Triple Screens: 8 CPU's Tested with iRacing 

Agreed bugs me no one ever does benchmarking/testing of triples, and also only does F1 2022. I just assume 4K is a similar number of pixels to triple 1440P, of course there’s a lot More to it than that, but there’s a niche in the market, big enough I’d have thought, for at least one dedicated Sim specific hardware/software review channel to do this sort of thing on the main sims, IRacing/ACC/AC/RF2/AMS2. Possibly flight sims as well MSFS2020/DCS etc. Damn as I type that that feels like an awful lot of work!

If you're running triple screens, I definitely recommend a card that has 3xDP or 3xHDMI. I'm not familiar with any technical limitations of 2xHDMI + 2xDP,, I have read mixed experiences from users. iRacing is clever with managing VRMA limitations, and will automatically reduce image quality to fit textures within the cards capacity. I'm not yet sure how to tackle that challenge of 'image quality' assessment to these benchmarks given that situation, or comparing DLSS/FSR. Screen shot captures can tell a story that's very different from the motion on the screen. And if I try to capture that motion, RU-vid compression unfortunately muddles the finer details in video playback. It's a challenging situation! But I'll do my best :)

Thank you! I've been waiting to... so I just decided to do it myself :) I'll be posting a lot more data and info, so stay tuned.

Thank you :) Personally, I'd hold out for the next X3D! Yes an upgrade to faster AM4 processor can yield a measurable improvement in tough scenarios, a little more eye candy, but it may not deliver that 'wow' feeling that we all want from an upgrade.

Thank you :) And great CPU choice, the performance gap between 7600X and 7800X3D is fairly small considering the price jump. Now you're on the AM5 platform which AMD claims will even see new processors in 2025, so you can wait for a more enticing SKU.

4070ti will strugle .. vram issue :) my ultrawide 3440-1440p eating vrams from 16gb using 14gbvram...

from video I understood CPU is bottlenecked most time and GPU is sitting idling, not doing much. I thought it's important to get best strongest CPU for simracing. waiting fro AC EVO to be released and will see what PC I need. it will be same KUNOS engine as AC. Only ACC is Unreal engine.

Thank you! :) If you're comfortable with lowering some settings, I think it's definitely playable with your setup. Your CPU+GPU combo is well balanced, but I'd take on a new CPU first if you don't upgrade both at the same time.

This pretty much defeats the purpose of this review of CPU's.

well, i was more asking for review on graphics card with different CPU, to see where bottleneck appears in those scenario, than anything else.@@leonn1196

I'm curious too! I have both of those trucking simulators and a couple pieces of recent DLC. I'm planning to benchmark those after ACC.

Thanks :) It's easy to capture data. The challenge is to understand the parameters you've selected and consistently perform the benchmark run. iRacing is developing a big update to its GUI, and I'm hoping they implement a standardized benchmarking tool within it.

In iRacing ? Worst, just google it. Even iRacing staff say so.

Yes. At simple tracks with few buildings (Lime Rock Park) you will technically become 'GPU Limited' as indicated by the GPU Busy graph for Red Bull Ring, however, your FPS should easily average over 120fps. In complex scenarios like Daytona, your 5800X3D continues to perform as a high-end CPU.

I run a 5800x3d and a 3060ti. Getting 110+fps on all tracks with medium-high graphics at 1440p on triples. Grandstands and crowd on, etc. only exception is some of the new tracks but even then, 80+ fps

You won't notice the extra FPS gained by the 3D V-Cache in most iRacing scenarios. It takes complex and demanding circuits, like Daytona, for a significant gap to build. Also, X3D chipsdon't like being limited by your GPU, and at higher resolutions like Triple 1440p and VR, it's easy to be constrained by a GPU bottleneck. If you can find a good bundle deal on a 7600 or 7600X, I'd take that and wait to see what AMD does for it's next gen of X3D on AM5.

My friend made the music track! I'm trying to convince him to make music for other parts of my videos 😍

@@BenchmarkOdysseysoh, I had to be clearer. I like the intro music,which reminds me of the 90s, when I started with PC gaming. But the intro for me goes up to 1:40 minutes… how your words introduce us to the topic! 😊👌

Yes, those look great! I'm using a 'local' alternative from Advanced Sim Racing (www.advancedsimracing.com/products/advanced-vesa), but somehow I've screwed it up (pun fun). I'm going to reassemble them anyways, because I want to extended the monitors farther from the posts.

Awesome! Does your card have triple DP, or do you use both HDMI+DP for the monitors?

@@BenchmarkOdysseys I have one with 3 DP (Merc310). I use it with a 7900X. Was watchhing to see if I have the power to upgrade to triples, I reckon I might :)

@@BenchmarkOdysseys only 2 dp and 2 hdmi

3D V-Cache works really well with iRacing! Especially now that I've tested AC and ACC and seen several instances where X3D loses its advantage.

Yes, your GPU is limiting the FPS. The 4070 provides similar performance to the 3080ti used in these benchmarks. And it is struggling at Triple 4K. I think it is OK to sacrifice screen clarity and run Triple 1440p so you can achieve smoother FPS. I usually race with VR and that is a common tradeoff. Btw, CPU utilization is reported as an 'average' usage across all cores. Simulators are only demanding on about 2 to 4 cores, and the others will be near idle. Those idling cores can bring down the average to 15%, even though a couple cores may be crunching most of the data at +90% usage. So if you upgrade to 5080, the CPU utilization 'average' may not change.

It would be interesting to see the 'at the wall' measurement to capture total PC power usage with each CPU. Even though racing simulators are demanding on the processor, that doesn't mean the overall CPU usage is high... it seems like it's 25% overall. So the power consumption analysis may be counter intuitive: the 'newest' CPUs may consume the least AND provide more FPS than the 'older' CPUs that are struggling.

@@BenchmarkOdysseysyup! my new Corsair HX1000i has a usb connection to my motherboard, with Corsair Link (and eg HwInfo to isolate CPU) you can see exactly what's going on - and I'm amazed at the low power usage of the 7800x3d (w 4090). Also have a 5800x3d here (son's, my old), same PSU, it's just as frugal! (with 3070). Performance wise the newer system is beastly, especially when you look at per watt.

ps. brilliant analysis@@BenchmarkOdysseys - this would have taken ages. I've thought of upgrading my QHD 32s to 4k monitors, mainly because of my work as a software engineer / tech guy, but I see that this really would require a 5090 at this point!

Usually it's ok to mix HDMI and DP. You can expect to see better performance than R7 2700 with that CPU, and the 2070 Super will perform similar to the 3060Ti which I benched in one of my other videos. So expect good FPS after some normal tuning!

how is the framerate improvement? I have a rzen 5 3600 as well.

@@glenndjenkins Let me get back to you on concrete numbers. In FFXIV I was around 60 fps high settings in high workload situations (world hunts, Limsa Lominsa). Biggest reason I upgraded though was iRacing. I use Racelabs and Crew Chief with all cars drawn in the track and especially at race starts I was getting down to 40-50 fps, even with the default lock at 84 FPS. Now if I get any frame drops, it's to 80 or so, which is still more than sufficient for my display.

nah wait for next gen. a 5800x is very close

You are correct! I got a little crossed in the dialog and shorthand, but the data is accurate to the 'pixel' resolution that was outlined :)

If racing in a car with 4 mirrors around a difficult track like Daytona with 49 other competitors, the 5800X3D may offer a +30% gain over 5600 at Triple 1440p. But if you find yourself racing less demanding series like 20 competitors in single seaters (only 2 mirrors), than 5600 is within 6% of 5800X3D.

Thank you! Also, great question. The 12900K would sit somewhere between the 12600K and 13700K in my performance results for the torture test at Daytona, but the 3080ti constrains FPS results at Triple 4K. RBR has higher FPS because of the lighter load on the CPU, but again the 3080ti bottlenecks at Triple 1440p and 4K.... so that's where your 4090 would shine. So in most racing scenarios, I think the 12900K should be able to push to your monitors max refresh rate, or close to it. 14900K is best for those who want top-end performance without the hassle of overclocking, and Intel charges a hefty premium for that. AMD's Ryzen 9000 may be out Q3 this year, and Intel's Arrow Lake is probably Q1 2025. Investing $600 into either of those platforms, instead of 14900K, will probably yield much better results.

⁠@@BenchmarkOdysseys I appreciate the reply! That was my original plan was to just upgrade when the next gen comes out. I had heard iRacing was pretty intensive on CPUs which is what brought me down the search trail to this video. Nice to have peace of mind about it though! Thanks again!

I recently did an ACC analysis with Nords for the graphics cards, and I did do a comparison between 7800X3D and 13700K, but only as low as Triple 1440p. The X3D showed a clear advantage at that track, and I suspect it will be even bigger at Triple 1080p.

Thanks I'll take a look

In my video comparing 6700XT to 3060Ti, they traded 'wins' for average FPS using triples within iRacing. But when the Radeon lost... it lost by a bigger margin than when the GeForce lost. This suggests that Nvidia is the better choice, but I have not tested the latest generation from AMD.

VR can be very GPU demanding, however, the Rift S only requires 80Hz and it's resolution is much easier to drive than say a Quest 2 or Quest 3. I don't think you will see a noticeable improvement with iRacing, however other simulators like ACC are very inefficient and could benefit from a 4080.

Good question. 7800X3D is a bit 'spiky' with thermals; there's some inefficiencies with the IHS and people have shown great thermal improvements with delidding the processor. With my testing, however, I used Noctua D15 on the AM5 and the temperatures never approached the throttle limit, and the clocks remained boosted during the tests.

Unfortunately I do not know! Considering the power draw (and thermal) advantage of the 40 series, and the compute efficiencies gained, I suspect the 3080ti may perform very similar to 4070ti.

I have a 7800x3d and a 4090 with triple 1440p and I dont see any better performance than you do most of the time with graphics on max PLUS FSR enabled and it will even dip into the 90's with a full grid of 27 GT4s on Red Bull ring. Without FSR enabled and it's only FSR 1 not 2.0 or 3 i believe it drops even further getting in the 130's to start and at the most taxing portion of the circuit getting around 70fps low end.

@@Sean-ps3ec , I have a Ryzen9 7900x with a RTX 4090, I;m just wondering if the 7800x3d would give any significant performance, or if I'm better off to way until the next gen 5000?x3d chip to get a measurable increase

That's a great processor! I was looking for a used 10th generation Intel to test, but it was cheaper to buy new hardware than eBay prices :| 'GPU Busy' is a beta feature with apps that use PresentMon, so there's a few different tools out there. The video posted by Gamers Nexus is full of information about this metric and how to interpret the results, I recommend you check it out! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5hAy5V91Hr4.htmlsi=BtwIcxK8lHmU4nhT If you're just looking to evaluate your own hardware, the Intel app is slick and easy to use.

Yes. The start of the race will be tough, but after the first hour or so, the field will be spread-out. I recommend only a virtual mirror, reducing LOD, and drawing min pits.

@@BenchmarkOdysseysperfect thank you. luckily i won’t be our starter lol.

Yes. This test was completed at High quality settings to stress the CPUs. If you adjust the graphic settings, you can obtain over 100fps.

At that resolution, I would expect the 10850K to get about 90% GPU utilization out of an RTX 4070 12GB during a 'typical' iRacing official race. I suspect that a faster card, like 4070ti or 4080, will be less than 80% utilized with that CPU.

Happy to help ;) The X3D cache will help with running iRacing. If you're running triples AND streaming, you're asking a lot of your GPU!

@@BenchmarkOdysseys I'm running a Titan XP and that's sololy for the sim on a 4k60 monitor, and have an intel Arc 380 for streaming, but when it's a large grid like Daytona and I've a Simhub dash running and RaceLabs for the stream the C and S stats go into the red and all the cars start flickering in and out. GPU normally sits around 60/70% on the Titan and the Arc sits at 30/40% while streaming. So we're pretty sure the core that IR is using can't keep up. I'll see if I can get a 5800x3d cheapish 😅

I do not log that data, however, I do casually observe it. I generally see 4 cores not being used at all, 2 cores maxed and 2 cores above 50%. Although I do leave Intel Ecores enabled because I think only a small subset of users will disable those just for iRacing.

@@BenchmarkOdysseys Thankyou. It would seem to be true that single core performance is the best place to aim. CPU with the best single/dual clock rate when overclocked. Heat/cooling will also play a big factor. I forgot to say thanks for the video, great contribution to the community.

I have a 7800x3d with a 4090 and while Im seeing 130fps to 150fps with FSR enabled it dips into the 90's and 80's with/without FSR enabled with my usages around 30% tops on CPU sometimes hitting 40%, but most of the time staying in the 20's to 30's. And GPU usages sit at around 60% almost all the time. This is with maxed out graphics minus foilage and crowd (Personal preference)

@@Sean-ps3ec what I can find interesting is that 8P cores are running on 50-60%, other 8P cores are 1-2% and 4 E cores are just doesn't doing anything. So this might be some parallelization issue...

lol yes, all the cards! I'd really like to do a Radeon vs. GeForce comparison in VR and triple screens.

1080p

@@johnnybanana8004 thx

Hey there :) 1080p is great for triple screens with your CPU+GPU, and you can expect your 4060ti to perform about 10-15% better than my 3060ti results.

@@BenchmarkOdysseys thank you ;)

The performance gain I saw for Ryzen 5600 to 5800X3D, was 19% to 35% at Triple 1080p. That's a solid improvement offered by the 3D V-Cache. If you run multi-class series on newer circuits, I think the 5800X3D will provide a +25% boost to your regular 5800X. In contrast. you will see smaller gains with Vees around Lime Rock Park, perhaps in the teens.

@@BenchmarkOdysseys I appreciate the reply, many thanks...From that then I'd say it's 100% worth it...With rain coming next season even more so...Thanks again and I'll be doing the upgrade.

Forgot to mention probably triple 1440p. Seems like triple 1440p the i5/i7 won’t be as big of a difference?

I would not expect the 13600K to perform significantly worse. Compared to 13700K, it has 2 less Pcores (6 vs. 8) and a bit less cache, but iRacing is not efficient at leveraging 8 or more cores (as of 2023 Season 4). iRacing does respond well to faster clock speeds, and the 13600K boost to about 5% less than 13700K.

At Triple 1440p, it seems that iRacing becomes more reliant on the video card, therefore the performance differences between 13600K and 13700K should diminish. If the $100 saved on CPU go help him upgrade the GPU from 4060ti to 4070, or 4070 to 4070ti... then that would have a bigger impact on performance than a 13700K at triple 1440p, @@jmancherjeee

What screen res/hz? What's your budget and region?

@@BenchmarkOdysseys budget no idea bit by bit seen someone say around 27 screens best but im only use to consoles so i havent a clue

Interesting! It looks like the 980ti is just beneath the 1070 in regular gaming, although it does have 8GB. Are you running triple screens, or single screen?

@@BenchmarkOdysseys Triple 1080p. I think the main issue is the 6gb. At tracks like the new Zandvoort, I max out gpu ram usage (set 5.2 in game), so I'm guessing it's swapping things in and out per lap, and that is hurting overall fps. Either way, I'm only getting 50-70fps at zandy, whereas at other older tracks I'm still getting 110-130fps (and they come in under the 5.2g video ram I have set in game). I do run a fair amount of graphics on, pretty much identical to what is in your video, bar I turn in car mirrors off (and only use virtual mirror).

@@ianjameslake Gotcha, makes sense. Do you have Mem Swap Cars enabled? I've read that it has been tweaked recently to help VRAM constraints

Ye bro you wont gain any FPS running triples on a 980ti just by upgrading the CPU. But now you have a great foundation for when you do upgrade your card :)

@@BenchmarkOdysseys Yep, Mem Swap Cars is enabled. I probably just need to turn off enough textures to get under the limit, and then fps would improve decently. But it only really affects me at a few tracks atm, so it's not too much of a worry.