A new cpu for x4

[astraorion5]

My actual cpu intel g4560 is bottlenecking :/
So I`m considering to upgrade.

What cpu would you recommend for x4?
I have this options in mind:

- i5 9400f
- r7 2700
- r5 3600

Are more cores better for x4?
intel or amd?

Thanks in advance!


PS: my System

RX 590 Nitro+
16 GB DDR4 2400
M2 SSD Intel 600P

Performace ~60 fps in space and ~25-30 on stations.

[Vertigo 7]

x4 doesn't utilize multithreading afaik. more cpu cores wont impact performance. I have an i9 and only 1/16 cores is pegged out while the game is running.

[astraorion5]

wow that's interesting, so practically I could buy an i3 withouth changing my board for example: (Intel Core i3-7350K @ 4.20GHz)
and have better results than with i5 9400f?

[Alan Phipps]

The X Rebirth/X4 engine does indeed use multithreading and having at least 4 real cpu cores is recommended. There may be diminishing improvement returns per core for having more cores above the necessary 4 though - unless you use lots of concurrent/background applications or do a lot of gameplay streaming.

System hardware discussions are best handled in the Off Topic forum so over we go.

[Chips]

Unfortunately, few in Off Topic play the game and therefore you're less likely to gain input from those who do play the game with their corresponding CPUs compared to the numbers who do play the game and have various different systems to offer up their experiences. Isn't the best policy to move them tbh

[Gavrushka]

I do play the game, and observations suggest many systems seem to bottleneck on the graphics card rather than the CPU. I've an I7 8700, and it's under little strain playing the game, but my GTX 1050Ti does struggle. Thing is, the game is still receiving patches and they're as much to optimise the game as to add functionality.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Chips: No, we definitely do not want the near-inevitable Intel vs AMD lively debate in the X4 forum thanks.

There are also parallels in game performance between X4, XR VR and XR with or without mods so here is probably the best place to bridge all these variants. Anyway, the OT forum is probably read and used pretty much by X game players.

[Len5]

The 9400f can't be overclocked. (If you weren't planning on doing that anyway, you don't need an expensive mobo or ram or better cooler.)
If you'd like to upgrade the cpu some time later, it'll be cheaper with the am4 socket as with intel you'd probably need to buy a new mobo with a different socket.

When I bought my pc a few months ago I had a choice between 9400f and r2600 which were the same price back then
I went with the 9400f as it performed just as good in games as a fully overclocked r2600 and I could get a very cheap but good motherboard on sale. It would've cost me a lot more if I went for the overclocked r2600 route.
Haven't played X4 that much, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with it together with an rx580 8gb. High settings and the game is smooth, although I do have a stutter once in a while, but don't know where that's coming from exactly.

[astraorion5]

Thanks for your replies!

Turned out that my card was running in silent mode (bios switch), by switching to performance mode I could get around 35-40 fps on stations & 60 outside.
But my cpu is definitely not so good for x4 cuz its already under minimum requirements and is around 70% busy already from the beginning of the game, where I don't have much ships, stations etc.

So I think, I will change to the Ryzen 3 3600 in the future.

[Imperial Good]

Out of the list provided the Ryzen 3600 is the recommended go to.

The Ryzen 7 2700 has more cores but the cores are considerably slower than the Ryzen 5 3600 (~15% at least). For pure gaming performance the 3600 will yield considerably better frame rate (GPU permitting) due to the better single thread performance and still come in close with multi threaded work loads due to faster overall cores despite having fewer of them.

Intel's I5 series is currently a joke, especially the low end ones like the 9400F. Due to technology node difficulties Intel has been stuck with practically the same core design for the last 3 years. As such the only advantage Intel has is the high 5 GHz clock speed making them king of the single thread benchmark and hence gaming performance. However this high clock speed is only on the middle and higher binned variants, not the 9400F. Worse still is only the I9s have hyperthreading so their multi thread performance is poor at the same core count. As such the I5 9400F is slower than the R5 3600 with both single thread and multi thread performance, only winning on cost of ownership due to being a cheaper part and Intel having cheaper motherboards. Hopefully this will change next year when 10nm Intel desktop CPUs hit the market but for now one might as well forget the I5 series exists.

Do not worry about overclocking modern CPUs. Both Intel and AMD have very little to gain from overclocking, especially if one factors in the power economics. You might get 5% faster clock max.

[grbaker]

Well I just upgraded last weekend from a AMD 1600X to the 3600X so not such a big jump there exept less heat and noise (since the fans don't need to spin up so much anymore).

Easily gets a tick from me... just need to find nice 3200mhz or 3600mhz memory that is not gold plated.

[astraorion5]

Fps suddenly dropped to around 30 - 35 on station. I tested several graphic settings in the game: put everything on low or even changed the resolution to 1440 x 900 but there are no changes at all.

Full HD everything hight: 30 - 35 fps
Full HD everything low: 30 - 35 fps
1440 x 900 everything hight 30 - 35 fps

When I activate vsync the game runs a bit smoother.

This is so ridiculous. I mean with everything on low and there are no changes at all.

After a restart of the game I got again around 35 - 40 fps with Full HD and everything hight at the same position.

Is this normal?

[pjknibbs]

If you're heavily CPU-bottlenecked then getting the same framerate regardless of graphics settings is entirely normal--your frame rate is not being limited by the graphics (which are almost all done by the GPU anyway), it's being limited by game-related stuff like AI calculations.

[Imperial Good]

Well I just upgraded last weekend from a AMD 1600X to the 3600X so not such a big jump there exept less heat and noise (since the fans don't need to spin up so much anymore).

The upgrade is pretty large. Even if core count did not change.

Is this normal?

Depends on what is happening in game. For example flying a destroyer into an unconstructed Xenon Station will give you very low FPS (~15 FPS on a I7 920) while if one parks in the middle of nowhere in a Xenon sector the same CPU will give you very high frame rates.

If you're heavily CPU-bottlenecked then getting the same framerate regardless of graphics settings is entirely normal--your frame rate is not being limited by the graphics (which are almost all done by the GPU anyway), it's being limited by game-related stuff like AI calculations.

I think physics are the biggest bottleneck. Seeing how parking a destroyer inside a Xenon station causes FPS to tank despite nothing actually happening.

[astraorion5]

Yes indeed it seems to be a kind of a cpu bottleneck.

[BigBANGtheory]

On the plus side if you are CPU bound you can often whack up the graphics options with little to no penalty. Back in the day of XR I got far smoother gameplay on ultra graphics options and 1440p - 4k res.

[Gavrushka]

Has RAM speed a huge impact on system performance? - I'm going to buy what I'd thought was a high end PC in a few months but the RAM is DDR4 2400. - The processor is I9 blabla KF, and it's the 8GB version of the 2080 for a graphics card. - Elsewhere, I read it's then the RAM that becomes the bottleneck (when using an SSD,) but wasn't sure if that was the case. - Surely no manufacturer is going to create a £2,000 PC that has such an issue without giving the buyer the facility to upgrade?

And does cooling have much impact on performance?

[pjknibbs]

Depends on the CPU to some extent. Ryzen CPUs are known to be far more sensitive to RAM speed than Intel ones are. RAM speed will make a difference even on Intel chips, mind you, but it should only be a couple of percent--e.g. you're not going to suddenly get an extra 25% performance just by upgrading from 2400MHz RAM to 2933MHz.

Cooling will make no difference so long as it's sufficient for the job and you're not overclocking. If your CPU overheats then it will throttle its clock speed to avoid burning out, but you won't see any difference in performance between your CPU running at 80C and it running at 50C.

[Gavrushka]

Ah, thanks. My judgement of performance is binary: 'It's playable' or 'It's not playable.'