Hi all,Could anyone tell me more smoother is you simulation experience going from i7-900 to SandyBridge? Preferably with similar clock speed. High frame rate does not equal more fluid, smooth experience. I am waiting for IvyBridge for an expected jump of 50%+ in CPU power from my current i7-950 system (SandyBridge = 25% faster than i7-900, and then Ivy being 25% faster than Sandy), but unless we have a Ivy system, I am not sure if it will improve "smoothness"?Thanks

First Ivy won't be 25% faster than Sandy Bridge, it is about 8% CPU processing increase. The real improvement is the HD4000, which is still poor compared to Nvidia and AMD high end cards. Haswell will be the real beast of this 22nm intel cpu series. Check this out http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770kRegarding smoothness, it depends on many factors of your computer, but upgrading my 920 to the 2500k, overclocking and the proper tweaks for FSX was a good improvement, not great but good. Going from your 900 to Ivy is a great idea.

For smoothness you need basically constant 30fps, without a drop, that means a CPU capable of maintaining 30fps in any condition you set it.920 is also smooth, with appropriate settings.You are talking like 920 is less smooth than SB, it's not.

My i7 860 system was always a little smoother, less microstuttering and hitching. With my new SB system, I got much higher framerate, but also a little big more hitching. I found that some fast RAM, and limiting FPS to monitor refresh rate (60 FPS) in NVIDIA Inspector, make things quite smoother. Above the 4.7 GHz things are smoother also. I also use PoolSize=0. People can tell that this can cause instability in FSX. Well, I do have black artifacts in spot view when rotating the view very fast, but insidet the cockpit I don't have any of that. And with PoolSize=0 things are just way smoother.

Thanks for all the comments so far. I also has a 3 monitors setup. With all the complex planes, I reduce Autogen to Sparse while keeping everything else high. I removed road traffic altogether. With this setting the complex planes frame rate is 20-25 FPS at busy airport. For less complex planes like the Van's RV-7 or Diamond Kanata 4X, I got 30+. away from airport and high up it's 60+. I was hoping for Ivy to get the framerate up with the complex planes around busy airport and complex scenery like ORBX major airports. So far my sim experience is smooth with some sacrifices in autogen. Upgrading will set me back a few hundred bucks, I care more about simulation smoothness, and wonder if the upgrade will worth the trouble. Hence the question.

First Ivy won't be 25% faster than Sandy Bridge, it is about 8% CPU processing increase. The real improvement is the HD4000, which is still poor compared to Nvidia and AMD high end cards. Haswell will be the real beast of this 22nm intel cpu series.Check this out http://www.anandtech...w-core-i7-3770kRegarding smoothness, it depends on many factors of your computer, but upgrading my 920 to the 2500k, overclocking and the proper tweaks for FSX was a good improvement, not great but good. Going from your 900 to Ivy is a great idea.

So what this means is that I should get Sandy now if cost is a concern, not knowing how much the new Mobo for Ivy, and Ivy itself is going to cost?

So what this means is that I should get Sandy now if cost is a concern, not knowing how much the new Mobo for Ivy, and Ivy itself is going to cost?

The socket is the same for both, which means people who already have a sandy bridge can just upgrade to Ivy. What I meant is that Sandy bridge would give you more performance going from your 950(personal experience), that replacing the sandy for an ivy one.. It wont be pricey though, the i5 3570k is expected to be around the 230s, while the i5 2500k is 220 in newegg right now, gotta take in consideration the price may drop a little after the releasing date but for a few bucks more I wouldnt care.... if it fits the budget of course.