I currently have a Q6600 Quad running at 2.4ghz and have never been happy with it's performance. I have tried doing a bit of overclocking but all it did was cause FSX to crash. I am considering replacing it with an E8400 Core 2 Duo running at 3.0ghz.It is about all that will fit my current motherboard. Does this make any sense to anyone out there or am I wasting my money? Thanks for your help.

Yes, that is crazy. You will likely lose performance. If you want more performance you should look into a new board & CPU.

I don't think it's crazy at all, the higher core clock speed will help you tremendously, and if you can overclock the chip to 3.8 - 4.0 Ghz you'll have a fantastic FSX experience.The two cores will hurt a little if you run other programs at the same time, but for a dedicated FSX session you should be fine.The Core 2 duo computer in my sig runs great!

FSX runs better with more cores. Otherwise no one here would be running anything but water-cooled E8x00s @ 4.5GHz and above.

Sure it does, but the most important component for FSX performance is single core clock speed. The OP was asking if they would get better performance by swapping from 4 cores at 2.4Ghz to 2 cores at 3.0 Ghz, the answer is yes.

I currently have a Q6600 Quad running at 2.4ghz and have never been happy with it's performance. I have tried doing a bit of overclocking but all it did was cause FSX to crash. I am considering replacing it with an E8400 Core 2 Duo running at 3.0ghz.It is about all that will fit my current motherboard. Does this make any sense to anyone out there or am I wasting my money? Thanks for your help.

Wasting money. Save for an i7 system. FSX runs BAD on a C2D.Understand it like this: FSX needs at least 3 cores to run OK. One for fibers, one for main scheduler and one for textures. Mixing any of those on a single core is looking for troubles. ONLY if you have a really fast CPU, like OCed i7s to 4.2 etc, then you can put main+fibers on 1st core and use 3 cores for textures, which is real performance thing btw. Going for C2D with 3,2 will give you couple of frames yes, but will introduce many MANY other problems.Been there, done that, got i7. That's it.

Wasting money. Save for an i7 system. FSX runs BAD on a C2D.Understand it like this: FSX needs at least 3 cores to run OK. One for fibers, one for main scheduler and one for textures. Mixing any of those on a single core is looking for troubles. ONLY if you have a really fast CPU, like OCed i7s to 4.2 etc, then you can put main+fibers on 1st core and use 3 cores for textures, which is real performance thing btw. Going for C2D with 3,2 will give you couple of frames yes, but will introduce many MANY other problems.Been there, done that, got i7. That's it.

+1 , Yes fully agree , I upgraded from E8500 @3.6 to i7 @3.6 too. I really enjoyed and now flying day/night , complex aircrafts VC on FSDT airports and never see FPS below 25 and it runs smooth.

Thanks a bunch.....I was confused by the "FSX doesn't care about cores but wants higher speeds" controversy.....so this info really helps. Now....deciding on an i7 Motherboard.

I think we need to see the rest of your specs. If you don't already have the GPU and ram speed to back up a faster cpu, than no you won't see much difference.Bob

Sure it does, but the most important component for FSX performance is single core clock speed.

If that were true then everyone would still be running 3.8GHz Pentium 4s. It is not true. Clock speed on its own is not a measure of performance. You can only compare clockspeed of two otherwise identical chips.

The OP was asking if they would get better performance by swapping from 4 cores at 2.4Ghz to 2 cores at 3.0 Ghz, the answer is yes.

You may see an increase in maximum FPS, but minimums (which are far more important) will decrease.

I think we need to see the rest of your specs. If you don't already have the GPU and ram speed to back up a faster cpu, than no you won't see much difference.Bob

Bob you can see my specs in my signature file...and thanks again for your help.

Bob you can see my specs in my signature file...and thanks again for your help.

Oops. Read at first on my phone where I couldn't see your info. Good luck on your i7 quest. I hear the GTX 470s and 80s are killer GPUs.Bob