Can somebody look at my specs in my sig below and let me know if you think it would be worth my while to upgrade my MoBo at all? I fly FS9 exclusively. The E8600 listed is only 3 months old, having replaced my E8500 OC, for basically minimal results -- probably wouldn't do it again -- and I feel my current MoBo may be choking my system, but I'm not clear if there are any more good, rocket type socket 775 dual core boards on the market any more. All the other recent posts here are for people looking to go with Quad CPUs? I can't find an ASUS Maximus Extreme II any more either at Tigerdirect.com or Egghead.com and just can't seem to figure out which board would be good for my OCing. Don't think it HAS to be under $100.00 USD in price either -- I would be willing to go 4200-$300 to rest assured that I'm not choking off an otherwise good system.Thank you in advance for any help/insight you can provide.

Until last week I was running E8600 on my ASUS Striker II Extreme ROG-edition, and I

I think your probably maxed out on that CPU. 4.4GHz is pretty dam good. Can you up the voltage just a hair? I don't think a new mobo will help all that much.

You're not going to achieve higher clocks without higher voltage and sub-zero cooling. If you want more performance you need a quad core.

My H50 cooler is great! It replaced an awesome, high end air cooler, and gives me 8-10 c temps lower than high end air, and is a very simple liquid cooling mod.The voltage to my E8600 is at 1.4 v right now (yikes) which is OOOHHH-KAYYY, and I can actually cut it back a bit without problems, but I'm rock stable at this (relatively high) CPU voltage. I can't remember what I'm pumping to my RAM right now, but I'm aware I'd probably have to go to DDR3 with a mobo change.And I don't feel I'd get marked improvement with a quad core -- in my opinion, and in the research I've done, there is way too much focus in these forums on the quads -- the E8600 duo core remains the best CPU for MSFS 2004. All due respect to everyone's opinion -- I'm REALLY just giving my POV and I don't want to engage anyone in a debate! Thanks for the input so far, I'm starting to feel more comfortable with what I have. I really would like to hear more about high end dual core MoBo's . . . unless they are dead . . . Which they very well could be. :(

Well, you can disregard my advice if you want, but as a user of an E8400 running @ 4GHz which also happens to be cooled by an H50 and needs high volts, and as someone who's upgraded said E8400 to a Q9550 @ 4GHz, I can tell you that the difference is noticeable. Just for the sake of clarity, I'm not suggesting you overvolt and overclock your CPU further. I'm telling you that you're at the limits of your cooling system and would need significantly better cooling as well as much higher voltage to achieve any significant increase in clockspeed.

Thanks, Max. Abslutely no offense meant -- I really value your input in these matters! -- I actually thought I was over volting just a tad right now, that's why I finally posted. Any more and the system starts to get squirrely, hence my concern that I was really cheating my processor with "just" the ASUS Maximus board. The only better candidate I could come up with was an Extreme II, and I just can't find one anywhere . . . except a used one once in a while on eBay.

I'm not offended at all, I just wanted to make sure you understand where I'm coming from.