CPU question.

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
Wanted a few opinions.It has arrived again.The annual PC upgrade.
Which would be better for FSX;
3.0ghz Core2duo running at 1333mhz bus speed,
Or
2.6ghz Core2quad running at 1333mhz bus speed.

Buddha13

 

[IanP]

I'm in the same boat, but from my research it appears that the higher clock speed is more important to FSX than the number of cores. Hopefully someone with personal experience will be able to chip in soon.

Ian P.

 

[harleyman]

Well here is my findings...

I ran a Q6600 2.4 OCed to 3.42

I ran a Q9650 2.93 OCed to 3.8(unstable there)

And I now run a E8600 3.33 stock and love it much


I see no real difference in them....FSX did load faster with the quads ....But saw no real difference in the sim that I could tell


But remember..I'm having a very unusual screen issue and have not flown the E8600 very much...But it was nice....I do not think my issue has any relationship to my processor at all....


Hope that helps some...

 

[txnetcop]

If you are going to buy the Q9550 and up you only need to oc a very small amount to reap big benefits. Having said that my E8600 handles FSX very well as does my wife's OC'd E8400. There are others in here who never seem to post but the systems with the E8400 OC'd and Q9550/Q9650 OC'd run FSX very well. As Harleyman said the backgrounds load faster and distance textures are a little sharper in FSX with the use of the OC'd Quads. Of course you can improve your textures by changing your FSX.cfg LOD_radius to 7.5 if you have the horsepower to run it.
Ted

 

[Buddha13]

Any one else got any more info.Big difference in the Core2 and Quad prices here in the UK.

Buddha13

 

[kilo delta]

As the others have said....the faster the clock speed, the better the performance in FSX. I'd personally recommend going for a quad and overclocking the heck out of it!

 

[codeseven]

Does FSX make use of more than one core? I think, if I remember right that one of the updates allowed it to recognize and use dual cores, is that right? But I dont recall anything about it's ability to recognize and make use of quad cores. If all thats true, then it wouldn't make sense to buy anything more than a dual core CPU for running FSX.

 

[Roger]

FsX Acceleration can use all 4 cores.

 

[codeseven]

FsX Acceleration can use all 4 cores.

Good to know, thanks.

Is there a limit to how much memory FSX can recognize? Has anybody added memory until it seems as though there is no longer any performance increase in FSX? Or is all that limited by your OS anyway, ie. Vista 32 will only recognize a max of 4gigs memory.

 

[harleyman]

FSX is not horribly dependant od memory......

All your reading and research on FSX will only mention CPU and Vid cards...

It will throw OOM errors tho at times......

 

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
Well the new system looks like it is going to be,
Intel Core2quad Q9550 2.8ghz
Abit I35 Pro XE mobo
MSI GTX280 OC
Seagate 750gb HD
4gb Kingston PC2-8500 Hyper X memory 1066mhz
OCZ 700W stealth power supply
Antec 1200 Ultimate Gamer case
Creative Extreme music soundcard
Plus usual optical drives.

Thanks for the info,

Buddha13

 

[jmig]

Hi all,
Well the new system looks like it is going to be,
Intel Core2quad Q9550 2.8ghz
Abit I35 Pro XE mobo
MSI GTX280 OC
Seagate 750gb HD
4gb Kingston PC2-8500 Hyper X memory 1066mhz
OCZ 700W stealth power supply
Antec 1200 Ultimate Gamer case
Creative Extreme music soundcard
Plus usual optical drives.

Thanks for the info,

Buddha13

I just upgraded to the Q9550. It is a nice CPU and is at the sweet spot price wise. I bumped mine up to 3.0 GHz using Eazytune and it is running there with no problems.

 

[Wiens]

Well, Ted called me out on this one..........

I have the e8400 with a stable OC @3.50 Ghz. I have 4 gigs of ram slightly oc'd and no heat or stability issues.


Kevin