i-7 2600 (non k) and GTX 1050ti: Is it any good?

[Yri]

Hello folks,

As my lag spike issues become worse (especially on the Nurburgring), I am beginning to look into a new GPU, and into upgrading my ram. Currently, I have a Dell XPS8300, all stock, that I bought for $75. Have been using the old beast for a while now, but these lag spikes are starting to get to me. I was looking into the GTX 1050ti because it does fit with my motherboard, and the reviews of it seem alright. Plus, I'm upgrading from 8gb of ram to 16gb. What do yalls think?

 

[Lizard Of Bodom]

Hello folks,

As my lag spike issues become worse (especially on the Nurburgring), I am beginning to look into a new GPU, and into upgrading my ram. Currently, I have a Dell XPS8300, all stock, that I bought for $75. Have been using the old beast for a while now, but these lag spikes are starting to get to me. I was looking into the GTX 1050ti because it does fit with my motherboard, and the reviews of it seem alright. Plus, I'm upgrading from 8gb of ram to 16gb. What do yalls think?

I have 1050Ti in my HTPC paired with i5-2500 and ocasionally i play games on that aswell and have to say I was very positively surprised with 1050Ti performance. in FHD it can handle any game, just ofcourse with lowered settings so Im sure you will be able to tweak it to handle AC even with SOL and CSP, its not very demanding game if you dont go overboard with graphical tweaks.
Your CPU will be ok in most cases but on tracks like LAC with 42users it will probably struggle, 16GB of Ram is also the bare minimum for comfortable play on some tracks, I saw usage of 15GB+ on LAC track very often and had to upgrade to 32 but all depends on rig setup and tracks you will be playing on.

on a sidenote - thats probably worst time ever to be buying GPU but I guess you know that already? :/

 

[RasmusP]

Hi,
When googling I find different configurations for that dell PC. What graphics card is currently in there? A gtx 530?

Either way, the 2600, even non-k is still good enough for most sims. However it will definitely stutter a bit here and there when driving with larger grid sizes (15+ cars) or if the track is massive like la canyons.

The 1050ti is a good card for its price (when not inflated due to shortage right now).
It should handle assetto corsa very well if you don't have a 1440p or 4k monitor!

Before you upgrade anything, you should find out what's really going on with your pc though.
Are you on windows 10?

Then simply open Taskmanager and go into the performance tab, where you can see cpu/memory/hard drives/gpu on the left and when you click on these, you will see the loads on the right.

We need the graphics card load!
So as soon as you have this open, just go into AC, drive a bit until you get one of the "hangs" and then close ac or alt+tab out of it and take a screenshot with the gpu load showing.

If it's below 95%, then it's not the graphics card causing the hang but instead it's something else.


The second thing you should do is enable developer apps (either via editing the ini file, just Google for enabling dev apps) or via content manager with a simple click in the ac - > apps settings.

Then go on track with a session config that causes hangs and enable the two performance apps.
The symbol is changing with csp vs stock config but you should find them.

One should have "fps" in it or gpu.

Anyway, they look like this:

We need the fps, main_t and phy_late value.

Main_t close to 100 indicates a cpu limit. When it reaches 100, you get a lot of different, stuttering glitches.

When phy_late is going up quickly (I've seen 2000 after one lap), then you'll get cars jumping around etc.

The fps value is just to put things into relation and shape an overall overview.

If you don't know how to take and upload Screenshots:
Simply press the "print" key on your keyboard, open paint (the normal, not paint 3d), press ctrl+v to insert the screenshot, use the cut tool to mark the area you want to keep.
Then press ctrl+x to cut it out.
Make a new paint file (top left menu - > new) and don't save the current one.

Make the white area in this new file very small and then press ctrl+v to just have the cut out area.

Now save as - > jpg, open the location and just drag & drop into the rd reply window.

Sounds very complicated but when you did it once, it only takes a few seconds.

RD only allows for small picture uploads so you need to get rid of unnecessary pixels and also compress it to jpg.

 

[Yri]

Hi,
When googling I find different configurations for that dell PC. What graphics card is currently in there? A gtx 530?

Either way, the 2600, even non-k is still good enough for most sims. However it will definitely stutter a bit here and there when driving with larger grid sizes (15+ cars) or if the track is massive like la canyons.

The 1050ti is a good card for its price (when not inflated due to shortage right now).
It should handle assetto corsa very well if you don't have a 1440p or 4k monitor!

Before you upgrade anything, you should find out what's really going on with your pc though.
Are you on windows 10?

Then simply open Taskmanager and go into the performance tab, where you can see cpu/memory/hard drives/gpu on the left and when you click on these, you will see the loads on the right.

We need the graphics card load!
So as soon as you have this open, just go into AC, drive a bit until you get one of the "hangs" and then close ac or alt+tab out of it and take a screenshot with the gpu load showing.

If it's below 95%, then it's not the graphics card causing the hang but instead it's something else.


The second thing you should do is enable developer apps (either via editing the ini file, just Google for enabling dev apps) or via content manager with a simple click in the ac - > apps settings.

Then go on track with a session config that causes hangs and enable the two performance apps.
The symbol is changing with csp vs stock config but you should find them.

One should have "fps" in it or gpu.

Anyway, they look like this:
View attachment 485147

We need the fps, main_t and phy_late value.

Main_t close to 100 indicates a cpu limit. When it reaches 100, you get a lot of different, stuttering glitches.

When phy_late is going up quickly (I've seen 2000 after one lap), then you'll get cars jumping around etc.

The fps value is just to put things into relation and shape an overall overview.

If you don't know how to take and upload Screenshots:
Simply press the "print" key on your keyboard, open paint (the normal, not paint 3d), press ctrl+v to insert the screenshot, use the cut tool to mark the area you want to keep.
Then press ctrl+x to cut it out.
Make a new paint file (top left menu - > new) and don't save the current one.

Make the white area in this new file very small and then press ctrl+v to just have the cut out area.

Now save as - > jpg, open the location and just drag & drop into the rd reply window.

Sounds very complicated but when you did it once, it only takes a few seconds.

RD only allows for small picture uploads so you need to get rid of unnecessary pixels and also compress it to jpg.

Thanks to you both for the replies. My current GPU is a AMD Radeon 5670 (1gb, comes stock from factory like that), and I am running windows 7. I can't provide screenshots at the moment, but the FPS with lowest settings, Nurburgring with 32 cars (online) is about 25 fps when all cars are around, with major skips. I remember looking at the graphics stats app and seeing that the GPU was maxed out (99%) and RAM was looking pretty thin, about 5-6 GB's used out of 8 (and considering its a Radeon, there is that mysterious computer-eating-ram kind of thing. At idle (nothing open), its using 2 gb, so I'm pretty much maxed out!). The CPU was also doing just fine, about 45-50% usage (which to me seems a bit low, though the CPU was not overheating, stable 160 degrees Fahrenheit) with the previous situation (Nurburgring with 32 cars). Mainly why I asked here is because of seeing those values.

Also, Lizard of Bodom, I don't plan on driving LAC anytime soon. Something that'll get me a stable 60 fps will do just fine, namely why I'm looking at the 1050ti. Also, yes, I know it is a horrible time to be looking at GPU's. I may wait a while to buy one, as I do like to plan ahead instead of asking questions as I'm on the brink of buying something.

Thanks!

 

[RasmusP]

AMD Radeon 5670

Ouff.. Yeah ok, you need an upgrade!
I looked at some older benchmarks to get some perspective on the performance.. about 30-50% performance of a gtx 260, which is about 30% of the 1050 ti.

So definitely your bottleneck here!

Nurburgring with 32 cars (online) is about 25 fps when all cars are around, with major skips.

25 fps should be easily doable with a non-k i7 2600! How many overlay HUD apps are you running? Sadly these AC overlay "apps" are all lowering the CPU headroom.
The difference for me, no apps vs my normal racing HUD is about 40%.
But anyway, you should have around 50 fps even with a lot of apps.

about 5-6 GB's used out of 8

That's in theory okay! Windows 7 and the newer ones are very good at putting everything that doesn't have priority into the page file on your hard drive. As long as you're not hitting the 8 GB, it's okay in my experience!
But additional 8 GB won't hurt either way so go for it

The CPU was also doing just fine, about 45-50% usage

Now this is a bit more complicated.
When you read out the application threads of AC via process explorer (little exe you can download for free), you'll see that AC only uses 2 big CPU threads and a few little threads.

This means that in simple theory, AC can only use 3 CPU cores. 2 for the big threads and one core doing all the rest.
So in theory, you'll only see:
100% divided by your 8 CPU threads (4 cores + hyperthreading) = 12.5% per CPU thread maximum load.

12.5% * 3 = 37,5% maximum load caused by AC.

However your CPU can still be the limiting factor, because you can't split the AC threads further and the other CPU threads simply sit around, doing nothing...

Now Windows does some magic shuffling, which you can imagine like this:
Slowing everything down to a single CPU cycle:

Core 1: calculating thread 1 of AC
Core 2: calculating thread 2 of AC
Core 3: managing everything else
Core 4: caching for what comes next
Virtual cores (HT): caching for what comes next

Then the next CPU cycle:
Core 1: caching for what comes next
Core 2: caching for what comes next
Core 3: calculating thread 1 of AC
Core 4: calculating thread 2 of AC
Virtual cores (HT): managing everything else

Now this happens with up to 3.8 GHz for your CPU. Taskmanager etc having a tick rate of 1 second, you're seeing at 3.800.000.000 CPU cycles AVERAGED!

What I want to say:
Assetto Corsa can't use all of your CPU. So you can still be CPU limited with an overall CPU load of only 12.5%, which would mean a single thread application using that one core to the maximum.
However due to the averaging from TaskManager, you'll see ALL CPU cores used to some extend and get the impression of the CPU having some massive headroom.
But it has none.

Easy solution:
The graphics card load works differently. All applications can use it to at least around 94% (sometimes some applications have issues using everything but it's always at least a bit more than 90%!).

So if your graphics card is NOT at 90%+, your CPU is the limit (or a FPS limiter, vsync or something else that restricts the FPS).


However:
The render stats AC overlay app can show the MAIN_T and PHY_LATE, which both can indicate a CPU limitation and are very useful.


Hope that helps! But I completely agree that you need a better graphics card and that your CPU is a LOT better than your current 5670.

 

[Lizard Of Bodom]

Thanks to you both for the replies. My current GPU is a AMD Radeon 5670 (1gb, comes stock from factory like that), and I am running windows 7. ....

yikes, ok so your GPU is basically non existent and yes 1050Ti will make huge difference and will work great with i7.
as for RAM - im guessing yes, but you do have x64 version of W7? just double checking as some people are not aware of 4gig limitation on x86 W7.
on Nurburgring with 31 other players my Ram is spiking to 9GB so on your setup 16GB will be enough for sure.

 

[Yri]

Ouff.. Yeah ok, you need an upgrade!
I looked at some older benchmarks to get some perspective on the performance.. about 30-50% performance of a gtx 260, which is about 30% of the 1050 ti.

So definitely your bottleneck here!

25 fps should be easily doable with a non-k i7 2600! How many overlay HUD apps are you running? Sadly these AC overlay "apps" are all lowering the CPU headroom.
The difference for me, no apps vs my normal racing HUD is about 40%.
But anyway, you should have around 50 fps even with a lot of apps.

That's in theory okay! Windows 7 and the newer ones are very good at putting everything that doesn't have priority into the page file on your hard drive. As long as you're not hitting the 8 GB, it's okay in my experience!
But additional 8 GB won't hurt either way so go for it

Now this is a bit more complicated.
When you read out the application threads of AC via process explorer (little exe you can download for free), you'll see that AC only uses 2 big CPU threads and a few little threads.

This means that in simple theory, AC can only use 3 CPU cores. 2 for the big threads and one core doing all the rest.
So in theory, you'll only see:
100% divided by your 8 CPU threads (4 cores + hyperthreading) = 12.5% per CPU thread maximum load.

12.5% * 3 = 37,5% maximum load caused by AC.

However your CPU can still be the limiting factor, because you can't split the AC threads further and the other CPU threads simply sit around, doing nothing...

Now Windows does some magic shuffling, which you can imagine like this:
Slowing everything down to a single CPU cycle:

Core 1: calculating thread 1 of AC
Core 2: calculating thread 2 of AC
Core 3: managing everything else
Core 4: caching for what comes next
Virtual cores (HT): caching for what comes next

Then the next CPU cycle:
Core 1: caching for what comes next
Core 2: caching for what comes next
Core 3: calculating thread 1 of AC
Core 4: calculating thread 2 of AC
Virtual cores (HT): managing everything else

Now this happens with up to 3.8 GHz for your CPU. Taskmanager etc having a tick rate of 1 second, you're seeing at 3.800.000.000 CPU cycles AVERAGED!

What I want to say:
Assetto Corsa can't use all of your CPU. So you can still be CPU limited with an overall CPU load of only 12.5%, which would mean a single thread application using that one core to the maximum.
However due to the averaging from TaskManager, you'll see ALL CPU cores used to some extend and get the impression of the CPU having some massive headroom.
But it has none.

Easy solution:
The graphics card load works differently. All applications can use it to at least around 94% (sometimes some applications have issues using everything but it's always at least a bit more than 90%!).

So if your graphics card is NOT at 90%+, your CPU is the limit (or a FPS limiter, vsync or something else that restricts the FPS).


However:
The render stats AC overlay app can show the MAIN_T and PHY_LATE, which both can indicate a CPU limitation and are very useful.


Hope that helps! But I completely agree that you need a better graphics card and that your CPU is a LOT better than your current 5670.

Alright, thank you! I figured AC wasn't all that CPU heavy, as even Minecraft takes up more CPU power (doesn't run the graphics card as hard though, unless shaders lol) and also, I do not run an FPS limiter or Vsync. The FPS limiter did not decrease performance all that much (as you would expect, its a limiter) but Vsync made the FPS go from 25 down to at least 15, with many, many more skips. Also, I run nearly any apps when driving, so at this point is pretty much conclusive that the CPU isn't maxed out. Also, if the CPU was maxed, wouldn't it be a lot hotter than 160 Fahrenheit? I use Hwininfo to monitor my temperatures after every session. Namely why I asked about the 1050ti is because of my 5670, its so old and the drivers don't work like they're supposed to (some sand textures in other games are broken beyond repair), and I figured it's soon time for a new one.

Also Lizard of Bodom, I do have Windows 7 64 bit. I also want 16 GB of ram for other gaming purposes, and I don't want to max out the RAM in certain situations, basically give the RAM some headroom. Thanks for the replies!

 

[RasmusP]

I figured AC wasn't all that CPU heavy

Hehe "CPU heavy" is a difficult word to use in this scenario.
Most racers want either 90 fps for their VR headsets or even more fps for their 144 Hz monitors.
It does make a difference to your precision on track when you can achieve and actually see higher fps.

You need a very very good CPU to have some HUD apps running and keep the fps above 90 at all times.
But you only really need 3 cores of that superb CPUs...

So "heavy" depends on how you mean it. But it won't make your CPU overheat compared to other games, that's true!

Vsync made the FPS go from 25 down to at least 15, with many, many more skips.

Yeah that's normal. Vsync means that the fps are synced to your monitor.
So each frame can either be displayed once before the next frame is ready or twice or a 3rd or 4th time.
Meaning at 60 Hz, which means 16.6666667 ms between frames (1 second = 1000 ms, divided by 60 = 16.6666..):

A frame can either be displayed for 16.67 ms, 33.34 ms, 50,01ms, etc.
Which equals to 60 fps, 30 fps, 15 fps.

This can change from frame to frame, depending on this frame pacing.
So you sometimes only see a frame 1 monitor refresh long and the next frame 3 monitor refreshes long.
This makes it stutter a lot!

Without vsync, the next frame is pushed into the monitor whenever it's ready, leading to a "tearing border" becoming visible if you focus on it.

At lower than the monitor's refresh rate fps, the tearing is less annoying than the stuttering though.

I run nearly any apps when driving, so at this point is pretty much conclusive that the CPU isn't maxed out.

Yep, definitely not your i7 2600 then!

Also, if the CPU was maxed, wouldn't it be a lot hotter than 160 Fahrenheit?

160 Fahrenheit are ~71°C according to google.
It highly depends on your cooler and case what's hot and what is not hot.

Overall 160 Fahrenheit is completely fine. With my cooler, which is currently keeping my 10600k slightly below 90°c at full load though, my non-overclocked i7 2600k didn't go above 55°c / 130 Fahrenheit.

Namely why I asked about the 1050ti is because of my 5670, its so old and the drivers don't work like they're supposed to (some sand textures in other games are broken beyond repair), and I figured it's soon time for a new one.

Ouch.. Yeah it really makes sense to upgrade!

Btw if you want to upgrade NOW, you could also look into the lowest gaming GPUs.
The performance and driver support would still be leagues better!
But don't look for office GPUs like a 1030. These really suck in their 3D modes and are only good for watching 4k videos and stuff like that.

GTX 950, 770, 1050 non-ti
AMD 270/80/90 or newer would also be a great upgrade! Don't look into the 250/260 and the other 50/60 ones though. They suck...

Maybe there's a nice deal on the used market?

 

[Yri]

Hehe "CPU heavy" is a difficult word to use in this scenario.
Most racers want either 90 fps for their VR headsets or even more fps for their 144 Hz monitors.
It does make a difference to your precision on track when you can achieve and actually see higher fps.

You need a very very good CPU to have some HUD apps running and keep the fps above 90 at all times.
But you only really need 3 cores of that superb CPUs...

So "heavy" depends on how you mean it. But it won't make your CPU overheat compared to other games, that's true!

Yeah that's normal. Vsync means that the fps are synced to your monitor.
So each frame can either be displayed once before the next frame is ready or twice or a 3rd or 4th time.
Meaning at 60 Hz, which means 16.6666667 ms between frames (1 second = 1000 ms, divided by 60 = 16.6666..):

A frame can either be displayed for 16.67 ms, 33.34 ms, 50,01ms, etc.
Which equals to 60 fps, 30 fps, 15 fps.

This can change from frame to frame, depending on this frame pacing.
So you sometimes only see a frame 1 monitor refresh long and the next frame 3 monitor refreshes long.
This makes it stutter a lot!

Without vsync, the next frame is pushed into the monitor whenever it's ready, leading to a "tearing border" becoming visible if you focus on it.

At lower than the monitor's refresh rate fps, the tearing is less annoying than the stuttering though.

Yep, definitely not your i7 2600 then!

160 Fahrenheit are ~71°C according to google.
It highly depends on your cooler and case what's hot and what is not hot.

Overall 160 Fahrenheit is completely fine. With my cooler, which is currently keeping my 10600k slightly below 90°c at full load though, my non-overclocked i7 2600k didn't go above 55°c / 130 Fahrenheit.

Ouch.. Yeah it really makes sense to upgrade!

Btw if you want to upgrade NOW, you could also look into the lowest gaming GPUs.
The performance and driver support would still be leagues better!
But don't look for office GPUs like a 1030. These really suck in their 3D modes and are only good for watching 4k videos and stuff like that.

GTX 950, 770, 1050 non-ti
AMD 270/80/90 or newer would also be a great upgrade! Don't look into the 250/260 and the other 50/60 ones though. They suck...

Maybe there's a nice deal on the used market?

I'll be upgrading my monitor soon, also. Currently I have some Sanyo monitor thats 720p 60hz, does the job but it would be nice to have something a little larger and with somewhat better hertz, such as a 29 LG Ultrawide. I don't need much FPS to be good, without other cars on the track I run at about 50ish, lowest of the low when it comes to graphics. Did achieve a 7:31.678 with a E92 M3 2 days ago on the Nurburgring Tourist configuration, so I can still kick pretty good. I think I might be even faster if I could tell where I was going lol!

Currently I'm running the stock CPU cooler, its pretty much a fan sitting on some fins, of which are on top of the CPU. Does look like an efficient setup if I'm honest.
Like I did say, I might end up waiting a good while until I can afford a 1050ti, I will look into those other GTX and AMD's you recommended to me. Whenever I get another GPU I'll either update this thread or make a new one. Thanks you both for the help!

 

[Vintagedriver01]

Before doing any GPU upgrade on that old rig, always check if your PSU can handle the new card watts and do not forget to check the availability GPU connectors. I know some Dell PSU were being fitted with only one single 6 pins connector, think its good to know on beforehand if your card is using an 8pins or 2x6 pin connector layout.

 

[RasmusP]

Before doing any GPU upgrade on that old rig, always check if your PSU can handle the new card watts and do not forget to check the availability GPU connectors. I know some Dell PSU were being fitted with only one single 6 pins connector, think its good to know on beforehand if your card is using an 8pins or 2x6 pin connector layout.

Very good point! I always forget about this...
Pre-built PCs can have the weirdest PSUs!

 

[Lizard Of Bodom]

Very good point! I always forget about this...
Pre-built PCs can have the weirdest PSUs!

..but it something works out as advantage as the quality of PSU's in pre-built PCs like Dell or HP are surprisingly good compared to aftermarket low-tier ones. The PC i mentioned on my first comment is HP office pre-built sustem from 2011 and i am still running its original 300W power supply in it, it has no problems handling 100% utilisation of i5 and full load of 1050Ti. But its understandable when you take PSU in hand as it weights equivalent of small brick. That gives me much more confidence than "450w" PSUs that are lighter than your coffe mug...

The problem actually might be in OP's PCIex slot - make sure that you a) have one, b) what gen it is. Some cards like 1050Ti for example takes all power only from PCIex slot, if you have older generation it may not output enough power trough it.

 

[Mogget]

How does the 1050Ti compare to a 2GB GTX 770? I had the latter in my previous PC, and it could easily handle AC @ 1080p resolution when coupled with the 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM and i5 4690k CPU @ 4.3Ghz. The question is......how much of a difference would my overclocked CPU have made when compared to your stock speed i7-2600?

 

[RasmusP]

How does the 1050Ti compare to a 2GB GTX 770? I had the latter in my previous PC, and it could easily handle AC @ 1080p resolution when coupled with the 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM and i5 4690k CPU @ 4.3Ghz. The question is......how much of a difference would my overclocked CPU have made when compared to your stock speed i7-2600?

GTX 770 has mostly the same but depending on the workload-mix, a better performance than the 1050 ti!
Only issue would be the 2GB vram, depending on textures from mods and track size.
Getting a 4GB 770 would be plenty enough though!