96GB or 128GB ?

Littlenose

Littlenose

Littlenose

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I'm looking to upgrade my gaming rig from my 5900X with 64GB to a 7800x3d or maybe the 9800x3d when it arrives.

As part of it, I'm also looking to increase the memory to either 96GB ot 128GB.
Will I be better off with 2 x 48GB sticks, or 4 x 32GB sticks?

It'll be primarily used for gaming.
 
both are massive overkill aren't they? even 32gb is enough currently by and large. do you run a spectacular amount of mods or something?
 
You'll want 2 x 48GB sticks at this time. This is because whilst you can go 128GB via 4 x 32GB sticks at the moment, the major issue is most (if not all) of the 7000 Ryzen series CPU's can NOT drive the memory to their rated speeds with fully populated DIMM slots that are dual ranked DIMMs (which is what the 32GB sticks are at the moment, there are no single sided/ranked ones at this time, we're still waiting on those to be released and rumor is for next year at the earliest). So what you end up having is the capacity but none of the speeds you could be having.

In your case, you're losing out on 32GB between going 2 x 48GB DIMMs and 4 x 32GB DIMMs, but you get to run the memory at as fast as they are rated at (if not more if you tweak). Whilst going the 4 x 32GB route at this time (because of being dual rank per DIMM) is usually going to be 3600MT speeds at the very most unless you tweak settings hard. And even then you'll be lucky to hit 4800MT. Much less the normally 6000MT or more by going 2 x 48GB DDR5 with a 7800x3D.
 
B@Th*nG said:
both are massive overkill aren't they? even 32gb is enough currently by and large. do you run a spectacular amount of mods or something?
Click to expand...
yeah, for most things it is overkill.

Unfortunately for my use case, with DCS (flight sim) is that I'm exceeding 64 GB. Although the page file isn't the end of the world, I'd like to explore the possible options of increasing the ram.
I run a separate server on the same machine as the game instance as then the sim runs smoother for me while in VR in a complex mission.

Although I could keep the old 5900X and run the server instance on that, I thought I'd explore the increased ram option first, as then I can save some pennies by selling the older kit.
 
Meddling-Monk said:
You'll want 2 x 48GB sticks at this time. This is because whilst you can go 128GB via 4 x 32GB sticks at the moment, the major issue is most (if not all) of the 7000 Ryzen series CPU's can NOT drive the memory to their rated speeds with fully populated DIMM slots that are dual ranked DIMMs (which is what the 32GB sticks are at the moment, there are no single sided/ranked ones at this time, we're still waiting on those to be released and rumor is for next year at the earliest). So what you end up having is the capacity but none of the speeds you could be having.

In your case, you're losing out on 32GB between going 2 x 48GB DIMMs and 4 x 32GB DIMMs, but you get to run the memory at as fast as they are rated at (if not more if you tweak). Whilst going the 4 x 32GB route at this time (because of being dual rank per DIMM) is usually going to be 3600MT speeds at the very most unless you tweak settings hard. And even then you'll be lucky to hit 4800MT. Much less the normally 6000MT or more by going 2 x 48GB DDR5 with a 7800x3D.
Click to expand...

cheers for clearing that up for me... I was hoping that maybe they'd developed things that the 4x sticks was a better option.
 
"
DCS is really RAM-hungry, the more complex the mission is, the more RAM it'll use (specially in MP).

If you plan on doing a lot of MP, I recommend an upgrade to 32GB, DCS really needs as much fast memory as possible, otherwise it gets "clogged" (the kind of behaviour you described).

These are some performance enhancement guidelines to consider as well:

- Always delete fxo and metashader folders after each update
- The more RAM you have, the better (32+GB recommended)
- Install DCS on SSD or faster (avoid HDD)
- Set up a paging file on SSD or faster (avoid HDD).
- Get rid of any antivirus you have (don't bother with exclusions, it's not enough, just uninstall it)
- Use wired connection rather than wifi

- If you have a gaming mouse with tweakable polling rate, set it to the lowest freq setting (125Hz), DCS doesn't like high polling rates, for some reason (causes massive stutter)

- Shadows, preload radius, viewing distance and anti-aliasing have a considerable performance impact. Tweak them to find your sweetspot.

- The number of objects in the mission is the main fps killer in DCS, so avoid high object concentrations when possible.

- If you're running Windows 10, disable Windows Update service, otherwise it'll mess with drivers and other stuff, causing problems with DCS."

Agree with install on SSD, I installed DCS on regular HDD and it took about 15 minutes to load.
 
I believe the correct answer is the 7950x3d (the x3d chips reduces ram usage on dcs according to a quick Google, along with providing better frame times).

Youd also want to stick to 2 dimm sticks as fast as possible, so 96 (48x2) would also be your best bet, although you may want to try 48 initially (24x2).

And you'd want 16 cores if you're hammering your pc as a server as well
Why not the 7900x3d you ask? Well it's because it's the worst of both worlds. If just purely gaming then 7800x3d...if heavy CPU workloads then 7950x3d.
 
tamzzy said:
I believe the correct answer is the 7950x3d (the x3d chips reduces ram usage on dcs according to a quick Google, along with providing better frame times).

Youd also want to stick to 2 dimm sticks as fast as possible, so 96 (48x2) would also be your best bet, although you may want to try 48 initially (24x2).

And you'd want 16 cores if you're hammering your pc as a server as well
Why not the 7900x3d you ask? Well it's because it's the worst of both worlds. If just purely gaming then 7800x3d...if heavy CPU workloads then 7950x3d.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Although I definitely want an x3d version, I hadn't considered the 7950x3d, I'll look into it.

For the core count:
My understanding is that the DCS server instance isn't able to use multi-threading (yet), but I suspect it will in the future.
DCS sim itself does have the ability to use several threads (4 I think).
 
hornetstinger said:
"
DCS is really RAM-hungry, the more complex the mission is, the more RAM it'll use (specially in MP).

- The number of objects in the mission is the main fps killer in DCS, so avoid high object concentrations when possible.
Click to expand...

This is true and to keep it playable I've had to cut back the number of ground units my script generates already.
 
DCS still has a long way to go regarding the world outside the cockpit, but it has recently started taking small steps forward, and this has rekindled my enthusuasm.
It would be nice if it would handle 1 million units... at the moment I'm counting by the 100's before hitting the tipping point.
 
Littlenose said:
For the core count:
My understanding is that the DCS server instance isn't able to use multi-threading (yet), but I suspect it will in the future.
DCS sim itself does have the ability to use several threads (4 I think).
Click to expand...
Ah fair enough, if 8 cores are sufficient then 7800x3d is the way to go. Purely because you then don't have to rely on windoze assigning threads to incorrect cores
 
Littlenose said:
cheers for clearing that up for me... I was hoping that maybe they'd developed things that the 4x sticks was a better option.
Click to expand...
Most of us on here just game, so the information doesn't filter down that fast, but there certainly have been a lot of BIOS updates RE: memory compatibility since launch. You might find that it does better than expected with 4x sticks, though 48x2 still makes the most sense, in my opinion, because you'd still have the ability to upgrade the memory in future.
 
That all makes sense re the free slots for upgrade, and benefits from the technology still having time to mature a bit more.

It seems that the CAS timings on the 48GB sticks are higher than the 32GB sticks.
Is this much of an issue I should worry about?
 
Meddling-Monk said:
You'll want 2 x 48GB sticks at this time. This is because whilst you can go 128GB via 4 x 32GB sticks at the moment, the major issue is most (if not all) of the 7000 Ryzen series CPU's can NOT drive the memory to their rated speeds with fully populated DIMM slots that are dual ranked DIMMs (which is what the 32GB sticks are at the moment, there are no single sided/ranked ones at this time, we're still waiting on those to be released and rumor is for next year at the earliest). So what you end up having is the capacity but none of the speeds you could be having.

In your case, you're losing out on 32GB between going 2 x 48GB DIMMs and 4 x 32GB DIMMs, but you get to run the memory at as fast as they are rated at (if not more if you tweak). Whilst going the 4 x 32GB route at this time (because of being dual rank per DIMM) is usually going to be 3600MT speeds at the very most unless you tweak settings hard. And even then you'll be lucky to hit 4800MT. Much less the normally 6000MT or more by going 2 x 48GB DDR5 with a 7800x3D.
Click to expand...
It'll probably be the same as x570 in that 4 single rank sticks and 2 dual rank modules will be run well but 4 double rank will be a pain and run at reduced speeds.

I believe only 16 and 24GB modules are single rank for DDR5 and 32 and 48GB will be double rank. So the best bet to balance speed and capacity is 2x48GB double rank modules.

Eventually we'll get single rank 32GB and dual rank 64GB modules at decent speeds which will open up 128GB configs at decent speed.

Edit - it looks like there are 32GB single rank modules but they're slow and expensive.
 
Last edited:
Tetras said:
No, when you're going for capacity the speed isn't a big deal and the X3D will mitigate a lot of the impact.
Click to expand...
I guess the question is how to get the balance of speed and capacity right.

I'm certainly a lot more informed now than I was a few hours ago :)
 
Minstadave said:
It'll probably be the same as x570 in that 4 single rank sticks and 2 dual rank modules will be run well but 4 double rank will be a pain and run at reduced speeds.

I believe only 16 and 24GB modules are single rank for DDR5 and 32 and 48GB will be double rank. So the best bet to balance speed and capacity is 2x48GB double rank modules.

Eventually we'll get single rank 32GB modules which will open up 128GB configs at decent speed.

Edit - it looks like there are 32GB single rank modules but they're slow and expensive.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the input, very much appreciated.

Still not sure what I'm going to do, but it's interseting to know that the single rank sticks are an option.
Would that require a high spec mobo? So far I've been thinking that I'd get a MSI MAG Tomahawk.
 
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