Just upgraded to a Q6600 and have confirmed that all four cores are showing up in Windows Task Manager. If I run a few different desktop apps or a game like the Crysis Demo, I see all four cores having a play, but when I run FSX it only uses the last two cores.Ahah you say, someone has been playing with AffinityMask! Well, I have tried affinity mask = 15 (ie. all four cores enabled) and even deleted my FSX.CFG file to let FSX rebuild a new one, but the result is the same - just the last two cores being used. Interestingly, if I set AffinityMask to 1, I can get FSX to run on one core, but at no stage can I get it to run on more than two.Any suggestions?Gary

>Just upgraded to a Q6600 and have confirmed that all four>cores are showing up in Windows Task Manager. If I run a few>different desktop apps or a game like the Crysis Demo, I see>all four cores having a play, but when I run FSX it only uses>the last two cores.>>Ahah you say, someone has been playing with AffinityMask! >Well, I have tried affinity mask = 15 (ie. all four cores>enabled) and even deleted my FSX.CFG file to let FSX rebuild a>new one, but the result is the same - just the last two cores>being used. Interestingly, if I set AffinityMask to 1, I can>get FSX to run on one core, but at no stage can I get it to>run on more than two.>>Any suggestions?>>GaryGet the utility called "Seasaw Pro" and use it to set the affinity of any loaded process. I use it to set all processes to run on core 0 and FSX to run on cores 1-3. Works fine.Unlike the Task Manager, it can set the affinity of ANY process.Task Manager won't let you touch system processes.I've noticed that the fsx.CFG affinity entry doesn't seem to work. Paul

Go on Phil's Blog, although ot may be on FSinsider by now, there was a MS Hotfix for this problem that solved it. It was one of his earlier blogs after SP1!

>>Get the utility called "Seasaw Pro" and > Paul>I cannot find anything resembling that nameIs it spelt corrrectly?allen

>>>>Get the utility called "Seasaw Pro" and >> Paul>>>>>I cannot find anything resembling that name>>Is it spelt corrrectly?>>>allenYes...Google is your friend....http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtmlhttp://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Twe...eesaw-Pro.shtml Paul

If it was the July 07 hotfix, I just downloaded it and installed it and my FSX still gravitates to the last two cores.Actually, I am not going to get too worked up about this as my Vista 64 DVD just arrived in the post, so I am about to embark on a whole new adventure (or headache if you are the glass half empty type :-)).Thanks for the suggestions anyway guys.Gary

It was misspelt, it is not seasaw but seesawAlso, it only runs with dual cores, not quadal

>It was misspelt, it is not seasaw but seesaw>>Also, it only runs with dual cores, not quad>>>alMy version ( free ) of Seesaw Pro works just fine with my quad core Q6600.... Paul

>>It was misspelt, it is not seasaw but seesaw>>>>Also, it only runs with dual cores, not quad>>>>>>al>>>My version ( free ) of Seesaw Pro works just fine with my >quad core Q6600....sorry for the misspelling in my original post.>> Paul>

An update from my Vista 6 adventures - all four cores are now in use by FSX, although it rarely bumps over 50% total CPU use (ie. 2 cores worth), but I kinda expect that would be the case.Gary

Witb my Vista64/Q6600 install, I just clean/fresh-loaded FSX, then Accel onto that clean/fresh Vista64 install. Nothing else. TM shows all 4 cores are fully engaged when running FSX. They don't bang-hard into the 100% stop, but they are all working away. 2 cores worth maybe. I didn't really measure if they were below (or above) the 50% level, but the real takeaway is this: There's no 2-core top stop. Over a heavily auto-gen'd area, those cores really get a hoppin'. Plus there's plenty of extra HP to burn a CD, play my radio station and convert a downloaded movie file to something that'll play on my DVD player. I also see 3gig+ ram loads with only FSX running. Vista 64 allows access to all 4 of my gigs-O-ram. Darn good thing, so it seems.If you feed it, it will eat.I got the op system Raid 0'd on those 3 Seagates running in Intel's Matrix Raid last night. Sustained transfer rates of 300+ MB/sec (yes, M-Bytes). Haven't loaded FS yet, but boot and program times are startling. This Matrix system allow a raid 0 across numerous drives, then a raid 1 across any 2 physical drives and/or any (or all) single physical drive(s) to be established as a solo. Woah. So far, I just have the raid 0 across all three drives, but the backup strategy is this: Slice out the outer disk segments of the 3 drives and set them up as the raid 0 (outer tracks are the fastest). Then set up 2 of the physical drives as a raid 1. Use Acronis to auto-back-up important files to one of the (physical) Raid 1 drives. Then just let the raid 1 to do its raid 1 thing. I'm using all 3 drive in a raid 0, but still any one drive can fail. I'm covered. (Raid 5 you say? Yes, that's possible too, but it's too slow.) On the CPU front, the P5K ramped up to a 400mhz FSB and the Q6600 just happily followed along to 3.6G. Just set the FSB to 400 and the Vcore to 1.4 volts. No bios tweaking necessary at all. Tc at 55-60c. I think I can go a bit more.We're having fun now.