Afther reading this and that about hardware and FSX performance and looking at benchmark charts, I'm still unsure what the current facts are. Hopefully someone can enlighten me:1.Quad cores with same clock speeds are better than dual cores, right?2.Due to the ability of FSX to spread the computational load onto several cores, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where that ability allows cheaper quad cores with slower clock speeds to be on par with higher clocked and extremely expensive dual cores, right?3.Can FSX distribute CPU load across more than 4 cores, i.e. if I'd decide to take e.g. 2 Xeon or Opteron quad core CPUs (=8 cores in total), would that be better for FSX than a single quad processor?4.Why is GPU performance (SLI comes to my mind) not so important and seems to have no substancial positive effect to FSX than faster CPUs?Andreas

There is plenty of information on this subject in this very forum. In any case I will summarise for you :-)>1.>Quad cores with same clock speeds are better than dual cores,>right?Marginally. FPS are about the same, but the extra cores help with overall smoothness, especially when handling addons.>2.>Due to the ability of FSX to spread the computational load>onto several cores, there seems to be a "sweet spot" where>that ability allows cheaper quad cores with slower clock>speeds to be on par with higher clocked and extremely>expensive dual cores, right?No. Clock speed still rules with FSX, no matter whether you have two or four cores to throw at it. See my dynamic benchmark result thread, which includes actual quad core and simulated dual core runs at different clock speeds.>3.>Can FSX distribute CPU load across more than 4 cores, i.e. if>I'd decide to take e.g. 2 Xeon or Opteron quad core CPUs (=8>cores in total), would that be better for FSX than a single>quad processor?FSX will probably use as many cores as are available, but FSX + addons doesn't get any better above 3 cores feeding them anyway. More than four cores won't matter a cracker with this title - maybe FSXI?>4.>Why is GPU performance (SLI comes to my mind) not so important>and seems to have no substancial positive effect to FSX than>faster CPUs?Because FSX is primarily CPU bound and most other games are not. eg. FSX + addons on my system = 2-3 core load constantly and my GPU barely cracks a sweat (low temps and GPU OCing is a waste of time). Crysis = 0.6-1 core load max and my GPU works its little heart out (high temps and GPU OC actually makes a difference). Hopefully FSXI will transfer more of the CPU load to the GPU to balance things up a bit.Gary

As best I can tell, from reading the benchmarks and testing my own rig:1. Marginally if at all, in FSX2. Not really, see 1.3. Not today... maybe in the future?4. The CPU has been the bottleneck for FS in every release. You can keep the GPU busy with high supersampling and high resolutions, but otherwise, the CPU is still the deciding factor for framerates.I would buy a quad over a dual for "future potential" and, since the Q6600 overclocks well and is only $300, it is hard to see how you can go wrong with it.ps. I see that Gary pushed the submit button seconds before I did.. at least we are not contradicting each other :-)