Hi,I am currently running the following hardware :Asus M3ANvidia GTS250 PNYAMD Athlon X2 6400+ OC @ 3.52 running VCore at 1.444gb 800Mz Ram OCZ I think :biggrin:H50 Cooler from CorsairHAF 922 Case from CoolermasterWin7 X64 Home Edition I am really a FS9 player and it was not until recently I started to delve back into FSX following Bojote's FSX Tuning Tool, prior to this FSX was running OK without my overclock but the minute I put UK2000 scenery for Heathow V2 on, it crawled and stuttered and probably did everything else too apart from run nice.Since I have used this tool and also with the FPS Limiter running alongside at 30FPS solid, the experience has been quite different and I wanted to pick people's brains on the way forward from here.Ok, my FSX is vanilla with most of the UK2000 scenery on it, Wilco Ejets and ASE running as well ( not bothered to install anything else yet)I am thinking about upgrading but I am still undecided wether to go with AMD x6s or Intel I7, I know the majority of posts will advise me to go for Intel and what is making me think twice before plumping for Intel is the performance I am getting now on this pretty low system as far as FSX is concerned. I have spent a lot of time on the forums this weekend studying the performance posts and this has only made me more confused about what to go for.I see users on I7s with lower framerates and less fluid performance than I am getting, on the other hand I see with users with more. The system I use has nothing but FS9 and FSX ( with Addons) on it plus a few benchmarking tools, if any addon can run on WideFS then it does so on my other 3 PCS.The theory that FSX runs different on every CPU is starting to ring true with, and it obviously is in my case. It is true that I don't have UT, REX or GEX on it at the moment, as I have not purchased it yet, so I appreciate there will be many calls that will say "wait until you get that on" but my point is that my current hardware should not be running it this well or should it ?.I really do not want to purchase an expensive I7 when I can get an AMD and spend a bit more on the video card and better hard drive and only acheive a few more frames, I would be happy with only 40+

Sandy Bridge (check the prices!), the next microarchitecture to be released by Intel, will be available January 9, 2011, presumably also with corresponding motherboards from your usual suppliers. That's only 6 weeks away, so it might be worth your wait. It will also mean crrent processor proces will drop as the next generation CPUs are released. You will likely get the usual 10-15% gain in performance for the same clock speed.Cheers,- jahman.

Then my question is: why do you want to upgrade if you're getting good performance?I'd recommend Intel... in fact I just made a big post about the system I'd like to get sometime this Spring. Based around intel i7 950 overclocked.It really depends on how much money you'd like to throw at a new system...If you were to do an AMD build, I'd definitely go with their 1090T x6 at a minimum, and plan to OC it to 4+ Ghzhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849I have no idea how well it would run compared to i7 950 clocked to 4 GHz... probably would be a decent upgrade based on your current system.

I'd say get either the AMD Phenom II Black Quad-core rated at 3.5GHz. default or go for the AMD Phenom II Black 6-core 1090T (saw for sale at $229!), which will run three of the six cores at 3.6GHz. Of course from what I read here you really need to overclock to 4GHz. which is easy to do for either CPU to get a good experience from FSX. With the money you save on the CPU you can now buy one of the new AMD Radion cards like the 6870 which has about 95% of the performance of the 5870 but at half the cost and you can run up to six monitors off one card.just some ideas...

Sandy Bridge (check the prices!), the next microarchitecture to be released by Intel, will be available January 9, 2011, presumably also with corresponding motherboards from your usual suppliers. That's only 6 weeks away, so it might be worth your wait. It will also mean crrent processor proces will drop as the next generation CPUs are released. You will likely get the usual 10-15% gain in performance for the same clock speed.Cheers,- jahman.

I might indeed wait for these chips to come out, thanks for the info

Then my question is: why do you want to upgrade if you're getting good performance?I'd recommend Intel... in fact I just made a big post about the system I'd like to get sometime this Spring. Based around intel i7 950 overclocked.It really depends on how much money you'd like to throw at a new system...If you were to do an AMD build, I'd definitely go with their 1090T x6 at a minimum, and plan to OC it to 4+ Ghzhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849I have no idea how well it would run compared to i7 950 clocked to 4 GHz... probably would be a decent upgrade based on your current system.

I would like to install a little bit of future proof in there, and as I said FSX is pretty vanilla at the moment, so I need some headroom when the adddons start getting installed.Again, thanks for the info on the AMD