Does FSX support dual core processors like the Athlon 4800? If so can we expect to see a good performance increase?Kev

Yes.No.Excuse me being shortspoken but this has really been discussed a hundred times.Regards,http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpg

>Yes.>No.>>Excuse me being shortspoken but this has really been discussed>a hundred times.>>Regards,>>http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpgI think your "no" is yet to be seen...

I saw the release version of FSX in action at the AVSIM conference. Windows Task Manager that I pulled up on two dual core systems they had there (Pentium D desktip and Core Duo notebook) showed some, but mostly neglible, use of the second core.I can therefore confirm that "no" has been seen :)Gary

Allow me to point you to this article titled 'The Last Word on Dual Core' written by tdragger @ ACES in his blog.http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/200.../21/711152.aspxSeems like it was missed by a few 1000 folks the first time round.........

>I think your "no" is yet to be seen... As others have shown, it has been.I'll even go a step further: multicore will do next to nothing for 99% of future games. The advanced memory bus and cache architectures that come with it will, but that's pretty much it.It's nifty for signal encoding though.Regards,http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpg

The answer is 'YES', FSX does support dual cores.The bad news is that it does not mean both cores will be at 100% utilisation all of the time."Hopefully you can see that a multithreaded game like FSX consists of a numerous start, wait, and complete sequences. The big problem here is that when you get too many of these then nothing gets done because everything is waiting on everything else. So where can you use multiple threads? You use it where the interdepencies are loose and indeterminate wait times aren't readily noticable. In FSX we use multiple thread for texture decompression and certain types of file I/O. Consider terrain textures that must be loaded and decompressed as you fly along. Normally new textures are needed for the area at the edge of the visual scene. Using low-resolution versions for the initial display and then loading higher resolutions in the background works because texture swapping in the distance is not very noticable. In other words, it doesn't a matter if a texture is available immediately or several frames after it's requested because you likely won't notice the delay. The good news is that these threads can be "farmed out" by the OS scheduler to multiple CPUs or cores. The bad news is that requests are made with varying frequency so the overall CPU utilization will also vary. In other words, those of you running the FSX demo and looking for 100% utilization on all your cores can just stop--you're not going to see it. You'll see a lot of utilization when you first load a flight (and we force requests to complete) and less as you fly along. As we continue to evolve the code base we'll continue to look for areas where thread offloading makes sense but changes in the area can have unexpected results so it will take time to decide what works best. And, oh, when you find a game that does use all that horsepower all the time, please let me know."

>The bad news is that it does not mean both cores will be at>100% utilisation all of the time.This is a nice piece of misinformation.The bad news is that RARELY you will see both CPUs at 100% and most of the time the second CPU will be hardly used at all.Michael J.

>>>The bad news is that it does not mean both cores will be at>>100% utilisation all of the time.>>This is a nice piece of misinformation.>The bad news is that RARELY you will see both CPUs at 100% and>most of the time the second CPU will be hardly used at all.>>Michael J.>Whatever......splitting hairs. The question was "Does FSX support dual core?"The answer is YES, but not to the degree many are probably expecting as per the reasons given in tdragger comments on the linked blog page.No "misinformation" intended. Only reading was required.

>>>No "misinformation" intended. Only reading was required.Absolutely misinformation and no, it is not splitting hair. Your "both cores won't be at 100% .. all of time" can easily leave someone with impression that this other CPU will provide measurable help quite often. It is like saying that someone is "not the richest person" instead of just simply saying "he is poor". Sorry but I must correct such examples of "double-talk".Michael J.

What about addons? We all know that PMDG and Level D, etc. use their own external program to do many of the calculations of the FMC, etc. Will these developers be able to take advantage of the 2nd core to run their addon, therefore leaving FSX to run more smoothly on the other core ?Mark.

I think you can do that, by assigning a cpu to the external application.I don't have a dual-core rig but that's my understanding of it.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

>Will these developers be able to take advantage>of the 2nd core to run their addon, therefore leaving FSX to>run more smoothly on the other core ?Yes, that may be the primary advantage of having the dual core.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/for...argo_hauler.gifhttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

And it is the same advantage that FS9 has. Dual core really comes into play for programs/processes that would otherwise steal valuable CPU time from FS.Gary

>>>>>No "misinformation" intended. Only reading was required.>>Absolutely misinformation and no, it is not splitting hair.>Your "both cores won't be at 100% .. all of time" can easily>leave someone with impression that this other CPU will provide>measurable help quite often. It is like saying that someone is>"not the richest person" instead of just simply saying "he is>poor". Sorry but I must correct such examples of>"double-talk".>>Michael J.>All you had to do is read the blog post from tdragger who works at ACES. So it's straight from the horses mouth.How I may have incorrectly phrased things is neither here nor there.Get off your high horse.....