Mobo (4x4GB is worse!).
Below 3200 MHz, the FPS will suffer but beyond 3200 MHz, costs vs performance doesn't make much sense.
Latency doesn't seem to give many FPS for AC and ACC! I for example overclocked my 3200 CL16 to 3466 CL18, which gives a few extra FPS although the latency is worse.
Here's a link where you can compare the averaged single thread performance from multiple samples from different users. Your own overclock + memory can make a difference but it's a good, basic comparison method!
That link already contains the most important CPUs for your decision. Sadly you can only compare 5 CPUs. I'd to have the AMD 3600x in there too.
So here are Screenshots with all CPUs I'd say are the most interesting for you:
Now there is ONE important thing to know:
Non-overclocked CPUs will drop quite a lot when you use more than 1 single core.
Also AMD CPUs tend to drop further than the Intels, since it's not really advisable to manually lock the AMD CPUs at an all-core-turbo. Their performance is better when you let the turbo clocks "do their thing".
And also you need to take into consideration that most i5 k CPUs can run at 5.0 GHz. So while the 9600k only scores 2785 points in the CPU comparison, it will mostly hit 3000.
Most cheap motherboards can still handle an overclocked i5 or Ryzen 6 core CPU without issues. You only need the beefier motherboards for 8 cores and more or extreme overclocking.
Boards I would recommend right now as cheap & good:
z390 for 9600k: Gigabyte z390 gaming x (not available over there anymore but around 120€)
z490 for 10600k: Gigabyte z490 gaming x (140€)
B550 for AMD 3600x and 5600x: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Pus (98€ here in Germany)
The 5600x currently blows everything else in the same price range out of the water though.
My recommendations in that order for simracing:
AMD 5600x
Intel 10600k
Intel 9600k
AMD 3600
Intel 10400
AMD 3500x
The AMD 2xxx gen simply has a too low single thread performance. You would solve the overall CPU load issue but you won't really gain anything apart from that.
Upgrading to the 5600x though will give you 50% more single thread performance! (2200 to 3300 points!).
Sure, it's expensive. But if you can somehow spend that much money, it will last you for a long time!!
For simracing: You can always lower settings to get good FPS with old graphics cards. But if your CPU is the limit, you can barely do anything about it.
So investing into a great CPU will give you a lot of joy for a long time! (not 10 cores and that stuff, just 6 cores and a great single thread speed!)
Sadly the Intel 11th gen seems to be a mixed bag. Great fps in some games, worse fps in other games compared to the 10th gen...
A few examples now if you can be bothered:
So my 10600k, which is overclocked to all core 4.9 GHz will stay at 4.9 GHz even when 4 cores are used.
The 10600k without manual overclocking will look like this:
1 active core = 4.8 GHz
2 active cores = 4.8 GHz
3 active cores = 4.8 GHz
4 active cores = 4.7 GHz
5 active cores = 4.5 GHz
6 active cores = 4.5 GHz
However I can tell you, that when I did some gaming before overclocking my CPU, it would most of the times run at 4.5 GHz with some cores clocking up to 4.8 GHz for a split second every few moments.
Averaging this, I would say while playing AC, the CPU would run at 4.65 GHz.
So instead of 6x 4.9 GHz that I'm running right now, it would be 6x 4.65 GHz.
For your 75 fps goal it would mean:
4.65 GHz = 75 fps
4.9 GHz = (75 / 4.65) * 4.9 = 79 fps
Not THAT much, but still quite a few fps.
This becomes worse with the non-k CPUs as they will drop even further.
The i5 10400 will max boost to 4.3 GHz with a all-core-turbo of only 4.0 GHz.
Giving it an average of 4.15 GHz (similar to the 4.65 GHz) when playing AC, this would mean:
10600k @ 4.9 GHz = 75 fps
10400 @ 4.15 GHz = (75/4.9)*4.15 = 63,5 fps
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