Infomation about Lynnfield is starting to leak out, do you think it has anything to offer FSX?On the plus side, compared to the 920:- Less power consumption (not an FSX benefit!)- Cheaper processor on like for like clock speed and cheaper platform (in theory)- PCI controller intergrated into chip. No chipset northbridge. Lower PCI bus latency to Graphics card?On the down side- No evidence of rumoured stellar overclocks over 5Ghz. Best seen so far is 4.2Ghz- Like for Like performance on same clock speed in "CPU" applications (such as SuperPi)- Dual channel rather than triple channel DDR3. How much use to FSX is tripple channel?- P55 is an immature platform compared with X58- There seems to be downwards pressure on 920 price right now (lowest UK price this week is

From What I understand, Lynnfield's are part of Intel's "Tick-Tock" strategy. These chips will be the "Tock" or refresh to the nehalem. The biggest advantage here will be on-board graphics being on hyper-steroids!I also read somewhere, I'm sorry I forget where, that the Lynnfield may not be as easy to overclock as the 920 (even though it will run cooler because of TDP) and that the 920 will go away soon after.I'm running an E8400 and have debated a 920 to overclock as well. With my E8400 and 3870 gpu, I get very very good performance in FS9. Once I go to the next platform, which will include Win7, It will be a 920 or a derivative of and either a 4890 or whatever comes next in gpu's which is what I'm really waiting for before I make a final move. I understand the next round of gpu's will be quite powerful and double the power of this group. Now if they could only give us that in a CPU for FSX!

From What I understand, Lynnfield's are part of Intel's "Tick-Tock" strategy. These chips will be the "Tock" or refresh to the nehalem. The biggest advantage here will be on-board graphics being on hyper-steroids!I also read somewhere, I'm sorry I forget where, that the Lynnfield may not be as easy to overclock as the 920 (even though it will run cooler because of TDP) and that the 920 will go away soon after.I'm running an E8400 and have debated a 920 to overclock as well. With my E8400 and 3870 gpu, I get very very good performance in FS9. Once I go to the next platform, which will include Win7, It will be a 920 or a derivative of and either a 4890 or whatever comes next in gpu's which is what I'm really waiting for before I make a final move. I understand the next round of gpu's will be quite powerful and double the power of this group. Now if they could only give us that in a CPU for FSX!

The tick is the 32nm process, that's not Lynnfield yet. The tock is the new architecture, SandyBridge, next year I hope. Lynnfield is a "cut down/mainstream" Nehalem, while the integrated graphics is something else entirely. I'm still edging towards the 920, simply because it's been around longer, is well understood and lots of good FSX reports (and hence FS9 even better). I will love one of those new graphics cards when they come, and just for FSX, although I expect drivers will take months to become good. Let's hope they keep the ageing DX9 code path in good shape.

Thanks....I went looking after I wrote and found exactly what you said. FWIW, a friend built a 920 system running Win7 and a 4850X2. We put FSX demo on it with nothing else and we maxed every possible setting. WOW. No stutters, fluid frame rates, yada yada yada. He was running 15K drives in SAS. Remember, we had a disposable system here and kept throwing stuff into the mix...what a beast and not even overclocked! So the 920 will probably be a great choice to install and overclock along with one of the up-coming gpu platforms.

Just read on fudzilla.com :Intel's soon launch quad-core, second generation Nehalem CPU, codenamed Lynnfield will end up with either Core i7 or Core i5 brands. The brand will depend on the performance and market segment Intel wants to target. At the top of the range, Lynnfield at 2.93GHz will end up with Core i7 870 brand.Core i7 9xx generation will remain reserved for Bloomfield socket 1366 CPUs, while Lynnfield generation will be Core i7 8x0 or lower.Top of the line is 2.93GHz and the nice feature is that with Intel Turbo this quad-core can reach 3.6GHz with at least one of its cores. Intel explained to us in Sunnyvale that if the TDP of the CPU is at an acceptable rate, the CPU will overclock one, two, three or all cores to the maximal speed that will still be at acceptable TDP.The good thing about Core i7 8x0 generation is that they do officially support DDR3 1333, something that Bloomfield and upcoming 6-core Gulftown don’t.Clakdale 32nm is Core i5 or Core i3.

I have not thought about hardware in a long time but I now have some cash and the upgrade bug. What do you think the longevity will be for the socket LGA 1366 will be? I'm thinking about the I7-950 (yeh, I know I can over clock the 920, I'm looking at out of the box speeds vs $) and I would hate to buy a board if the 975 is the last 1366 cpu that will ever be released. I'm probably going to wait until Windows 7 is released and I may get the 975 if the price drops by then.

I have not thought about hardware in a long time but I now have some cash and the upgrade bug. What do you think the longevity will be for the socket LGA 1366 will be? I'm thinking about the I7-950 (yeh, I know I can over clock the 920, I'm looking at out of the box speeds vs $) and I would hate to buy a board if the 975 is the last 1366 cpu that will ever be released. I'm probably going to wait until Windows 7 is released and I may get the 975 if the price drops by then.

LGA1366 will take Gulftown, 32nm/6 core. Not a big step forward for FSX most likely. Then we wait for Sandybridge. Is that a new socket? The tripple memory channel makes a lot of sense to 6 core, so I'd be suprised for it to retire (unless Sandybrige is a completely new chipset).Simon