Hello! OK, my first post after years of reading forums at Avsim.After some posts about Core 2 Duo and all concerns about FSX performance I decided to give my contribution to this comunity.Firstly, sorry for my english (I'm from Croatia).OK, now report.Here is configuration: (bougt it yesterday :) ) MB: Intel DG965SS - Intels newest G965 Chipset - 1066 Mhz FSB Procesor: Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 (2,4 Gzh, 4Mb L2) RAM: GoodRAM 2X1Gb Dual channel at 800Mhz (2Gb) VIDEO: :( My old Nvidia G6600 128MB OS: XP fresh install with 91.47 Nvidia driversThis MB has internal Graphics with core at 600Mhz and they say DX9 AND DX10. But I havent tested it yet (it is stil VGA :( ).System works perfectly. I'm very impresed with Win XP performance. I couldn't beleve it. So I tested FSX Demo. Didnt had luck with FP beta. :( Impession:Settings...Visuals impresed me. Big BIG diference form P4 HT 3 Mhz 1Gb with the same Video Card. That was suprise. It seamed very smooth, but then shift Z and..... 20 FPS. Suprise again. Then drops to 15 FPS.. 10 FPS... 120 FPS etc.. but average is arround 17FPS.I was cuite dissapointed. But I'm shure it is only a DEMO thing. Interesting thing is that FSX doesnt use second core at all....Here are some screens with FPS....Notice FPS drop when there is water visible So that would be it for now. I'm downloading Beta (30min trail B)) so I will post results here tomorow. I cant find FS9 CD-s right now so I cant compare B) Cost of this upgrade (MB, CPU, RAM) here in croatia was $950 USD.Hope you will find this report usefull. Danko

You can go into task manager, process and right click the process and select affinity. Untick a box so only 1 cpu is selected, click ok. Then repeat again and this time select both CPU boxes. That should enable both CPU's - you'll see it in the graph. Check the FPS again.

Hej,That tweek didn't help. OK diagram now shows activity for both cores but FPS is the same.It is understandable that FXS can't use both cores. tdragger wrote one good post on his blog about the issue...https://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/200.../21/711152.aspx... but owerall performance should be much better with core 2 duo arhitecture anyway. (faster FSB, faster RAM etc.)so... low FPS in my case could be because of Video card. But the point is... with 15-20 fps simulator is usable... fyable...on my old P4 3Ghz that was not the case. with this settings I got 10 FPS and it was NOT flyable.

your graphicscard is not doing any good to the rest of your setup.

And the motherboard graphics would be even worse.

Yes, I know. But there is no point of buying new Video card till second generation of DX10 cards. It's a waste of money.

FSX will not max out both cores no matter what you do. You can set affinity to both cores and on average it will hover around 50%.I've seen FSX peak using both cores at 72% while launching the program. It's an improvement over FS9 but it may not be what you expect. Yes it may be dissapointing, other game like Oblivion and Crysis take full advantage of multiple cores, but oh well.This is what you get, be happy. :)http://www.cpavirtual.org/images/banners/MyNewCrapBanner.jpgEric Thornton - CX001

Well.. I'm happy. I didn't expect it to use both cores as I read tdraggers post. But deep deep in side i was hoping for some better results.with 1Gb extra on 800Mhz and new core2duo I was expecting more then 5FPS upgrade (over P4 3Ghz)

Your vid card is probably what is holding you back. One of the ACES team posted that FSX will use a lot of video ram, so hopefully a better card will help.Since it doesn't look like AMD will have anything substantial to beat the Conroe chip anytime soon, hopefully they will be a bit cheaper by the time I upgrade (waiting for Vista and DX10).Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/ambanner.jpg

I don't think any CPU + video card on the market right now can max out the settings on FSX. It's the same old story with every flight sim title that's been released, we have a wait a year or two before the hardware catchs up. I guess we'll have to wait for FSX to be released to get some serious benchmarks.

but my gosh, the scenery area was not a dense one with lots of polygons and lots of AI! Not a single scenery object is visible in the views!! I think 15 FPS is terrible in this case!

yea and the autogen density set to nonethis is not good.

Correct ;)

I can max out every thing on the demo (with bloom turned off) and fair weather selected. It runs at around 15 FPS with the microlight sitting on the runway at Princess Juliana. It easily goes up to (locked) 20fps when airborne and lookig away from autogen. I am sure it would poorer at Heathrow with say the PMDG 747.With a another well known heavy add on it flys okay but doesn;t like FSUIPC missing. The frame rate went down to about 12 on the runway.Still the Core 2 Duo 6700 will overclock to 3.6Ghz on air cooling with good memory.I am sure things have improved on later releases of FSX.

It's surprising there was a frame rate increase at all with that 6600GT Vcard, after the P4 was swapped out for the 6700 Core 2. However since there was it appears even with that little ol' 6600GT, the sim was still CPU limited. In other words, it seems that the video card was not the (entire) limiting factor. Is FSX still CPU limited, even with the 6700 Core 2? It would be interesting to see if any further frame rate increase would occur with a nice, fat O/C on that 6700 Core 2. If FSX needs more than a 3.5 ghz, dual CPU'd Core 2? . . . well, Holy smokes Batman! We might need to re-think any future new-box build strategies. If this ends up being the case (and it seems it may well be), we might want to consider that quad core (Intel's "Kentsfield") when it shows up this November. Did you see that Taildragger was calling FSX "multi-core" capable, rather than just dual core capable? That quad core is just 8-10 weeks away......Hummm