get the fastest CPU you can afford, period.

For FS9, at the same core speed, would you go for a quad or dual?Or is it preferable to have a faster dual than a slower quad?ThanksGhiom

For FS9, at the same core speed, would you go for a quad or dual?Or is it preferable to have a faster dual than a slower quad?ThanksGhiom

It depends on the type of processor, in general it's always faster clock speed but chip architecture plays a role.

Hello,If you can find a 10Ghz CPU (one core suffice) .. buy it on the spot Results will be amazing Regards.Gus.

I should think you'd need a machine incorporating waveguides rather than circuit-board tracks at that frequency

Please do not answer with comments like "I get 200 frames per second when looking at just the sky in a default sim setup".I

Sorry... I have a socket 478 pga at 2.7 GHz, 2 Mb RAM, a £30 motherboard that doesn't even have PCI-E and an Nvidia 7950 AGP card. Sliders all to max I get 85 FPS when looking at the sky, and no more than 12 FPS when at a busy addon airport with 100% AI & weather. Mostly rescued by a good graphics card but the bad CPU shows through when demands are made.

a GPU with more memory will help in graphic loading ... to a point....FS is CPU bound.get the fastest CPU you can afford, period.

'S right. A good gpu will bail out a bad cpu to an extent if there is only the drawing and colouring to do but won't help if there's a lot of calculation to do such as tracking lots of AI or having multiple open panels.

For FS9, at the same core speed, would you go for a quad or dual?Or is it preferable to have a faster dual than a slower quad?

Since you can dedicate one core to FS9 and leave all other applications to squabble over the remaining cores, it depends on how much FS9-linked stuff you have running in the background. FS9 may not be utilising its own core to the full extent if it's having to wait for another app to get stuff done before continuing.

I should think you'd need a machine incorporating waveguides rather than circuit-board tracks at that frequency

Mmmm... Ultra fast PC running FS9 printed on my shirt and tie. Those little dots of metal and their embedded components look so much more elegant than lumping old tracks and barrels!Regards,D

Hi,to those posters mentioning that my statements are incorrect: Wrong. but maybe I did not find the right words to describe what I mean. So with this I try to fix that. You are correct when you say that FS is not a modern program and that it does not handover graphics related calculations over to the GPU in the same scale as modern games do. But: Every CPU available, even the ones in the lower segment are more than fast enough to handle FS, even with extreme settings. If you take one of those low end CPUs, startup FS and look into any application which shows you the CPU load, you can see that it will not rise above 50% (most of the times). The result is that CPU power is not the primary issue here. Next thing is, that even the fastest CPU will not operate at its' full performance if the rest of the system does not fit to it. If you want to unfold your CPU's max, you have to build a well balanced system.That begins with the CPU and end with the PSU.The statement "get the fastest hardware you can get" is not the ultimate answer to this question. Take a high end system which is not very well balanced hardwarewise and compare it with a medium end system which has the best balancing it couldget and you will see that you can get better results with the slower system. It all depends how well the components fit and work together. But that is what I meant when I posted that I do not want to go into details too much.And when it comes to the graphics card: At least I observed that a modern graphics card is able to improve performance of FS in a great scale when it comes to displaying a huge amount of traffic, even if it doesn't take over all of the calculationsfor rendering and so on, as mentioned before. Of course, display size is a factor too. One example: If you had a 19" monitor attached to your older card and you are now using the same monitor on your brand new, high end card, there won't be thatmuch difference but still a noticeable one. But the gap gets bigger if you use a bigger, say 22" screen. That is because it is the higher resolution where the newer card can show what it is capable of, where the older one would go on its' knees.And believe me, I am into FS quite some years now and my FS has seen many system configurations. It has seen simple upgrades, where only single components were changed as well as completely new systems.That being said, I hope I found the right words this time.CheersMike

Hi,to those posters mentioning that my statements are incorrect: Wrong. but maybe I did not find the right words to describe what I mean. So with this I try to fix that. You are correct when you say that FS is not a modern program and that it does not handover graphics related calculations over to the GPU in the same scale as modern games do. But: Every CPU available, even the ones in the lower segment are more than fast enough to handle FS, even with extreme settings. If you take one of those low end CPUs, startup FS and look into any application which shows you the CPU load, you can see that it will not rise above 50% (most of the times). The result is that CPU power is not the primary issue here. Next thing is, that even the fastest CPU will not operate at its' full performance if the rest of the system does not fit to it. If you want to unfold your CPU's max, you have to build a well balanced system.That begins with the CPU and end with the PSU.The statement "get the fastest hardware you can get" is not the ultimate answer to this question. Take a high end system which is not very well balanced hardwarewise and compare it with a medium end system which has the best balancing it couldget and you will see that you can get better results with the slower system. It all depends how well the components fit and work together. But that is what I meant when I posted that I do not want to go into details too much.And when it comes to the graphics card: At least I observed that a modern graphics card is able to improve performance of FS in a great scale when it comes to displaying a huge amount of traffic, even if it doesn't take over all of the calculationsfor rendering and so on, as mentioned before. Of course, display size is a factor too. One example: If you had a 19" monitor attached to your older card and you are now using the same monitor on your brand new, high end card, there won't be thatmuch difference but still a noticeable one. But the gap gets bigger if you use a bigger, say 22" screen. That is because it is the higher resolution where the newer card can show what it is capable of, where the older one would go on its' knees.And believe me, I am into FS quite some years now and my FS has seen many system configurations. It has seen simple upgrades, where only single components were changed as well as completely new systems.That being said, I hope I found the right words this time.CheersMike

HelloNo, you are still wrong just as you were when you stated that XP32 will crash with large memory amounts.Some of us here have also been doing this stuff for a long time.Hope I found the right words :(

startup FS and look into any application which shows you the CPU load, you can see that it will not rise above 50% (most of the times).

mike, if your CPU isn't running at 100% all the time when FS is launched there is a problem. FS want 100% of one CPU all the time when the game is playing. FS will not demand 100% if you are in a paused mode or are in the selection screens.during game-play FS is at 100% of the CPU. this has been the reality since FS7/8.FS does not work like other games ... in part because is is so old.. this is the reason that when you talk to non-FS 'wonks' they don't correctly explain how to maximize a PC for flightsim.again, buy the fastest CPU you can afford. then go for a solid MOBO, memory and GPU.--

Hi,

again, buy the fastest CPU you can afford. then go for a solid MOBO, memory and GPU

That's exactly what I meant. And of course buying the fastest CPU you can afford is not the worst thing you can do. All I meant was that this is not absolutely neccessary. The performance of the system also depends on how well the componentsfit together. That was what I meant with balancing.And for the memory size issue: I have to admit that the statments I made based on knowledge and experiences that were made quite some years ago. At that time it was a fact that if installing more than 3GB into a system running on a 32bit OSwould result in unstable system operations. Maybe this is outdated in the meantime. Maybe there are solutions for this available now that haven't been around back then. Maybe they came with OS updates or whatever. I haven't put much effortinto this for some time now as I have become used to 64bit systems. So I assume that you are correct if you say a 32bit OS will run stable on more than 3GB RAM. And when it comes to the CPU load factor: I checked that and found out that the core assigned to FS is running on a load factor between 70% and 100%, while the other 3 cores are taking a break with only 3-5% load. But the "FS-core" almost never reachesthe 100%. Most of the times it stays at around 90% load while FS is running. But there are occasional peak when the 100% are reached. The load factor of all cores combined, with 3 of them almost inactive, results in an overall CPU load of around 50%.Of course, FS wise this is irrelevant as the core assigned to FS is running on a very high load. Because of that I must admit that I made some interpretation errors for whcih I want to apologize.But the fact remains that a well balanced system is the alpha and the omega if you want your PC to run at its' full capacity.That's being said, I hope we are all friends again. :( CheersMike

Hi,That's exactly what I meant. And of course buying the fastest CPU you can afford is not the worst thing you can do. All I meant was that this is not absolutely neccessary. The performance of the system also depends on how well the componentsfit together. That was what I meant with balancing.And for the memory size issue: I have to admit that the statments I made based on knowledge and experiences that were made quite some years ago. At that time it was a fact that if installing more than 3GB into a system running on a 32bit OSwould result in unstable system operations. Maybe this is outdated in the meantime. Maybe there are solutions for this available now that haven't been around back then. Maybe they came with OS updates or whatever. I haven't put much effortinto this for some time now as I have become used to 64bit systems. So I assume that you are correct if you say a 32bit OS will run stable on more than 3GB RAM. And when it comes to the CPU load factor: I checked that and found out that the core assigned to FS is running on a load factor between 70% and 100%, while the other 3 cores are taking a break with only 3-5% load. But the "FS-core" almost never reachesthe 100%. Most of the times it stays at around 90% load while FS is running. But there are occasional peak when the 100% are reached. The load factor of all cores combined, with 3 of them almost inactive, results in an overall CPU load of around 50%.Of course, FS wise this is irrelevant as the core assigned to FS is running on a very high load. Because of that I must admit that I made some interpretation errors for whcih I want to apologize.But the fact remains that a well balanced system is the alpha and the omega if you want your PC to run at its' full capacity.That's being said, I hope we are all friends again. :( CheersMike

Pritty right what you´re saying about the CPU. I´ve checked it with the PMDG 747 and much traffic and got a usage of processor c0 of arround 90-100% whereas the three remeining cores were at idle and a really low GPU usage of about 11%, so I think the crafic card doesn´t have to be the most corrent one, a good and powerfull GTX 260 for example, is more than enough. When it comes to FSX, but this is another story...I don´t think you´ll need the fastest CPU, a 3GHz will also make it. But bome kind of ressources are not bad anyway. I do have my system running on a oc. 3 GHz quad core and get FPS of arround 45-50 with the PMDG 747 and pritty cloudy weather, so it doesn´t have to be an i7-2600k.