Wait for it! "THE LAUNCH OF Intel Conroe is scheduled to go on July 23rd, when partners will start rolling out the new products."http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32589***

Nice technical tips. I have some professional and academic interest on this subject. Do you know "Computer Architecture: A quantitative approach"? Great book!However, even without reading the links, I would consider the quoted text to be a little biased through some lack of context... for example:>

Go get your self a nice Conroe powered Nvidia Sli pie and you will be laughing:DLets not have a next reply on that smarmy AMD vs Intel tip please, its getting boring now

>Go get your self a nice Conroe powered Nvidia Sli pie and you>will be laughing:D>>Lets not have a next reply on that smarmy AMD vs Intel tip>please, its getting boring nowSorry for that. Although I'm admitedly biased in favour of AMD, my purpose was to show that some of those comments lack context and therefore may be misleading - obviously, being mostly quoted text, it's not the poster's fault. If you read my post, I referred to several different topics like silicon "real estate", operating systems, schedulers, multi-cpu hardware, etc. And one of my arguments was that intel is improving because of the (silent) abandon of the netburst architecture.In all, I don't think it counts as amd-intel fude.However, you're right, I got carried away by my techo-geek-o-meter and I won't reply further to this matter.Cheers,Pedro Venda.

"Any recent Linux server scales linearly with 2, 4 or 8 cpus. Small locking losses occour with 16 or more cpus, but nothing notable."Wow, didn't know that. Bet the corporate world has scads of programs that actully use these multi-cores too. Now now if only my Doom 3 would . . . Really, this was just an alert for us small gaming potatoes (did I spell tht right?) Mainly, I like all this upcoming competition. Who cares about the label? I like it fast and cheap.

>The FX core is about 3 years and 2 months old *and* single>core. The new conroe is... new, and has 2 cores. Comparing>them is like comparing oranges with apples! The old FX core is about 3 years old. The FX-62 is a new Windsor core that was just released, and has 2 cores.>Yes, FX are expensive, but when the conroe comes out it will be >*expensive* as well.Not really, at least in my mind. The E6600 is going to be about a $300 chip, and people already have those things OC to 4.0 GHZ and doing sub 13 second super pi times. Show me an AMD chip that will do that. Much less one that did 4.0 GHZ before it was even released. ;)

I honestly think the big thing to wait for if you're doing a major system upgrade is DX10 video cards with onboard physics support, not the CPU... While it looks like the Core 2 Duo is gonna be a great one, it's the graphics card that's gonna really matter for new games... You could buy the most expensive dual GPU GeForce 7950GX2 right now and still be stuck up a creek without a paddle when the DX10 games hit.

>I honestly think the big thing to wait for if you're doing a>major system upgrade is DX10 video cards with onboard physics>support, not the CPU... While it looks like the Core 2 Duo is>gonna be a great one, it's the graphics card that's gonna>really matter for new games... You could buy the most>expensive dual GPU GeForce 7950GX2 right now and still be>stuck up a creek without a paddle when the DX10 games hit.Quoted for truth!Consequently cake is better than pie.

I have 4 words for you: I WantAConroe!!

Me too . . . it was all so clear. The CPU's in the bag, but Ryan has me thinking again. I still have a P4 w/ that old AGP Video bus. I have everything over clocked just short of a melt-down mode. With max settings, the Vcockpit is hanging in there at 15-20 FPS. Not great, but generally flyable. Far Cry, CoD 2 (and all that spooky Doom stuff), etc, are silky smooth.Any new system that is moving from AGP will need a new PCIe V-card. That was settling down too. The Nvidia 7XXXs were starting to get affordable. But now Ryan brings up a very valid, new twist. A whole new Vcard will be needed in Jan 07 to take advantage of DX10. Yes? Did I get that right? I'm getting dizzy again.

That is correct, no card currently availiable supports DirectX 10. If you want the full FSX experience, it's gonna have to be on Vista with a DX10 card. Don't really see a point to spending the kind of money the top DX9 cards cost right now only for them to be obsolete by the end of the year...

If youre thinking of a new rig especially for FSX just wait. It seems you can run FS9 now with nor problems which means your PC can handle anything else youre doing with it until the newer hardware comes out for Vista and DX10. I run a OC'd FX55 with a 7800GTX and some other crap and while its tempting to start looking at another upgrade Im going to hold off until Vista is here and DX10 cards are out. FS9 will hold me over just fine until FSX has some add ons to play with and the hardware to truly experience it on. Take the cash you have no for a new rig, put it away and start adding to it. By the time everything is TRULY ready for FSX go nuts build yourself a sweet rig and see what that new sim has to offer.Beef is better than pork.