question for virtuali, if you dont mind...

[byron4life]

Hello Virtuali, I would like your opinion if you do not mind pertaining to hardware. Currently, I have a phenom 9950 w/ 4 gib mem and a gtx 260 core 216. Allthough it runs FSX okay, I am looking for more frames. Overclocking my Phenom to 3.0 GHz helps, but I would like a little more performance. Do you think the current processors  will show a signifigant gain (Phemon II's or core I7), or should I wait for something coming down the pipeline. My budget is limited, so I probably am leaning towards the phenom II 940 since it is AM2+, and I do like the rest of my components. Ive been reading that overclocking these processors is relatively easy, as much as 3.7 on a good cooler. This processor should be a big upgrade from my 9950, right? I do see the benefits from 2.6 to 2.9 in frames at Zurich, as much as 5-7 frames to be honest, so I could only imagine FSX running at 3.7 - 3.8? Thank you for your time, I really appreciate what FSDreamteam does for the flight sim community.

[longbow]

Ok sorry to interfere. Although I don't have an i7 processor, I hear they work pretty good with FSX. Right now i7 is still expensive but till the end of the year prices will certainly drop. Also Intel has announced they will replace the current i7 processors with newer i7 this year. So I'll say you wait a bit. I currently have a Q6600 oc-ed to 3.00Ghz. Same GPU as yours. But I can tell you what I discovered. Not necessarily high FPS means smooth gameplay in FSX. I happen to have a smoother gameplay at 20FPS in some areas and get same FPS or maybe higher in other areas but with a lot of stutters. That depends on many factors. High amount of autogen is a killer for the CPU. So tweaking FSX.cfg a bit won't hurt. I always keep my autogen slider to dense, but I tweaked FSX to render trees to 4500 an buildings to 3000. Also I can tell I get much better results with the new Windows7. Although in beta is very good compared to Vista (64bit both of course, because 64bit versions can handle more than 4Gb of RAM). I put an i7 processor on my buying list also, and coupled with the next version of windows7 (notice the magic number 7 here  ) I hope I'll get fantastic results.

But you're getting only 5-7FPS on Zurich? Most certainly you have a bottleneck in your PC configuration. I've never seen FPS under 18 on any of FSdreamteam airports. Not even at KJFK and they're all smooth compared to other sceneries. And remember I keep the sliders all to the right except for autogen of course. I guess you need a serious upgrade.

[skydriver]

But you're getting only 5-7FPS on Zurich? Most certainly you have a bottleneck in your PC configuration. I've never seen FPS under 18 on any of FSdreamteam airports. Not even at KJFK and they're all smooth compared to other sceneries. And remember I keep the sliders all to the right except for autogen of course. I guess you need a serious upgrade.

i guess he meant he got an increase in fps of 5-7 when overclocking his cpu from 2.6 to 2.9Ghz, not that he gets 5-7 fps on Zurich 

[byron4life]

im sorry, I meant a 5-7 fps increase, not just 5-7 fps. Sorry for the confusion...