Which I7 For Fsx?

[Pete S 7]

Hi guys, after battling with my present system, I decided to shell out for a Core i7 gaming system built by "IBUYPOWER". My question is, should I shell out the extra $300 for the 940 processor or is the 920 plenty fast enough for the FSX?The second question is: Will the ATI 4870 1GB be good or shoud I shell out the extra bucks for the nVidia 280 GTX 1GB? The SLI option is out, but the ATI 4870 X2 2GB may still be in play, it will cost a few bucks more that the nVidia 280.Which Graphics option would ya'll recommend?Thanks for all inputPete S.

[jwenham 1]

This is what I am going withAsus P6t Deluxe MOBO6 gigs of 1600 ram brand name yet to be determinedi7 940EVGA 260 superclocked edition 896mb ramNewegg has a combo deal on the board and 940 cpuBest of luck with your new system!

[Pete S 7]

....Newegg has a combo deal on the board and 940 cpu

I built my last 5 or6 systems myself, but decided this time arround I will not go that route.This last system has driven me half crazy, It has great components:Gigabyte Ga-p45-DSR MoBo, Intell Duo E8500 CPU, 4 Gig of Mushkin DDR2 and nVidia 8800GTX video, but I am having some really weird problems with it that I cannot resolve, and rather than keep fighting it and replacing components I decided to get a turn key system, that I don't have to spend all my time troubleshooting!Now to decide just exactly what to get! :( Pete S.

[Pete S 7]

EDIT ....somehow I posted the same thing twice!Pete S.

[Guest Alphahawk3]

I built my last 5 or6 systems myself, but decided this time arround I will not go that route.This last system has driven me half crazy, It has great components:Gigabyte Ga-p45-DSR MoBo, Intell Duo E8500 CPU, 4 Gig of Mushkin DDR2 and nVidia 8800GTX video, but I am having some really weird problems with it that I cannot resolve, and rather than keep fighting it and replacing components I decided to get a turn key system, that I don't have to spend all my time troubleshooting!Now to decide just exactly what to get! :( Pete S.

While I don't blame you for buying pre-built I just did an i7 920 with Asus p6T deluxe with not one problem...and this was my first build in ten years. I was also looking at the company you are and at CyberPower also. But going to NewEgg I could do it cheaper and that is the road I went. But your question was which chip. I had to cut the budget off somewhere. I can tell you the last time I did a clock it was no where as easy as it is on this chip with the Asus P6. I have read a lot of articles about why pay for the 940 or 965 when you can have the same results with the 920. These articles are from well known sites on the web. But I don't agree with their premis of the end results. Yes the 920 is easy to clock. I had it up to 3.2ghz in about 3 minutes after being shown a good site to look at and the temp never got above 60c...I think that was the final figure. I bought 6gig of Corsair 1600 mem. It supposedly cannot be used with the 920 unless I overclock the chip. Well with the latest bios I can use the mem at the intended speed without clocking the chip. But I bought my mem for what will be out in a year for a new i7 chip so all I would have to upgrade is the chip. I am very happy with FSX on the 920. It is not nirvana and I don't think it will be on the 965 even. FSX is just one big bad boy who will be gathering dust on a shelf if newer versions come out. I think the cpu to max out FSX is so far down the road maybe two new versions of FS.... will be out before the hardware to run FSX fully is made for us to buy. I will tell you that all four of your cores will be used. I have sat here and watched this thing too much to let other people say otherwise. FEX SHD clouds and rain do nothing to slow down FPS when your flying. The 920 is as smooth as silk. I only fly GA so I can't speak to the heavies but I can now fly my SR22 with no problems at all and if you know that aircraft the avionics on it are a bear....but very nice. In a rural area on my old P4 5 fps sitting on the runway....with the same area i7 920 locked at 30 and staying at 30. I have FTX Orbx YMLL. It is a nice work and can bring a sytem to its kness depending what you do at the airport. Some people with higher end quads could only get 6 or 7 FPS there. With an SF260 I get 21 FPS locked at 60 and get the 60 shortly after take off but going back over the airport it goes back to the 20 area. But what you will find....and I only use the frame counter as a referal point because there is no other....how much smoother everything is. There is a guy that posts on here a lot...NickN....in some of his posts he was recomending the 940 as the starting point. I think he is correct. I just did not have the extra money and I was not going to spend 800 dollars on a build based on what will soon be an old chip set I put that and 400 more with it to get this rig. That is what happend with my Dell....I could not go out and buy a dual core or quad core and plug it in. I am expecting the 1366 socket to be around for a few years anyway and everyone seems to think in a matter of months a new crop of i7 will be out. Either way you go you will not be dssapointed. Good luck with whatever you get. I am off to fly some where regards

[Guest D17S]

You might begin an analysis by making a guess about how much performance increase the i7 can provide over the current Core2 design. A ~ 30% clock-for-clock improvement might provide a good (but arguable!) place to start. If so, an i7 at 3.0Ghz will provide the same performance as a $175 Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz. To make any sense at all, - any - i7 must be O/C'd (or initially run) beyond 3.0Ghz. It appears the 920s and the 940s will O/C to the same speed. The new FSB is called Base Clock (Bck) and runs at a default 133Mhz. Bck overclocks are topping out at ~ 200Mhz. The O/Cing drill is the same as it always has been. For instance the i7 has a fixed multiplier of 20x. To get to a CPU speed of 3.6, the Bck must be increased to 180Mhz (180x20=3.6). This Bck also drives the ram's speed. The new ram multipliers for the i7 920 is 6x and 8x. Users are having trouble getting the 6x multi to work. So plan on using the 8x. At a Bck of 180, the ram will be running at 180 x 8 = 1440. That means ya gotta get DDR3-1600 ram. All this will then get cha an i7 at 3.6Ghz that will preform ~ 30% better than that old $175 Q6600 at 3.6Ghz. The increased ram speed will provide no discernible performance advantage. So at least, a recommendation might be to go for the cheaper 920. It'll run with the 940 for the same $$$ and only cost an arm . . . rather than an arm And a leg!

[Pete S 7]

All this will then get cha an i7 at 3.6Ghz that will preform ~ 30% better than that old $175 Q6600 at 3.6Ghz. The increased ram speed will provide no discernible performance advantage. So at least, a recommendation might be to go for the cheaper 920. It'll run with the 940 for the same $$$ and only cost an arm . . . rather than an arm And a leg!

Thanks, Alphahawk and Sam.Great reasoning for not overspending, I will seriously consider the the 920 chip and OC it. Unfortunately that leaves out the system I was thinking of getting, since they come only with the 1333 DDR3. Guess maybe I should look into building it up myself, again!Or maybe I should just try a different motherboard, and stay with my present 2 core E8500? This is the first Gigabyte I used and it's really not impressing me! The MB's I have always used in the past were either MSI or Asus and one Intel. MSI stll remains my favorite brand!Pete S.