Worth Upgrading my CPU?

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Barry Burton
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Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Barry Burton »

At the minute I have an i7 4770k and it's pretty good but recently I've found quite a few ZDoom mods and maps kinda struggle on it. I just tried Elementalism and I was getting single figure frame rates in some areas!

I realise that GZDoom is pretty dependent on CPU rather GPU power so I've been thinking of getting something a little newer. About the only games I play these days are Quake and Doom along with emulation of older systems so a CPU is probably a worthwhile upgrade. Problem is that to get something newer I also have to get a new mobo and RAM which bumps up the price considerably.

Looking around it looks like the i5 11600k is a pretty good deal as I can get one of those, mobo and 16 gig DDR4 for around £350. I've already got a GTX 1080ti so I don't think I'll be bothering replacing that just yet!

So my big question is would that CPU make a huge difference to ZDoom and its more demanding maps and mods?
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Rachael
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Rachael »

Yes - that upgrade will make a huge difference, and will indeed help to play Elementalism at better frame rates. It might not absolutely crush it in those single frame rate areas but it will definitely do a bit better.
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Kappes Buur
 
 
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Kappes Buur »

It's definitely worth it.

I just upgraded with
  • ROG STRIX B550-A Gaming
  • Ryzen™ 5 5600X
  • Ripjaws V Series 32GB
for about C$ 850, and reusing everything else.

Not exactly the latest and greatest, but that made a big difference playing something like BoA, Elementalism :D
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Graf Zahl »

A modern CPU will definitely make a difference. I recently upgraded from an i7-3770 to an i7-12700 (bought a completely new system, though) and got nearly double the performance as before. So even with a slightly less powerful CPU there should be a significant boost. I went for the high end solution because I need this for running a C++ compiler mainly, so more cores definitely matter here.

(... but it makes me wonder if we ever get another single core speed doubling - this one was 10 years...)
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Barry Burton
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Barry Burton »

That's great to hear as I've couldn't resist and chucked £355 for the mobo, RAM, CPU and a tube of thermal paste. It's the first big upgrade in quite a few years and now I'm like a wee boy on Christmas Eve!

BoA was definitely another project that didn't run as well as I'd have liked so it'll be great to go back and check it out afresh.

It does seem a little bizarre on the surface that my machine can run most modern AAA games like Elden Ring well but stuggles with some Doom projects. Still, that's part of the fun of enjoying old games and old code bases. :)
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Rachael
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Rachael »

Graf Zahl wrote:A modern CPU will definitely make a difference. I recently upgraded from an i7-3770 to an i7-12700 (bought a completely new system, though) and got nearly double the performance as before. So even with a slightly less powerful CPU there should be a significant boost. I went for the high end solution because I need this for running a C++ compiler mainly, so more cores definitely matter here.

(... but it makes me wonder if we ever get another single core speed doubling - this one was 10 years...)
Yes - upgrading for compiler speed is definitely worth it, too.

GZDoom used to take about 5-10 minutes compiling from scratch on my old PC, on the new one it doesn't even take a minute. It has double the cores, much higher clock speed, and is also modern.

Changing core headers (like doomdef.h) is also way less painful, too.
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Barry Burton
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Re: Worth Upgrading my CPU?

Post by Barry Burton »

I don't really do anything productivity-wise - I wouldn't know where to begin compiling code. I went for the 11600k purely for its single core speed as I only really run old stuff or newer stuff built upon older philosophies like GZDoom. It does seem that the trend is on more cores rather than single core speed these days. I wonder how or if that'll affect source ports of older games years down the line. I'm sure most Quake engines will run better but I've actually been using Iron Wail as my daily Quake engine and it really takes advantage of my GPU. There's not a mapset for Quake that I don't get 100's of FPS on.

Kinda looking forward to seeing how running emulators'll go, though.
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