The ageless computer question...

[HumanDrone]

All, it's been ages... I can't believe how long. I've been retired for 4 years and still haven't found time to upgrade my computer.  So what's up with WOFF/WOTR?  Do I still basically want the fastest clock speed processor and best graphics card that I can afford? Which, thank God,I could afford quite a bit, but bumping around here, I notice Pol saying to hold back your settings for Over the Top and work them up, does that count for truly "High end" rigs?  Everyone seems to be saying AMD X3D chips instead of Intel 14900K or teh newer one, which Tom's Hardware is kinda rough on... and I'd really like to order today or tomorrow, though today seems very unlikely now...

Right now, the only thing different from the listings in my signature line is I'm up at Windows 10 - didn't want to bother with the upgrade workaround because, well, look how old this thing is! I built in 14 years ago and it wasn't "front of the class" then!

[Rick Rawlings]

Well, I have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz and an Nividia 3060 Ti with 64GB of RAM running in 2560x1440 and in 1918 for sure, I get a bit of slowdown when the fur starts to fly. So...something faster than that, I would say! Good luck! 

[Shootingstar2]

Ah matey go ahead and it you only live once

[HumanDrone]

Rick, you are, of course a very experienced and respected and helpful flyer here, so much thanks!  It's interesting to me that AMD and NVidia can live together now, so hmmm, maybe I'll have to take Shootingstar2's advice!  Still, I look at the difference in price between an NVidia GTX5080 -5090 and that's an eye-popper!  Meanwhile, the AMD 980 X3D is affordable and supposedly better for gaming applications than even the next one, what, 995X3D, and also much better than Intel's latest offerings.  But our sims don't act like other games, which is why I came here. I hope Pol or winder weigh in, don't want to bother them specifically...  But yeah, thanks!

[Rick Rawlings]

Pol doesn't follow this board too much, you'll have better luck catching him on the other forum. Cheers!

[HumanDrone]

Thanks, Rick, I have posted over there as well.  I thought we were coming back to this one after that big snafu years back, but I guess not!  Happy New Year!

[Rick Rawlings]

Ha! I thought so too, but here we are! My dim recollection is that clock speed is still king over number of cores. Have you checked https://www.logicalincrements.com/

for getting a system together? They might be able to help with what plays nice with what...

[HumanDrone]

No, but I will!  Thanks, Rick!

[+Erik]

On 12/31/2025 at 7:00 PM, Rick Rawlings said:

Ha! I thought so too, but here we are! My dim recollection is that clock speed is still king over number of cores. Have you checked https://www.logicalincrements.com/

for getting a system together? They might be able to help with what plays nice with what...

I prefer cores over clock. Think of it as 32 guys building a house verses 1 guy building a house at two times the speed. The 32 guys will always win even if they are department of motor vehicle ex-employees.

[space_ghost]

1 hour ago, Erik said:

I prefer cores over clock. Think of it as 32 guys building a house verses 1 guy building a house at two times the speed. The 32 guys will always win even if they are department of motor vehicle ex-employees.

That assumes that the program itself is designed to handle multithreading, which while it's becoming more prevalent, is still an exception moreso than a rule.

[+Erik]

Sure but the OS and everything else still has to run off that CPU and if the OS, GPU, and Game are fighting for processing time it turns into a vicious cycle of hurry up and wait.