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10 Years ago I built an Ivy Bridge 3570 with parts from this store. I play mainly Indie, Sim and grand strategy games and the small gains in per-core performance with each successive generation of CPU did not instill any desire to upgrade. Sure, I could have more cores, but none of the stuff i did would really benefit.
Hearts of Iron IV though was getting super slow, the AI thread pegging one core at 100%. Originally this system had low latency 1200mhz DDR 3, but after filling all the DIMM slots I was forced to step down to 1066mhz with some very loose timings to keep stability. The Video card I'm currently using is a Radeon RX570 - not up to the latest titles, but for HOI 4 it will suffice, for now !
The other week, my Gigabyte's dual BIOS recovery kicked in twice on startup, which finally prompted the upgrade. Perhaps a decade of 24/7 running was finally taking its toll.
I ordered the following parts to upgrade my rig. Drives, PSU and case would be staying the same. (I did open up the 10yr old Antec 520W 80plus Bronze semi modular though and give it a good clean)
www.overclockers.co.uk
www.overclockers.co.uk
RAM :
www.gskill.com
I chose that memory kit because
I'd heard that with DDR 5 you have to back the frequency down a lot when upgrading to 4 DIMMs. Whilst i might not overclock, I wanted the best memory topology possible for stability when running EXPO profile and for possible use with a newer generation Ryzen that has a better memory controller. So that means a 2 DIMM board with 10 PCB layers or more.
This pretty much narrowed the selection down to this board or the ASUS X670 Gene, at twice the price. After I'd already placed the order, I saw a Buildzoid video where he expressed disappointment at the 2 DIMM AM5 motherboards, saying they won't OC as well as 2 DPC normally does because of the "cramped" and "wierd" layout. I guess we won't know until an AM5 chip with a better memory controller appears.
The board swap was really painless. Only took a few minutes, POST first time. Enabled XMP, PBO and High Efficiency mode, and off we went.
Then I decided to do some cable management, because apparently that's what enthusiasts do these days. Can I get 4 hours of my life back ?
I'm pretty sure Linus TT already did a video showing that even the worst cable mess has no effect on airflow, and the arrangement i finally chose actually sacrifices maintainability in the interest of tucking every drive and cable up against each other and far away, and cable tied off. Worst of all , was the effect of all that stress on my ageing ticker. I work in electronics repair and my everyday experience is of things that appear to work fine until you flex, move or touch them. So every time i rerouted a cable or moved a part i was expecting to have killed it. Yes I suppose the things i handle in my day job are actually faulty and have dry joints and cracked solder balls galore, but i was so relieved to find it still POSTed afterward.
Ultimately its still not gonna win any awards. Well, I have three SATA drives and four case fans, and they're converging on a tiny motherboard with headers scattered to all four corners.
Performance-wise, I wasn't sure what to expect. Six times the cache, nearly six times the memory frequency, 50% more cores, three times as many threads, 50% higher boost clocks.
I loaded up a November 1940 save in HOI 4 and timed how long for a week to pass at speed 5.
The old Ivy Bridge, took 52 seconds.
Rafael ? 7, That's more than 7 times faster !
I also did some reroll scumming on Civ 6. This is now twice as fast on a standard map size, but the bottleneck seems to have shifted away from the CPU - it no longer pegs at 100%, only seeing high utilisation in bursts.
imgur.com
youtu.be
Hearts of Iron IV though was getting super slow, the AI thread pegging one core at 100%. Originally this system had low latency 1200mhz DDR 3, but after filling all the DIMM slots I was forced to step down to 1066mhz with some very loose timings to keep stability. The Video card I'm currently using is a Radeon RX570 - not up to the latest titles, but for HOI 4 it will suffice, for now !
The other week, my Gigabyte's dual BIOS recovery kicked in twice on startup, which finally prompted the upgrade. Perhaps a decade of 24/7 running was finally taking its toll.
I ordered the following parts to upgrade my rig. Drives, PSU and case would be staying the same. (I did open up the 10yr old Antec 520W 80plus Bronze semi modular though and give it a good clean)
MSI MPG B650I Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Mini ITX Motherboard
Order MSI MPG B650I Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Mini ITX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.
www.overclockers.co.uk
AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
Order AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail now online and benefit from fast delivery.
www.overclockers.co.uk
RAM :
F5-6000J3238F16GX2-FX5 - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.
Designed for DDR5-enabled AMD AM5 platforms, Flare X5 series DDR5 memory is built for high performance in a low-profile design. Featuring AMD EXPO overclocking profiles for easy memory overclocking, users can easily enable overclocked performance by simply enabling EXPO in the BIOS on compatible...
www.gskill.com
I chose that memory kit because
- It's on the motherboard's memory compatibility list
- It has Hynix chips which are lower latency and better OC headroom
- has AMD EXPO profile so i don't have to manually tune to get 6000
- relatively low voltage for this kind of kit. Most are CAS 30 and =>1.45V. This kit is CAS 32 but "only" uses 1.35V. I'm likely to operate this pc 24/7 and want it to have a long life.
I'd heard that with DDR 5 you have to back the frequency down a lot when upgrading to 4 DIMMs. Whilst i might not overclock, I wanted the best memory topology possible for stability when running EXPO profile and for possible use with a newer generation Ryzen that has a better memory controller. So that means a 2 DIMM board with 10 PCB layers or more.
This pretty much narrowed the selection down to this board or the ASUS X670 Gene, at twice the price. After I'd already placed the order, I saw a Buildzoid video where he expressed disappointment at the 2 DIMM AM5 motherboards, saying they won't OC as well as 2 DPC normally does because of the "cramped" and "wierd" layout. I guess we won't know until an AM5 chip with a better memory controller appears.
The board swap was really painless. Only took a few minutes, POST first time. Enabled XMP, PBO and High Efficiency mode, and off we went.
Then I decided to do some cable management, because apparently that's what enthusiasts do these days. Can I get 4 hours of my life back ?
I'm pretty sure Linus TT already did a video showing that even the worst cable mess has no effect on airflow, and the arrangement i finally chose actually sacrifices maintainability in the interest of tucking every drive and cable up against each other and far away, and cable tied off. Worst of all , was the effect of all that stress on my ageing ticker. I work in electronics repair and my everyday experience is of things that appear to work fine until you flex, move or touch them. So every time i rerouted a cable or moved a part i was expecting to have killed it. Yes I suppose the things i handle in my day job are actually faulty and have dry joints and cracked solder balls galore, but i was so relieved to find it still POSTed afterward.
Ultimately its still not gonna win any awards. Well, I have three SATA drives and four case fans, and they're converging on a tiny motherboard with headers scattered to all four corners.
Performance-wise, I wasn't sure what to expect. Six times the cache, nearly six times the memory frequency, 50% more cores, three times as many threads, 50% higher boost clocks.
I loaded up a November 1940 save in HOI 4 and timed how long for a week to pass at speed 5.
The old Ivy Bridge, took 52 seconds.
Rafael ? 7, That's more than 7 times faster !
I also did some reroll scumming on Civ 6. This is now twice as fast on a standard map size, but the bottleneck seems to have shifted away from the CPU - it no longer pegs at 100%, only seeing high utilisation in bursts.
imgur.com
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Ryzen 7600 vs I5-3570 in HOI 4 and Civ 6
I finally upgraded my CPU. Can anything make HOI 4 run better or is the game just too broken ? Is reroll scumming in Civ 6 going to get less painful, ...
youtu.be