First, Id like to thank in advance the Hardware gurus on this site who I have always given great advice. This is the only place I come when asking PC hardware questions.My question is, I currently have a P4 3.8, with 2 gigs of ram and a geforce 7800 GTX. I get very good performance in FS9 with all the addons (for which I am addicted). I also get good performance in other applications. However, I built my PC about a year ago and aside from a few minor upgrades (Video Card, Added Memory etc..) I have the urge to build a new one. There doesn't seem like there has been much advances in CPU speed only Duel Core and SLI. From what I have read, Nether will give me any increase in FS9. I have been reading a lot about AMD lately. It seems everyone upgrading or building a new PC is going AMD. I admit I know very little about AMD processors, but feel out of the loop running a P4. Am i missing a big speed increase but not going AMD. Should I swap out my P4 and MB for an AMD system? If so, which AMD processor would give me the best performance for FS9. Im not hooked on any brand, so I don't care which is better, just which will give me the best for Fs9. Also about what would this cost me.Sorry about the long post.Rob

Hi Rob,Very good question! You may wish to take a look at this article:http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051121/index.htmlYou'll see that in very general terms, AMD offers better performance in gaming situations while Intel offers slightly better performance in media creation (e.g. audio and video encoding) situations. The "problem" is, AMD's lead in gaming is quite a bit bigger than Intel's lead in media creation, which is, I think, why so many people are recommending AMD. Most of us play games more than we do audio/video encoding so we wouldn't mind trading off a little bit of encoding performance for a much better gaming experience. There are, of course, benchmarks which show the opposite but the above is generally accepted by most people.(As an aside, the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware Guide shows that AMD's dual-core CPUs lead even in audio/video encoding situations. This is because Intel chose to sacrifice some clock speed when it released its dual-core chips while AMD's dual-core CPUs came with equivalent clock speeds to their single-core counterparts. Without the clock speed sacrifice, AMD's chips became the leader in audio/video encoding also.)Now with you, the Intel Prescott 570 or 670 (and I haven't followed Intel's CPU products for such a long time that I don't even know what the difference between the two are) are already such fast CPUs that you really aren't looking at too big of an improvement. Now add in the issue you talked about, namely FS9 won't take advantage of dual-core. So if I were you, I really wouldn't go through the trouble.Having said that, if you really have that urge (don't worry, I understand the feeling. ;) and/or if you have a way of selling off your old motherboard, CPU and RAM (note AMD uses DDR RAM and not DDR2 like your Intel) then you will likely see some benefit from going AMD. It's a decision of money/trouble vs. performance that no-one else besides you can make.The other less tangible benefits (frankly, I'm not even sure the performance benefits will be tangible outside of benchmarks) of going AMD are lower power requirement and therefore, less heat.In any case, the link I gave you above should help you with your decision.Hope this helps.Edwin

Large speed increases on CPU's are pretty much a thing of the past,the new trend is toward multiple CPU cores--the new Xbox is running a triple core CPU,yep you can run odd number of cores.From what you describe of your present system about the only way you'd get a kick from a new CPU would be to go with the AMD FX processors. Only problem is they cost some major bucks and since hardly any sites test with FS9 its hard to say what the increase in frames would be.I emailed Toms Hardware months ago and told them I would GIVE them my copy of FS9 if they would included it in their tests. Not one word back from them. Guess their happy to continue testing with idiot games that get 200+ fps with the latest CPU's.David

Rob, I'll keep it short and sweet. Have a look at this site. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1876715,00.aspCraig

"Rob,I'll keep it short and sweet. Have a look at this site.http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1876715,00.aspCraig"Only thing wrong is "low-res" vs. "high-res" cited in the benchmark does not expand enough on the benchmark to let the reader know what is being tested. Some situations which demand a lot from the graphics card tend to make the cpu less important, and other situations have the opposite effect. There's know way to tell what they were testing--somewhere in the middle of Siberia in a cloudless sky, or LAX with a full load of AI and weather?-John

John,If you scroll down a bit at the site I believe they expounded on theirtest setups etc. I beleive the high resolution settings were set at1280x1024. I'm pretty sure their was quite an in-depth discussionabout the test setups.One thing I can tell you. I run FS at 1600x1200 and consistently getpretty much what I set the framerate to. I keep it pegged at 25.I can get this with everthing maxed except cloud draw distance andwith Active Sky running. I get it in both full and windowed modes.I know Toms Hardware did a test and I'll try and find the link.They tested at Hong Kong at dusk (default HK).Here are my system specs.ASUS A8N Deluxe MOBO SLIAMD64 3500Nvidia GT6600 PCI expressSB Audigy2Hope this helps.Craig

Hey John, You can search forever without finding a site giving an analysis of AMD processors and FS9. I think if you talk to enough folks though you will find that AMD will outperform Intel by a wide margin with FS9. You can't compare GHZ to GHZ because of the architecture of an AMD vs. and Intel. I can tell you from my experience with an AMD Athlon 800 vs. an Intel of twice the clock speed with FS2002 a few years back. A friend set his FS to the exact same settings as mine (he had the Inel) and the Athlon outperformed the Intel by a wide margin with theexact same location and graphics settings in FS.

Thanks for both posts Craig...I've been a long time Intel fan who has been looking at an AMD as well. I've been delaying my upgrade from a very old system since I am hoping I can stretch my old system long enough to see what the next MSFS will require. I don't want to turn around and buy a mid-level AMD or Pentium (based on my budget) only to find it runs FS2006(7?) poorly. Over the past year though I've developed a stronger preference for AMD based on feedback in the forums.That's why I found the benchmarks interesting...-John