Upgrade CPU to Dual Core or Quad Core

[MsThang]

I want to upgrade my CPU and don't know whether to buy a faster dual core CPU or spend the same amount of money on a quad core. Here is what I currently have:

Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, quad core ready
nVidia Ge Force 8800 GTS video card
E6600 dual core CPU @ 2.4 ghz
4 GB DDR2 RAM
Windows XP operating system

Which is faster, to upgrade to a dual core CPU @ 3.2 ghz. or to buy a quad core CPU chip at 2.6 ghz..

I plan on overclocking the system to what it can handle without buying add on cooling systems.

There seems to be some concern whether quad core CPU's have any advantage over a faster dual core CPU. My whole system is set up to maximize FSX performance. Does FSX run faster with a quad core system? I have read that some "games" do not run any better with a quad core CPU based on the specific game design.

I am currently overclocking my system by 10%, any faster than that and the computer will not boot up.

I am a newbie to overclocking. The P5N-E SLI motherboard is supposed to have a great deal of headroom for overclocking by making other changes, i.e. running at different voltages, changing FSB (I don't even know what that is), etc.

Is it possible to run FSX with all settings to "ultra high" and still get a decent frame rate with dense scenery?

[dc4bs]

While FSX with SP2 installed will use the extra cores, it does not use them very efficiently. They are only used to help preload textures and things into memory. This DOES help with reducing "blurries" and it also helps with smoothness (less stuttering and fps surges) but it does not help increase FPS much overall.

Given a dual core and a quad core, whichever one runs at the faster Mhz will generally give better results for FSX as the primary, core thread of FSX is always limited by the raw speed of whatever core it happens to be running on. This is why, FSX does not require a super high end video card unless you are running a big display (1920x1200 and up) with high antialiasing settings, etc.

While we expect new games, and software in general, to take more advantage of multi-core systems, it's been really slow in coming and FSX is old enough that they were really only beginning to explore how they could offload work to other cores when SP2 came out.

-dc4bs

[MsThang]

-dc4bs

Thank you for your very helpful reply. Could you direct me to a place I could find a list of all compatible dual core CPU's for my motherboard?

Asus P5-E SLI

[MsThang]

Oops ...
This is my motherboard:

Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, quad core ready

[MsThang]

Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, quad core ready

What type of CPU is fastest for FSX performance:
I found a list of supported CPU's and these are the categories:

Intel Celeron Dual Core
Intel Core 2 Duo
Intel Core 2 Duo Xeon
Intel Core 2 Extreme
Intel Core 2 Quad
Intel Pentium 4
Intel Pentium Dual Core

[tacomasailor]

I had the identical system - cpu, video card, memory only was running VISTA32/SP2 - running a fixed test flight for 5 minutes with all sliders set to almost max (except water and shadows) and traffic at 50% the system would deliver 10.3 fps flying from Seattle/West Point over KSEA over S50 and on SE flying a HondaJet at 2500' and 275 knots

I run UTX/REX

the e6600 was OC'd to 3.07GHz and the 8800 GTS was OC'd to 585/860/1460
3DMark06 score was 9832

Installed the i5-750 with 4GB DDR3 memory and no other changes - running identical FSX settings and flight - 10.02 fps

OC'd i5-750 to 3.42GHz (clock at 170) and no changes to the 8800 GTS OC - FSX is now giving me 12.95 fps in the identical configuration

OC 3DMark06 score is 12399

That is a 29% increase in frame rate for the OC machine but a loss of 8% for the stock i5


When I am flying FSX I see one CPU at 95%+ all the time, two CPUs at about 50% all the time and the last CPU runs around 30%

[ytzpilot]

I have a quad core Q6600 and would go back on that purchase for a high end Dual Core and overclock it.

Wasn't thinking at the time of purchase.

I could still swap in anyways and just might someday as prices keep droping out there.

[tacomasailor]

I just booted my i5-750 with only core 0 & 1 enabled.

Using my standard test flight and fsx.cfg (running REX/UTX) for 150 seconds I see the following frame rates:

4 cores - 11.92 fps

2 cores - 11.87 fps

That difference is within the standard error between any two tests. In other words, the 2 core frames per second is the same as the 4 core

My new mother board/memory/cpu cost me about $550

You can buy a new e8600 for $270 and use the same memory and mobo

The e8600 is 3.3GHz stock and can easily do 4 GHz on air cooling - I have no experience with that but everyone seems to report that and I know I went from the stock 2.4 GHz on the e6600 to 3.07 with little or no effort.

So - if money is of concern staying with your current mobo and getting a top of the line E series cpu would give very good results.

I needed a new motherboard - my THIRD nVidia 680i was failing with the same problem as the first two so it was time for me to switch motherboards and therefore upgrade everything.