I Like it!As you saw, I am exploring an upgrade from essentially the same rig that you have. Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember the 865PE chip set (and its ICH5 southbridge) were made available for the (then!) latest and greatest 775 socket. The 975 chipset quickly came online the 875/865s faded out quickly. My Abit IS7 died last month and it was a miracle to find a replacement. If I had known (or remembered!) about this possibility, I almost certainly would have gone for it . . . instead of the jitterbug I had to hoop-dance to get that IS7 replaced.Let

Thanks for the quick reply Sam.Will digest what you have said & see how I go. Will be a few weeks before I will be doing anything re an upgrade at this stage. I may even wait till the E4400 is available or the price of the E4300 drops further.In the mean time here are a couple of interesting links re this mobo & the new C2D's.http://www.asrock.com/support/CPU_Support/conroe.asphttp://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2813Cheers,Ross

Im still learning from you Sam....good job...jareth

Intel will be dropping prices on their entire C2D line on April 22. The E4300 will be going to $113 USD.http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/01/3...ril_price_cuts/Waiting for the E4400? Here

"Their efforts would be much better utilized by producing a dx10 patch ASAP to market vista as a flagship gaming OS with fsx as its centrepiece."That remark, if I may say so, is just a tad selfish when you consider the numbers, like me, who will remain with XP for at least a further year before considering any changes.Undoubtedly, Aces/Microsoft do wish to see FSX illuminating Vista in all its glory. However, lets not forget that FSX was targetted first and foremost at DX9 capable systems. Regrettably, performance of FSX has turned out to be a major issue, which, if not addressed, could still threaten the future viability of the franchise. Therefore, the imperative need to sort this out within the limits of what may be possible must be very strong. Never mind Vista and DX10, their turn will come soon enough. For now, we do need SP1 for current XP/DX9 systems as a matter of some urgency before the rot has a chance to spread any further.I do want FSX to succeed and I certainly enjoy flying and admiring it in those self-selected sim-friendly areas from time to time. However, there is nothing as yet to persuade me to uninstall my highly customized and immensely satisfying installation of FS9. Of course, most of us are hoping that SP1 will somehow turn things around and finally lay to rest those feelings of frustration and disappointment with aspects of this sim. The risk is that we may be setting our levels of expectation far too high. My fingers will remain crossed in the hope that my fears are unfounded. One thing we can be quite sure of and that is that ACES will certainly be trying to do their very best to please as many folk as possible.Mike

Thanks for those links Sam.I had seen a duel ASROCK mobo advertised at the site I usually get my gear however it wasn't the same one as you found. It only had 2 x PCI slots & didn't take DDR2 Ram as well as the DDR. This will certainly be worth considering over the 775i65G though.Many Thanks,Ross

This thread just keeps getting better and better!!Sam u tha man!Cheerz Josh

This is good stuff from Sam. Those C2D do have a bunch of headroom. With FSX being so CPU dependent, overclocking your CPU can get you fantastic FPS increases.If you have an Athlon or Opteron CPU, you can overclock those, too. I have a 2.0 ghz (stock) Operton that is overclocked to 2.8 ghz. I am aiming for 3.0 ghz when I can get a better temp monitor.AMD CPUs overclock using similar techniques (though there are some differences). The stickies on this thread give a good overview:http://www.ocforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3

That Opty (AMD Opteron) is still a real workhorse. Think about it. It has been around for more than a bit and is still within well within range of the very best anyone has to offer . . . including the top C2D (at least at stock RPMs) . If I had one, I

The only 'real' issue I see right now is that AMD and Intel are now going multiple cores with small speed bumps. FSX is desinged around increasing GHZ alone. NOt the fault of ACES, just the reality of the CPU world now.Multithreading apps is a challenge to code, and I expect that FSX.5 will be more threaded out of necessity, and it may be some time in coming (I'm not referring to either the SP1 or DX10 patches here). As ti appears now, it will be a long time before FSX performs as FS9 does on lifecycle equivalent hardware. My 3.5 year old system runs FS9 very well with loads of addons and AI. KATL with Delta and Airtran is flyable. Slow, but flyable under FSX. However KLGA is a 5 FPS slide show.I plan on a new build for FSX/Vista in the coming year. I now what I want, but getting it is another matter! It's all about the CFO (my wife) releasing funds for the project :)Ram, ram. ram. Fastest CPU I can afford (I try to build on a budget but get a higher end system), new HDD's and probably the biggest $$ item- video. Clearly I'm holding out for the R600 to see what it can do, and where everything falls in the bang/buck equation. There's a lot of hardware happening in the next 9 months (K8L, K9, more quads from Intel) Plus I actually use my PC to do real work.