Hi guys,I am at a stage of preparing to put a new PC together within a budget of course. My original idea was going to be something like a Core 2 Duo CPU but then I thought about the i7. However, the guy that gave me the quote who is also fairly into FS himself seemed to be under the impression that for FS9 the i7 would not be ideal and that there would be a bottleneck in performance created. He is also basing my system spec on some of the Jetline Systems PC's and according to their performance guide chart, the i7 is low on performance for FS9 compared to the Core 2 Quad. So he then put a quote together for a system based on the Core 2 Quad 9550 - unfortunately there seems to be a lack of stock of a decent 775 motherboard so he is now suggesting going the i7 route.So my question is, will the i7 860 QUAD CORE 2.80GHZ with 8MB cache not be able to run FS9 decently compared to CORE 2 QUAD 2.83GHZ Q9550 S775? Of course this is based on the rest of the components being of similar spec level. These days one does not find many (if any) benchmark tests with FS9 being used for newer hardware. I do plan to investigate FSX, but my main aim is still for FS9...Any advice would be great, thanks!Philip.

There is always a performance bottleneck. Not all bottlenecks are relevant, as in this case.

Hi PhilipYou seem to be short on good advice it seems...Given that FS9 is purely a single thread application the new i5 or i7 cpu's are in fact significantly better than any Core2 would be for the simple reason that they have an excellent turboboost which, without you doing a single thing, will boost your core speed well beyond 3.4GHz when using only 1 core. And FS9 will thank you for it.Forget Core2 - it is old news. If on a very tight budget go with an i5 - if you have a bit more to spare go with an i7 (both on a P55 motherboard with 4GB DDR3 RAM).

Hi PhilipYou seem to be short on good advice it seems...Given that FS9 is purely a single thread application the new i5 or i7 cpu's are in fact significantly better than any Core2 would be for the simple reason that they have an excellent turboboost which, without you doing a single thing, will boost your core speed well beyond 3.4GHz when using only 1 core. And FS9 will thank you for it.Forget Core2 - it is old news. If on a very tight budget go with an i5 - if you have a bit more to spare go with an i7 (both on a P55 motherboard with 4GB DDR3 RAM).

My i7 920 can take anything fs9 can throw at it. It's pretty ridiculous...

My i7 920 can take anything fs9 can throw at it. It's pretty ridiculous...

Funny how that goes, eh? My 4GHz Q9550 performs on-par with an i7 920 @ 3.6GHz across a variety of tasks, including games, including FS9 and FSX. I actually get higher fps in both fs9 and fsx, virtually identical in benchmarks, and his i7 is faster at hd video transcoding. Old architecture != old hat.

Thanks guys,It reassures me that I am making the right decision then to go the i7 route - it is going to stretch my budget a bit, but I think it's worth it in the long run! Now I just need to get the ball rolling - now the third attempt, so "take 3" it seems...All the best,Philip.