Is upgrade to an i7 necessary?

[brigs2381]

Quick question. I have a Q9550 OC'd to 3.4Ghz and was wondering if I would see a tremendous fps boost if upgrading to and i7 K series? I would probly OC the i7 to around 4Ghz, but was unsure how much of an improvement in my fps I would get since it would only bump me up about 600Mhz? Currently I get around 15fps around LAX flying the Captain Sim 727, if that gives you an idea of my current perfomance.

thanks! :)

[vlooi]

I have a "heavily loaded" FSX, meaning with so many scenery and graphical enhancements, it's scary. I was running it on a E8500, overclocked to 4.1Ghz, with 6Gb DDR2. It ran great, but in certain situations / areas I could feel it getting sluggish. Resolution 1920 x 1200 with Radeon 4870X2.

I upgraded to i7 950, overclocked to 4.16Ghz, with 6Gb DDR3, on same resolution, with same graphics card. I could not believe the difference in smoothness. I immediately experienced it. I never run FPS benchmarks, as the in-game experience is more important for me.

Then lo and behold, lightning took out my system, and I bought a i7 2700K, also 6Gb DDR3, on same graphics card. I am not yet overclocking it, but it is giving me the same super smooth experience I had with the overclocked 950. And it is cheaper!

My suggestion? Go for at least a i5 2500K (overclockable version), enough memory (I believe in a lot of "real-estate" here). These new Sandy Bridge processors from Intel are magic. And yes, I have all my sliders to the right in FSX, with all the bells and whistles activated, together with the ENB HDR mod installed. Only "bloom" is deactivated, as you're looking for trouble running it with the ENB mod. Also, have I installed graphical enhancement packages, scenery packages, etc.

Bottomline, you WILL experience a major perfromance boost. Go for it.

[JSkorna]

In short, yes you would.

[vlooi]

I forgot to mention, your Q9550 processes the same instructions much slower than the i5 / i7 would AT THE SAME Ghz of speed, simply because the architectures differ so much. The i5 / i7 is far more advanced.

[brigs2381]

Thanks for the reply's guys, that's just what I needed to hear!

[nevern]

I have a i7 2600k and I run it at 4.2Ghz. Yesterday I tried overclocking it and managed to get it to 4.7 I could notice the difference. Even though it was only a 500mhz speed increase I got around 10 frames more, it may not seem much but it made everything smoother. I had all the sliders maxed out and had 20% traffic and was getting between 30-35 FPS where it was normally in the low 20's, sometimes high teens. This was done with the CS 757 using UK2000 Manchester Xtreme and real weather with REX. Pitty I can't keep it at 4.7 because it's so yucky now at 4.2 lol.