So anyone here upgrade from a Q9450 to an i7 920 and if so how much faster is it in FSX?

Greetings;I'm on the i7 @4GHz. I came from a Q9650@ 4GHz and before that a Q6600@ 3.6GHz. Don't think of the improvement as "faster" because there's really no way to truely measure using fps. Your goal should be 25-30 fps smooth flight and clear scenery. The fast Q9650 was good but it doesn't match the clocked i7 in FSX. And the DDR3 does wonders for scenery clarity, night&day difference from DDR2.I don't know if you have that 9450 clocked but the i7 @ 3.6GHz and above, with at least DDR3 1600, will cream the pants off of any core2 at just about any speed in FSX. When I first got it, my i7 @3.2GHz ran at least as fast as my Q9650 @4GHz and it ran much smoother. I'm glad I made the switch. It takes an awesome chip to replace the Q9650 and the i7 does it.-jk

I cant comment on the comparison but I now have a i7 940 2.93 and it is overclocked to 4ghz and it is pure joy now to use FSX. As far as the FPS go I find I get the best performance with it locked at 30fps. I am able to run very dense autogen with the scenery complexity maxed, 59% ai, 8%cars, all other sliders max except I still run the 2x low water and with those settings can smoothly fly to any airport I want. It was an expensive upgrade but if you love FS as much as I do it is well worth the money and I would tell anybody wanting to upgrade to do it. Very very very very happy camper.

Greetings;I'm on the i7 @4GHz. I came from a Q9650@ 4GHz and before that a Q6600@ 3.6GHz. Don't think of the improvement as "faster" because there's really no way to truely measure using fps. Your goal should be 25-30 fps smooth flight and clear scenery. The fast Q9650 was good but it doesn't match the clocked i7 in FSX. And the DDR3 does wonders for scenery clarity, night&day difference from DDR2.-jk

You wouldn

Very very very very happy camper.

+1

You wouldn

No I've got the P6T Deluxe, V1. I looked at the Extreme but got scared away by the cold boot issue that seems to be common at this time. There were a few reports of the Deluxe having the same issue, but I haven't had any issues at all. I really was interested in that RIIE though, coming off the Rampage Formula. I'm really fond of that Rampage line.-jk

The RE is too much board for mostIts designed for silly people like me who like to play with values common to engineers and electronics buffs. It will not give you any more perf unless you are into better cooling and know how to trim for uberclocks in both CPU and memoryThe P6T is more than enough for most on i7i7 is the easiest platform to date to clock and does not need the higher class board like Q to squeeze the numbers out of it for northbridge latency reduction

No I've got the P6T Deluxe, V1. I looked at the Extreme but got scared away by the cold boot issue that seems to be common at this time. There were a few reports of the Deluxe having the same issue, but I haven't had any issues at all. I really was interested in that RIIE though, coming off the Rampage Formula. I'm really fond of that Rampage line.-jk

The RE is too much board for mostIts designed for silly people like me who like to play with values common to engineers and electronics buffs. It will not give you any more perf unless you are into better cooling and know how to trim for uberclocks in both CPU and memoryThe P6T is more than enough for most on i7i7 is the easiest platform to date to clock and does not need the higher class board like Q to squeeze the numbers out of it for northbridge latency reduction

Thank you both for your responses. I

I cant comment on the comparison but I now have a i7 940 2.93 and it is overclocked to 4ghz and it is pure joy now to use FSX. As far as the FPS go I find I get the best performance with it locked at 30fps. I am able to run very dense autogen with the scenery complexity maxed, 59% ai, 8%cars, all other sliders max except I still run the 2x low water and with those settings can smoothly fly to any airport I want. It was an expensive upgrade but if you love FS as much as I do it is well worth the money and I would tell anybody wanting to upgrade to do it. Very very very very happy camper.

The i7 IS is giving a bit more clock for clock punch than the core2. For instance with the same settings, a [email protected]/4G-ram@800/9800GTX+@740/19x10-res, FSMark run (Seattle flyby) gets smooth flight with frames locked at 20FPS. That is a ~ 30% improvement: attributable to 15% clock increase (3.6 > 4.0) and a 15% clock for clock increase. At the same clock, we might expect the i7 to provide a ~ 15% increase in performance over a core2.

If you have a smooth flight setup with a core duo or quad at 3.8GHz plus, just keep it.I have a 4GHz setup of each and once using either locked at 30fps I'd be hard pressed to see differences.In fact my core quad setup is probably smoother, the i7 may need more tweaking.i7 with HT on is amazing for video rendering speed but for FSX using NickN's tips on core quad setup is about as good as FSX gets.

I cant comment on the comparison but I now have a i7 940 2.93 and it is overclocked to 4ghz and it is pure joy now to use FSX. As far as the FPS go I find I get the best performance with it locked at 30fps. I am able to run very dense autogen with the scenery complexity maxed, 59% ai, 8%cars, all other sliders max except I still run the 2x low water and with those settings can smoothly fly to any airport I want. It was an expensive upgrade but if you love FS as much as I do it is well worth the money and I would tell anybody wanting to upgrade to do it. Very very very very happy camper.

When you're running @ 4 GHz how do you cool the CPU? How much DDR3 RAM do you have installed and of what type and what gfx card are you using?I'm on a Q6600 @ 3.4 GHz and a 8800GT 512 MB today and I'm thinking of upgrading but I'm not sure if the performance gain would be in comparison with the money spent. Also I'm not sure if I should go for a 920 and a new gfx card like the GTX285 or if I would be better off going for a 940 and keep my 8800GT - any input greately appreciated!!