I hope this doesn't sound like a dumb question for you pros, but I wanted to know what the difference is with an i7 860 compared to an i7 920 or 930 and other 900 series. Is it due to the upgrade ability?I recently had a new gaming computer built and the builder recommended and built an i7 860 overclocked @ 4GHz, Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P LGA1156, G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB (2x2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR31600, GTX 280 Superclocked, WD Velociraptor 300GB and WD Caviar Black, Intel X25-M Maintsream SSD 80GB, 750 Watt, Windows 7 Ultimate, Corsair Cooling Hydro CPU cooler in a Cooler Master HF 932 Case.So far the computer works well, just wondering whether I should have pushed for aan intel 900 series GPU.Any help or insight much appreciated as there is a wealth of knowledge at these forums. Thanks,Myron P.

MyronDifferent MOBO's not interchangeable i7 860 uses socket 1156 and the i 7 9xx use the 1366.Ram on i7 860 is dual channel DDR3 and should be intstalled as 2 or 4 or 8GBRAM on i7 Series is triple channel DDR3 usually 3GB, 6GB or 12 GB and is supposedly faster, ie memory bandwidth on i7 9xx series > i7 860 .Max RAM in i7 860 = 16GB in i7 9xx = 24GBCpu (eg BUS Type) architecture on i7 9xx series supposedly better than on i7 860 makeing them more effficient, and system bus on i7 9xx is fasterEasier to overclock the i7 9xx series?The i7 860 uses less power than i7 9xx series.That's about it I use an i7 860 for FSX and it's good for me. Is say the i7 920 significantly better than the i7 860 - anybody's guess.RegardsPeterH

Thanks Peter. I surfed the net on this and it appears to be the subject of alot of debate regarding which is the better CPU, the i7 860 compared to the i7 920.Myron P

Overclocking the 860 has a nasty problem which the 920/930 does not: to reach a stable 4G and above the 860 vtt (DRAM/QPI) voltage must be set beyond its max absolute voltage limit (or at least all 4G 750/860 OCs posts I've read had to do this). The Intel spec claims this may damage the CPU, but other disagree. I prefer to play it safe.

Ok thanks for the info. I'm almost wishing I'd gone with a 9xx series as it seems to be a better choice. I have no problems with my system, however I feel as though I might have had better performance with an i7 920 or 930. O well guess I'm stuck with what I have for a while as I can't use the 9xx CPU with the motherboard I have.Myron P.

I'm almost wishing I'd gone with a 9xx series as it seems to be a better choice. I have no problems with my system, however I feel as though I might have had better performance with an i7 920 or 930.

Don't worry about it. What you have is a superb computer for FSX. If you exchanged it for a 1366 socket rig, you probably couldn't tell the difference in FSX performance. Enjoy what you have.

Thanks Art, I guess you do have a good point.

Tune FSX that's the key, you have a great system!I did the following:Fresh install of FSX and PNW on Win7 64 with latest drivers using an Intel SSDSet FSX to unlimited frames, and used the external frame rate limiter at 30fpsSet affinity to 14Use bufferpools = 0Autogen dense, other settings mostly maxed, water High 2x, AI 20% all typesThose few changes gave a 30% minimum framerate increase over my older settings.The old days of endless defragging, nhancer settings, multiple cfg tweaks and addon tweaks, etc are gone :)