Hellotoday i upgraded my E6850 to the Q9650 - but to my big surprise - the framerate in FSX was exactly the same as the old E6850. I really hoped that there would be some kind of improvement.My system are as follows:Q9650 @3.0 ghz3 gb ram ddr 2 (667 mhz)Geforce 9600 GT 1 gbOthers out there wit a similar setup.At EGLL final with all sliders on full expect bloom was about 7 fps with standard EGLL and Wilco 737 in 3d cockpit view.

Unfortunately FSX responds more to core clock speeds, rather than number of cores. What you did is go from a core clock frequency of 3.0GHz with the E6850 to a core clock of 3.0GHz with the Q9650 - yes, same clock speed.What you should notice though is some increase in smoothness since you now have four cores instead of two. However, the Q9650 is a pretty good overclocked, so what you want to do is purchase a quality cooler for your CPU, like this one: http://www.crazypc.com/products/ultra-120-1366-50985.htmlAnd overclock that thing to at least 3.6GHz - then you will notice a difference :)

today i upgraded my E6850 to the Q9650 - but to my big surprise - the framerate in FSX was exactly the same as the old E6850. I really hoped that there would be some kind of improvement.

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Make that ram 800 or 1066 ( don't even gb's of ddr2 work better than uneven, as in 2gb or 4 gb), and a 9800, and I think you start to see more of what you want. And the OC.Bob

Make that ram 800 or 1066 ( don't even gb's of ddr2 work better than uneven, as in 2gb or 4 gb), and a 9800, and I think you start to see more of what you want. And the OC.Bob

Agree. If you're running 667MHz DDR2 with three sticks installed, you are running already slow dual-channel memory in single-channel mode, making it REALLY slow. Dual-channel requires DIMMs be paired up. If you add a fourth DIMM, it won't be used in a 32-bit system (XP or Vista 32) because your video card memory will block 1GB from use...but it will allow the ~3GB of user-addressable memory to operate in dual channel mode. Or you can remove the odd stick of RAM and probably see a perf increase that way. Best solution, with RAM as cheap as it is these days, is to put two x 2GB sticks of RAM as closely matched to the FSB speed as possible. And an upgrade to a 64-bit OS will let your system use all four gigs of RAM versus a bit less than three.A Q9650 and 667 MHz RAM is a pretty big mismatch.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Unfortunately FSX responds more to core clock speeds, rather than number of cores. What you did is go from a core clock frequency of 3.0GHz with the E6850 to a core clock of 3.0GHz with the Q9650 - yes, same clock speed.What you should notice though is some increase in smoothness since you now have four cores instead of two. However, the Q9650 is a pretty good overclocked, so what you want to do is purchase a quality cooler for your CPU, like this one: http://www.crazypc.com/products/ultra-120-1366-50985.htmlAnd overclock that thing to at least 3.6GHz - then you will notice a difference :)

Yup..a Q9650 is essentially two E6850 CPUs on the same module. Each pair has 6MB of L2 cache instead of 4MB on the E6850, but they're pretty much identical. E6850 can also be overclocked...FSX was originally written for ridiculously fast single-core CPUs that never materialized. At the time FSX was developed, Intel had this crazy delusional idea that Netburst (P4) would soon (2006 or so) reach 10GHz and by 2012 we would all be running 50 GHz, single-core CPUs. Eventually reality caught up with them and they began putting multiple cores on the same die/package instead to increase performance. Since then, performance improvements of each individual core have essentially stagnated. The only way for new games to take advantage of current and future multi-core CPUs is if they are specially coded for it. Unfortunately, by then the codebase for FSX was already finalized and optimized for the 10+ GHz single-core CPUs Intel promised.SP1/2 was a quick and dirty way to try to utilize the dormant cores at least to a small degree, but it only affected a few aspects of the sim, like terrain texture loading speed. The first core by far does the most work still, the others only kick in now and again to build up new scenery as you fly.Contrary to popular belief, the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION line still has an effect however. With a quad core, this can safely be reduced without introducing blurries. Some can go as low as 0.01, but I would try something like 0.16 or so first and then experiment. This can improve smoothness ever so slightly.