I got my 9650 yesterday and installed it last night. Set it to 400x10 @ 1.4v and left almost every other configuration setting on auto.It booted up and slid into windows with no problems at all. Ran some 3dm06 runs, ran some OCCT runs, all of them passed. I decided to let OCCT run overnight and when I awoke this morning it had passed 7hrs.I'm watercooling with a Swiftech Apogee GTX and a Corsair Nautilus 500. Idle temps are 32F and max load is 60F. The water was heating up above ambient so I'm sure load temps would be lower with a better radiator. Overall I'd say this is one cool running sucker considering it's at 4gig. The 9650 has the same max temps @ 4gig that the e6600 had @ 3.2gig, but it idles 10c cooler than the e6600 did. (both @ 1.4v)I need to tweak some more and run some prime runs to double check stability. Then I'd like to run Gary's FSX benchmarks and post results here.Forced into working some OT today and part of tomorrow so I won't get a chance to do anything. I'm a crane operator at a seaport so I have to work when the ships hit the dock. Got a cold, feel like crap, last thing I want to do is work 12hrs today.My system has been down for 3 weeks after Asus update erased the bios boot block and errored out before writing the new bios. I'm having flight sim withdrawal symptoms, sucks I have to work. Man, I need a vacation.On a side note, it's not only temps that damage ic's. Electron migration will degrade them over time. I'm like Gary though, if it lasts 12-18 months I'll problably be ready to upgrade by then. I'm currently running 2x2gb pc800, but I have 2x1gb pc1066 sitting in a drawer. Right now I'm 2:1 at 1600fsb/800mem. I'm curious about putting the 1066 back in and running 1:1 @ 1066fsb/1066mem, then cranking the multiplier. I'm thinking that theoreticaly 1066/1066 would have the advantage. My 2gb stick have nearly no headroom, but the 1066 sticks have alot to play with.

Wow, 4Ghz with a 9650, congrats!According to Be hardware looks like FSX with Penryn gives about a 10% increase, then with its 20% higher overclock potential, that makes for a 30% gain, add a new G98 GPU in the new year and your ready to take off !

>Wow, 4Ghz with a 9650, congrats!>>Thats not the first report I've heard of Penryns clocking at 4. So it looks like that could be very common o/c for one of those, which is nice!>According to Be hardware looks like FSX with Penryn gives>about a 10% increase, then with its 20% higher overclock>potential, that makes for a 30% gain, add a new G98 GPU in the>new year and your ready to take off !>That kind of gain could really make the difference at KJFK with 100 AI aircraft loaded up and LevelD/PDMG going on.I just hope Vista service pack 1 will improve things. It did with XP and Win98.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

That's the Penryn Extreme where you can adjust the multiplier to overclock it. It's in the 1000$ region. Nice it runs 4 GHz, and there's more potential. But:PLEASE ANYBODY CONFIRM OR REJECT the following:If using a non Extreme Penryn with fixed multiplier, IS there a way to overclock by not putting memory over 400MHz and still getting the CPU higher than "400 x fixed multiplier" ? I.E. by using mem divider?I've seen Sam's response to this, but it's too compliacted for me, sorry. 1. Is it possible, and 2. how? in a little bit simpler words ;-)THX, Bigean

With the Intel boards, no. It's impossible. With the Nvidia boards, I doubt it, but am not 100% sure.

Got a chance to run prime95 for 8 hours while I slept last night. I ran small FFT's and it passed with flying colors. So that's 7hrs OCCT and 8hrs Prime95.Conclusion, overclocking a 9650 to 4 gig is easier than taking candy from a baby. I have to head back in to work again today so I won't get a chance to try anything else.They are darn expensive though. But it's $2.87 (usd) a day for a year. I spend more than that on lunch and fuel. I hate paying that much, but for me it was worth it. Around 12-18 months from now I'll be selling it to my best friend who always buy's my old gear. When I got this cpu he bought my year old e6600, a motherboard, and some ram I had. One thing about these EE Penryn's that I do like. Buying one is a no brainer if you want to hit 4ghz while falling out of your chair. I hate paying through the teeth for something, but I feel I got what I paid for and I'm almost positive there's more left in the tank.

Lith1um,Since you are nearing the fresh FSX install point on the latest hardware out there now, could I trouble you to do a few test runs for the rest of us using the benchmark I put together? In particular, it would be good to see how your system performs doing a standard test (1280x1024 full screen, global high defaults + ingame AA/AF) at stock 3GHz, 3.6GHz (to compare with mine), and at your current 4GHz overclock. SP1 or SP2 is fine, as long I as we clearly know which one it is.I posted the benchmark suite to the AVSIM library yesterday, so I am hoping to see it up there today for you to download. Failing its timely appearance today, just PM me with your email address and I will set you up with the required files.Gary

Thanks, Sam.What a (little) mess.Now, apart from the Extreme, here's our choice:E6700: Mem 266 x multiplier 10 = 2666 stock OC: Mem 400 x multiplier 10 = 4000, usually must be lowered (3600?)(similar for the Q6600)E6750: Mem 333 x multiplier 8 = 2666 stock OC: Mem 400 x multiplier 8 = 3200 :( but should workE8500: Mem 333 x multiplier 9.5 = 3166 stock OC: Mem 400 x multiplier 9.5 = 3800 should workFor a while, that's the end. Not much more than the E6700 or Q6600How about higher models, to be released? If they stay with FSB1333/mem333, the multipliers should raise to 10 or more. Then it's possible to jump over 4GHz sooner or later?Your opinions?Bigean

Whats the issue with using a FSB over 400?

The E6700 is over $300. The 10 multi will clock it up nicely, but I agree that 3.6 is about the top for any of the 65nm parts (with these $50 thermalright air coolers). Why spend > $300 for 2 cores at 3.6 when 800 stuff. Now you have the CPU ($200) plus the additional ram cost ($100) = about the same as the E6700. But your FSB is at a less desirable 450mhz. There's not much additional value here, imo.The E8500 is $266, just like the Q6600. This will be FSB limited. 450mhz is about the top I'd want to run 24/7. At the 450mhz FSB, the extra ram expense kicks in. So we have a $366 actual cost to get a top (24/7) clock from this chip. 450 x 9.6 = ~ 4.3ghz CPU clock. But remember, this is only a dual core. The E8500 seems like the only thing to even consider other than the Q6600 . . . but it will not be available until January. Here's an analysis:The Q6600 gets you 4 cores at 3.6 for the nominal cost of $250, but provides the potential to skip and entire up grade cycle. Dollar wise, the Q (could) provide the real financial result of leaving at least $500 in-your-pocket over a 2-3 year period. The E8500 gets you an increased clock of 600mhz (20%) over the Q6600 for a nominal cost increase of $100 (30%). From a nominal, and I argue, a myopic Point of View this looks OK. But consider, we only need 2 cores now, but quads will be a requirement in the foreseeable future. Any dual does not include the future proofing margin provided by the quad. This cost must added back in to the E8500's price tag to provide a real comparison. The real cost of the E8500 is 250 (CPU) + (100) ram + 500 (next build) = $850. This gets you a 20 increase in FSX performance right now for a real 200% increase in cost. This is going from bad . . . we get 20 to 24 FPS for $850? . . . to downright silly. Sure wish I was made of money, but I can't afford to upgrade every 12-18 months. That 2-months-from-now, January, 20% FPS boost in FSX is just too expensive for me. I got the Q6600 . . . last week! Here's the future: Intel is raising the FSB so they can lower the multiplier. They are on to us! With a low multiplier, we are FSB limited. Intel knows this. It we want the speed, we must pay up for a high multiplier. However the Penryn is the Last CPU that will use the FSB. The next CPU will be called the Nathalem and will use (AMD's hypertransport?) Quickpath buss. The FSB is all done, right here. I don't know how O/C'ing will work with this next gen. With my pre-quaded CPU (Q6600) I'll be watching from the sidelines. The first gen will be a mess. My quad will get me to the "Nathalem 2" (or whatever they'll call it). Then it'll be all figured out and cheaper . . . than mud! That's my plan, anyway.

Yes, Sam,sounds reasonable. But my point is - 1. FSX gains the most from clock speed. Now, today. 2. It doesn't gain much from Quad Core. (Addons another story, let's see)3. Quad Core produces more heat than Dual Core - limits OC more.Solution: To max the "FSX as it is" Perf, you best have a very high clocked CPU. Here's the theoretical benefit of Penryn.As you state, it's an expensive way currently. And for future, DualCore most prob will be a disadvantage. That's the problems right now.So it's good to go for a Q6600 OC, if you want to save money. Then you're limited to the speed you can already have since 2006. Or you can wait for Penryn FSB1333 with higher multipliers and hopefully dropping costs. Then there's a chance for really high FSX Perf and only for up to FSX.By the time of FS11 AND first working addons AND affordable, reliable Nethalem hardware, it makes sense to buy new hardware. Is that 2010? Bigean

Setting up a dual core now will cause a user to need to quad-up prior to mature Nethalem. If 20% is just too tempting now. the quad-up of 200% will be irresistible. A dual choice must include the additional cost of an additional upgrade cycle. It's really about how much money ya got.

What do you say to the skeptics who say, "Well, multiple-core cpu's have been slow to be taken advantage of in the sw department, so how can we be so sure that this 'slow adoption' won't continue for the next 3 years?" ;)RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

I would argue that multi-core utilization is the next frontier. Quaddrouples - Octouples, mega-touples (is that a word?) are available to the software folks that will be first to this new "Holy Grail" of performance. Utilizing multi-cores is where even current-gen software leadership will come from. Behind the scenes, it's a flat-out race. At this level of maximum effort by the entire - World - software industry, I am (reasonably?) guessing that multi-core functionality will occur MUCH sooner that alot later. I wouldn't bet on it taking 3 years. Therefore (I'm arguing), it seems reasonable to bet that a dual core build now will require a 'quad-up' prior to the 2gen (32nm) Nehalem.

Actually Gary, I didn't do an o.s. reinstall. I went from a p35 board (which my friend just bought from me), to an x38 board. Since the chipsets were relatively similar I just reinstalled all my drivers and ran with it. I have UTX USA/X-graphics/My TrafficX/FSGenesis mesh/GEX/ Cloud9 europe-africa-asia-south america/ etc installed right now.Normally I prefer to do a fresh reinstall when changing hardware configs, but work has been out of control busy this week. A 50,000 ton salt ship, 2 35,000T petrol coke ships, 2 containerized banana ships, and a repair assist on an ocean tug. All since the day before thanksgiving. We have several guys on vacation, so they're working the crap outta me. One of the coke ships, and another container ship are working tomorrow. Hopefully there won't be any work this weekend. We have nothing on the schedule, so as long as nothing shows up out of the blue I should have a nice weekend off. In all I worked 68 hours last week, then back in today from 5am-7pm.What I'd like to do is ghost my present install this weekend with True Image. Afterward I will reformat and reinstall vista + FSX, then run us some clean benchmarks. I probably won't reactivate windows or FSX unless my performance takes a noticeable jump from my current drive image. If I do it this way I can get us some benchmarks and restore my drive image when I'm done because I just don't feel like reinstalling and tweaking windows,fsx, and all my payware. My system has been down for 3 weeks after asus update performed a bad flash on that p35 board. After being down that long I just want to fly some FSX. I did get chance to fly a little last night. After quickly exiting one flight I took a screen shot of cpu utilization to see how the cores were being used. As you can see all four cores were working.The first core is obviously the rendering core, but the other cores are being used fairly substantially by auto gen. I may not be a genius, but it seems to me that there is a substantial benefit in FSX from having additional cores. I have TrackIR, the Saitek programming software, and the CH programmer running.I can't believe how clean and clear my ground textures are now. I'm not sure if it's because I just installed GEX or the extra cpu grunt.