Sorry, another i7 advice thread.

[duckbilled 310]

I know every other thread is asking this question. I have read many of them and below is the system that I am looking at putting together for FSX. Although I am sure I will try oc'g the cpu, I'm a little leary about it. I always feel like I'm going to fry something when I start to play around. I'm going to purchase everything and have someone local build it for me. When flying, I usually fly between major aiports with payware add on scenery and full ai. I also like to fly between tropical islands so I will be running some photoreal scenery along with GE, UT and ASA.BOARD: ASUS P6T DELUXE V2 SOCKET LGA1366RAM: MUSHKIN 6GB DDR3 1600 998691 CL6VIDEO: EVGA 01GP31180 GTX 285CPU: I7-950 BLOOMFIELD 3.06MONITOR: ACER H243HBMID 24" 2MS 20000:1DRIVES: 300GB VELOCIRAPTOR (FOR FSX ONLY) 150GB RAPTOR FOR OS AND FS9 (ALREADY OWN)PSU: THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850W (ALREADY OWN)I have a couple questions:First, is there anything that I should be adding/changing to get the most for my money.I noticed that the memory is out of stock at Newegg. Is there something else that someone could recommend or should I be looking at the Redline (also out of stock)? They only have 3 CL6 6GB sets there and all are out of stock except a set by G-Skill. I'd prefer Corsair, OCZ or Mushkin.With XP, I have the page file set on it's own 5GB partition and a different drive from XP. Is this necessary with Vista 64 or Windows 7? I will have two 7200 RPM drives left over after the rebuild and I am wondering what I should do with them. I suppose I could do raid0 and put the OS on them leaving the raptor for fs9 and other games.

[Max Kraus 341]

On the subject of Windows 7 and Xp page files, I haven't bothered now with a pagefile on separate partition since going to 6Gb and W7. Things seem to run ok. You could certainly run your old 7200rpm drive as an OS drive, that's what I do and use the Raptor for FSX only.I think your rig is a great setup. I was kind of surprised to see stutters when I went to Core i7 but it was still a massive step up. Not enough to move to FSX permanently. I am a heavy jet flier like you and FSX still isn't attractive for this IMHO, FS9 still rules this. I have however been putting in some light overclocks (still learning) and at 3.6GHz I can see the CPU really start to let go on FSX. It becomes so much smoother and I will pursue this to 4GHz if possible and start using my -400X. I think your i7-940 (940 right, not 950?) will perform great but still be prepared to do some work with it. That's all I can say, I don't have all the answers to the great FSX riddle. :(

[duckbilled 310]

Thanks for the reply. Interesting to know that you are still seeing stutters.It is the i7-950 that I am looking athttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115211Yesterday I checked out a couple new computer stores here in the area (southeast Oakland County outside Detroit). I like Microcenter but I don't think they give really good personal attention. There is another store that I have used but no one there speaks very good English - things have gotten lost in translation in the past with them. I usually wouldn't go to a place that I didn't know but one of them seemed really promising. They specifically build and service high end gaming and media systems. They have been around for a 1.5 years and they are in a very affluent area - I'm sure they get a lot of money is no object types in there. They have built FS rigs and they have no problem with overclocking systems as long as I sign off on it. They are even familiar with FS-GS which surprised me. He also confirmed what you said about pagefile on W7.Anyway, the guy there suggested that if I can be patient, I should wait until after Windows 7 is officially released. He was saying that a lot of manufacturers have things waiting to be released. They guy talked a good game and I think I trust his opinion after talking with him for about 15 minutes.

[myatan 0]

I know every other thread is asking this question. I have read many of them and below is the system that I am looking at putting together for FSX. Although I am sure I will try oc'g the cpu, I'm a little leary about it. I always feel like I'm going to fry something when I start to play around. I'm going to purchase everything and have someone local build it for me. When flying, I usually fly between major aiports with payware add on scenery and full ai. I also like to fly between tropical islands so I will be running some photoreal scenery along with GE, UT and ASA.BOARD: ASUS P6T DELUXE V2 SOCKET LGA1366RAM: MUSHKIN 6GB DDR3 1600 998691 CL6VIDEO: EVGA 01GP31180 GTX 285CPU: I7-950 BLOOMFIELD 3.06MONITOR: ACER H243HBMID 24" 2MS 20000:1DRIVES: 300GB VELOCIRAPTOR (FOR FSX ONLY) 150GB RAPTOR FOR OS AND FS9 (ALREADY OWN)PSU: THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850W (ALREADY OWN)I have a couple questions:First, is there anything that I should be adding/changing to get the most for my money.I noticed that the memory is out of stock at Newegg. Is there something else that someone could recommend or should I be looking at the Redline (also out of stock)? They only have 3 CL6 6GB sets there and all are out of stock except a set by G-Skill. I'd prefer Corsair, OCZ or Mushkin.With XP, I have the page file set on it's own 5GB partition and a different drive from XP. Is this necessary with Vista 64 or Windows 7? I will have two 7200 RPM drives left over after the rebuild and I am wondering what I should do with them. I suppose I could do raid0 and put the OS on them leaving the raptor for fs9 and other games.

I won't say anything in detail about everything you mentioned except "frying" things. I am not "OC nerd", I don't have pipes coming out of my tower or nitrogen containers everywhere. All I have is a thermalright ultra extreme heatsink and 2 x 120mm fans (i dont even know their brand). I have a Q6600, and I have it running at 3.6 Ghz. That's %50 overclock. I have had it running like this constantly for more than 2 years now (last july was 2nd year anniversery). I also have a 8800 GTX which I am overclocking to 621/1011/2022. Again, my RAM, which is originally a 800 Mhz DDR2 Crucial Ballistix, I overclock it to 1033 Mhz, that's %25 overclock. This entire system did not have a single hardware failure for more than 2 years. I did not do anything special, all I did was to go into the BIOS, change the frequencies. These hardware parts are so advanced, even if you wanted to "fry" them, you wouldn't be able to. During my initial overclock testing, I tried up to 4.0 Ghz, over 1.6V for the CPU. Nothing happened, worst, the PC would just freeze, you do a CMOS reset, and that's it. In my opinion, do not WASTE (I am writing with capital letters because it is a big amount of waste) money on 950, do not get anything more than 920. In fact, if I were you, I'd get a Q9650, not waste money on i7 because it has minimal gains on top of the Q series. The only gain comes in the form of a higher memory bandwidth which comes from the DDR3, it's not directly related to i7. If you were to take a 920 and overclock it to 3.6 and take Q6600 or Q9650 and overclock it to 3.6, with the same amount of RAM, the difference would be no more than 2-5 fps at best. This considers you will have the rest of your setup of course, a decent hard drive and video card, and so on.Regards,

[TechguyMaxC 516]

I tend to agree with myatan. The i7 is a great chip and if you have the money to build a high-end i7 system then good for you. If you are on a budget though or just don't see the value in spending hundreds of dollars more for minimal performance gains likely only to be evident in benchmark sessions, you may want to look at a Q9 system instead. I just picked up a Q9550 for a mere $169 @ MicroCenter, a new P45 board for only $99, and an OCZ Vendetta 2 cooler with an additional high-RPM Scythe 120MM fan for another $41. Throw it all together and 4GHz was accomplished with ease. You could spend $500+ on an i7 950, more than $200 on a board, $70 or more on a cooler, another $150 or more on RAM and come out a few percent ahead of the aforementioned system in benchmarks, but the question is: is it worth it?

[myatan 0]

I tend to agree with myatan. The i7 is a great chip and if you have the money to build a high-end i7 system then good for you. If you are on a budget though or just don't see the value in spending hundreds of dollars more for minimal performance gains likely only to be evident in benchmark sessions, you may want to look at a Q9 system instead. I just picked up a Q9550 for a mere $169 @ MicroCenter, a new P45 board for only $99, and an OCZ Vendetta 2 cooler with an additional high-RPM Scythe 120MM fan for another $41. Throw it all together and 4GHz was accomplished with ease. You could spend $500+ on an i7 950, more than $200 on a board, $70 or more on a cooler, another $150 or more on RAM and come out a few percent ahead of the aforementioned system in benchmarks, but the question is: is it worth it?

On top of that, a 750W PSU is highly unlikely to be enough for an overclock i7, you'd need at least a 1000W, at least with that 295 GTX, that's another $300+.Regards,

[duckbilled 310]

All good points. Your advice is very much appreciated.I'm not opposed to overclocking things myself if I was doing it with a backup rig. I plan to take all of the components left over from my current system and others I have laying around and building something myself to play with. From what I understand, my 3800+ has a little room. I am considering checking out WideFS - maybe having it run ASA or something. I guess the whole thing for me is every time I build a new system, I always take the pragmatic route (in 2002, I bought a top end 36" tube tv rather than a plasma; with this rig, I went AGP8X rather than PCI-E which was very new at the time, socket 939 rather than AM2...) For this one, I'm thinking that I want the latest and the best. If I go with LGA 775 I'm concerned that there will be no where to go in couple years if I want to upgrade the CPU. I tend to do a full upgrade every 4-5 years with small upgrades along the way (CPU, RAM, GPU). Faster 939 CPUs were produced but finding them now is impossible. Since I have decided to wait for W7, I may have a better gauge on what to do in a few months. I'd like to find something that has the most longevity. My wife will only let me get away with major upgrades every so often so I have to strike when the iron is hot.Is it just me or does Intel seem to switch sockets more than AMD? It seems like there were a ton of 939 and AM2 chips released. If so, is there a reason why?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

On top of that, a 750W PSU is highly unlikely to be enough for an overclock i7, you'd need at least a 1000W, at least with that 295 GTX, that's another $300+.Regards,

Now this I can't agree with. I have a "mere" 550W PSU in my primary PC, the aforementioned 4GHz Q9550 also featuring an overclocked GTX 285. My roommate runs his PC on a 750W PSU with his i7 @ 3.33 (HT on, turbo on) with an o/c'd 4870 X2.