Hello all,I am excited to be returning to the flight simulator community after a period of absence. Anyway, I know this question has probably been asked a million times but here goes ....I am in the process of deciding on a new CPU. It needs to run from the LGA1156 socket so I am considering either the I5-680 or I7-870. I have seen a lot of difference in opinion whether FSX will run better on a dual core with higher clock speed or a quad with lower clock speed. In this case is 2 x 3.6GHZ vs 4 X 2.93GHZ. Can anyone give me their opinion on which one to go for??? I dont need any other applications to be taken into consideration, just FSX.The rest of the system if it helps is the following ...8800 Ultra Graphics6GB Corsair 1600MHZ RAMAny help would be much appreciated!!Regards, Chris

Hi,I think it's hard to say. Some will say that the higher clock speed with benefit more, however with all the tweaks available out there, a lower clocked quad core can also have a large effect. In FSX, I believe the cores can be assigned to different tasks, with the primary task on the 1st core, and texture loading etc in the other cores. Obviously in this case, more cores is better. However, the clock speed is also important, hence my question Is overclocking possible?If it is, the quad core will be your best option. if it isn't possible, then I'd recommend the dual core with higher clock speed.

Thanks very much Alex,Overclocking is not really an option for me. Plus I have a dell PC which from what I gather they prevent overclocking???I still can't believe that years after FSX was released there is still so much attention needed to the hardware to actually run it properly!!!

Hello Chris,Unfortunately Dell lock their motherboards BIOS, disallowing users from accessing critical PC information and settings. This is to prevent users from accidentally damaging the system. It does seem very strange, considering how even my lacking PC can run Call of Duty:Modern Warfare at maximum settings and extremely smoothly which is a game of the same age. Saying this, FSX is a simulator, not a game.