------------------------------------------------------Hi Jim,To play Devil's Advocate, you will probably pay quite a bit less for an i7-975 when the new 980 proc comes out. I doubt that the 975 will maintain the current asking price. Would that difference be worth it to you...only yourself to decide. I guess we will all have to wait for a modern rewrite of the flight simulation genre before we see every last drop of performance from any multi-core, let alone the i7 line. Here's hoping that that is sooner than later....Cheers!Mitch

Agree.But why even bother when a 920DO will give you the goods.What we need is a nice 32nm quad, I have a feeling that 6-cores will produce enough heat to hit the same 4.2-4.4 (on air) thermal wall that we have now with the 4-core 45nm chips.Thats the way I see it, but I hope I'm wrong.

Traiditionally, price savings on previous flagship SKUs is really hit-or-miss. If you're lucky you'll find a deal for half-price, but most often you'll only save $100 or so.

I don't think that you will see much of an improvement with 6 cores. If an i7 980 was created with a speed of 4 instead of the current 3.3 i7 975, then you would see a nice increase in frame rates. Add a GTX 300 and you will see an improvement worthy of an upgrade.But, I see Orbx and their new technology as having a greater impact on FSX that the new hardware. FSX is just broken. It can be fixed with the right scenery updates. Not only eye candy but faster fps which translates into a smoother sim.

I don't think that you will see much of an improvement with 6 cores. If an i7 980 was created with a speed of 4 instead of the current 3.3 i7 975, then you would see a nice increase in frame rates. Add a GTX 300 and you will see an improvement worthy of an upgrade.But, I see Orbx and their new technology as having a greater impact on FSX that the new hardware. FSX is just broken. It can be fixed with the right scenery updates. Not only eye candy but faster fps which translates into a smoother sim.

You're right that the additional cores/threads won't improve FPS, but you have to also account for the fact that this new chip is produced on Intel's newest 32nm HKMG CMOS fabrication process, rather than the "old" 45nm HKMG CMOS process. That means smaller transistors. Smaller transistors mean (potentially) more overclocking headroom. Remember when the 45nm chips were first introduced and all of a sudden 4GHz was easy? 32nm may enable 4.5GHz or higher clocks provided appropriate cooling.

You don't really have to wait, Graham: the i7-920 is quite capable of holding the magic 4 gig, and allowing beautifully smooth flying at 25 frames - at Seattle, thunderstorms, 100% airline, 100% GA, 20 road, with most sliders 3/4 or full right. I'm doing that on the 950 at four, locked at 25 and flying the Maddog. It doesn't drop below 24.9, ever. http://forums.pureoverclock.com/showthread.php?t=5736Procrastination will kill you, because you will always think there's something better just around the corner. There is always newer of course, but 4 gig is available NOW, and will give you the sim the way it was intended. :( ..and the 920 is less than 3 hundred bucks...

I wish that were my experience. I have a 920 OCd to 3.8 (apx), and with a complex airliner, in a complex airport, with add-on weather, I am often in the low double digits - 12 to 14 fps. Good video card (ATI 4800). 6 gigs of memory. Win 7.

I wish that were my experience. I have a 920 OCd to 3.8 (apx), and with a complex airliner, in a complex airport, with add-on weather, I am often in the low double digits - 12 to 14 fps. Good video card (ATI 4800). 6 gigs of memory. Win 7.

You could still get more performance with a better graphics card like an HD 5800 series or GTX 200 series. But that's beside the point. MSFS still needs as much CPU horsepower as you can throw at it, and the 980x will soon be that chip. If I were in the market for a high-end system to run MSFS this year, I wouldn't even be looking at another chip, assuming $1000 CPUs are in the budget of course.

NDA release :(