The point is MS released a poorly-coded piece of software that will never take advantage of advances in GPU technology, and only barely take advantage of advances in CPU technology.

So there is no point in upgrading my system whatsoever? Can

How would I know whether or not *you* should upgrade your system when you hadn't previously mentioned what hardware you're running? If you want to know what to upgrade, tell us what you've got, and make sure you get it right when you do so, as there is a world of difference between e.g. an 8600 GT and an 8800 GT.And yes, an 8600 GT is woefully inadequate and should be upgraded.

I didn't want to mention my system cause I was afraid it would be running away from the topic's main question, wich is about Core i7.I'm running FSX in a 19'' LCD monitor in 1280x1024 (16)Intel Core 2 Duo E6420, 2133 MhzAsus P5B-Plus2 GB DDR2 667GeForce 8600GT 256mbI'm aware it's very outdated for FSX. Probably there's no point in updating only my videocard, I should think about changing the role system. Am I correct? What do you think would be a great shot for better FSX performace, but not too expensive?Anyway, thanks in advance

Back to the OP's question, I am running an AMD(ATI) 4890 card with 1 MB of ram on and i920 processer overclocked at 4 ghz. Since I just did a fresh install of FSX on my new Windows 7 64 bit system, I did a lot of testing with my graphics sliders within the sim, to see what kind of limits I could push as I begain reinstalling my add ons. I have come to the conclusion (using ATI's latest drivers), that the 4890 handles almost everything exceptionally well (1m textures, high detail, max autogen, 5m mesh) except for one thing. Clouds. If you have a lot of weather, and look up or down from within the cockpit out into the sky, the FPS is just fine, but when you look straight ahead (parallel to the horizon), the frames start skipping badly and the smoothness is toast. Same thing from outside views on the aircraft. Frames are smooth as glass when looking down upon the aircraft, even at varous angles, or from below the aircraft, including crisp ground textures. But when you view the aircraft parallel to the horizon with any signicant amount of clouds, when looking from the side or out in the distance you are flying, the sim stutters badly. I know its the clouds after testing numerous combinations. I run FEX clouds, and had to dumb down the cloud textures to 128X128, and reduce the cloud draw distance to 60 miles so I could fly smoothly in all cloudy weather. I understand the ATI 5870 runs FSX much better, and probably it's what I'm going to get within a few months, but it's still $400 U.S. So my recommendation at this point, even as an AMD stockholder :(, would be to go with an Nvidia card if your budget is mid range at this point. If you go high end, you probably would not go wrong with the 5870.

I didn't want to mention my system cause I was afraid it would be running away from the topic's main question, wich is about Core i7.I'm running FSX in a 19'' LCD monitor in 1280x1024 (16)Intel Core 2 Duo E6420, 2133 MhzAsus P5B-Plus2 GB DDR2 667GeForce 8600GT 256mbI'm aware it's very outdated for FSX. Probably there's no point in updating only my videocard, I should think about changing the role system. Am I correct? What do you think would be a great shot for better FSX performace, but not too expensive?Anyway, thanks in advance

Depending on your budget you may just want to replace the whole machine. Honestly, you could upgrade every component you've got and still not reach the performance of a new system, while barely saving any money. If you don't want to spend a lot though, I'd start with that graphics card. You'll want to get a Geforce 9800 GT or GTS 250 if your budget is < $150. If you can afford more than that, go for a GTX 260 or 275.