Here is a good review on the 3930Khttp://www.overclock...-3930k_review/1My load time is well under 1 minutes with everything maxed out, agree that I went over board with my SSD... mine is the 240GB version http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227518EDIT: to see how fast your SSD or HDD will load FSX please max out everything, sliders, car tyraffic...I mean everything and look at how fast your load time will be, futher more, high load radius will increase the loading time.

Edited February 17, 201214 yr by alainneedle1

For me, it's 7x faster on an SSD compared to a fast HDD: ~3.5 min on a 10,000 RPM Velociraptor, ~30 sec from a 300GB Intel 320 SSD. Same machine, same configuration on both drives.

Then a:

1. (10,000 / 7,200) x 7x = 10x speed-up vs. a 7,200 rpm HDD and a
2. (10,000 / 5,400) x 7x = 13x speed-up vs. a 5,400 rpm HDD

(ballpark figures) do not seem unreasonable.Cheers,- jahman.

My suggestion (look at my sig) is to just go with the SB 2600K and get about 8GB of best RAM you can afford. Save rest of your cash up for a MONSTER GPU and a cooling solution (H100, open loop system). Early data is showing that IB, SB, and SB-e are not going to leap frog each other in FSX performance. The benefit of SB-E and IB is that you get PCIe 3.0 ready gear, but right now the only GPU that can make that worth your while is the ATI 7900 series. Looks like we have some owners on these boards but the drivers and tweaking aren't mature yet so you will end up paying through the nose to be a "test pilot".Disclaimer: My advice is currently valued at what you paid for it.

The 3930K is built to use quad chanel memory, the 7900 GPU is as Dan stated the only one using PCI-e 3.0 right now, you will also need Rams quad chanel and a board for it to use all of this, to me if the OP is "gonna" be using the 2600K he just need to find the best board and hardware for this chip.My way of thinking when building a rig is this, find the board you want and max it out (if you can afford it), to me it's silly to buy a top of the line board and not maxing it out.The bottleneck in FSX right now using top of the line hardware is the PCI-e 2.0, I guess will find that out sooner rater than later.

I've been doing different upgrades throughout the years and the one upgrade that made the most difference in load times in FSX were CPU upgrades. Upgrading to faster hard drives did make some difference but not as much as upgrading to a faster CPU as far as load times are concerened. I currenlty have an i7 2600k and a 240GB SSD. I didn't notice any difference in load times in FSX going from a slower SSD to around a 2x faster SSD. I noticed some difference in load times after upgrading from a 1TB to a 160GB SSD. Would upgrading to an i7 3930k with quad channel memory from a 2600k with dual channel memory speed up load times in FSX? I can afford an i7 3930k and a decent x79 motherboard and I can sell my i7 2600k and Intel DP67BG motherboard for around $320 and that means I have the X79 motherboard covered if I can sell the package for that price or maybe I can just build a 2nd PC with my current hardware and use it strictly for work, photoshop, and internet browsing right now but if it's a waste of money upgrading to a 3930k for FSX then I'll stick with my 2600k.

I noticed that when I put the OS on an SSD and FSX on an SSD I saw an increase in loading times. It loaded in half the time.If I put FSX on a Velociraptor, loading times increased. As for the OS, I would NEVER put the OS on a Velociraptor. Everything loaded much slower.I know many here don't care about how long it takes to load FSX, I do. SSDs have made work snappier. FSX loads quickly, scenery is sharper when flying faster, and switching views occur instantaneously.

Rams quad chanel

There are no quad channel RAMs, only DDR3. If the plastic blister contains 2 sticks, it's "dual channel", if it contians 3 it's "triple channel".So for "quad channel" you buy two "dual channel" packs.Cheers,- jahman.

There are no quad channel RAMs, only DDR3. If the plastic blister contains 2 sticks, it's "dual channel", if it contians 3 it's "triple channel".So for "quad channel" you buy two "dual channel" packs.Cheers,- jahman.

I know that there is no DDR4 rams, I should have been more specific but I stand corrected...http://www.overclock...in_patriot_x79/

Edited February 18, 201214 yr by alainneedle1