When I was buying my SB system, the guy in the shop told me, at that point, that both companies are crap, but ASUS has a little lead. He told me both are basically good, and that they sell virtually same amounts of Mobos on both sides. I don't believe I'll ever sway to GB, but I almost did with the ASUS problem back then. Glad I did not.

Not arguing your cases but our house has 3 gigabyte motherboards, one is years old and never a problem with any of them.

 

You have been quite lucky then!

Strange, because I don't remember seeing a single big real life performance improvement because of the cas timings, ever. There are numerous tests in the internet about memory timings that show this. Difference can be in gaming like two FPS between 7-7-7 and 9-9-9 memory with same speed. Rising memory speed from, let's say 1600 to 2133 can give you few frames and even more (in some other applications difference may be bigger with higher clock rate).

 

Not talking one bit about FPS so that's off the table. Talking about the subjective impression of smoothness and many moons ago I brought up the issue if this could be measured somehow. I went from latency measured w/ Everest of around 65 to 45, and yes, I noticed an improvement in smoothness in FSX. I'm always game for placebo effect, however I continue to be surprised with how well the machine works, despite its age. I have been on the fence w/ moving on to something better, however since IB heat issues are as they are, I'm still in no hurry to upgrade. I tend not to believe Haswell or future IB releases will offer a whole lot more than SB, so if I can find a disposition for my old platform I may upgrade to SB. Analyzing where things happen in FSX 'performance' is spurious at some level, and laden w/ red herrings IMO. I take almost anything anyone says . . . hehe inc myself . . . with a hefty dose of NaCl ;o) NickN talked me into upgrading memory and main board many moons ago, and it seemed to work out. But as you well know, it's hard to evaluate and make claims about things such as this. Same same for your claim latency hardly matters, in any machine ;o)

You have been quite lucky then!

I wouldn't say luck, I would say you have been unlucky. Only problem we have had with GB is a burnt out GPU, 9800gt, only because the fan was clogged full of dust lol

I have a 64GB or so SSD for my OS and 240 or so for FSX. The FSX one is half full and I still have a lot of stuff to get. So I'd go a bigger SSD for FSX if you can.

I've decided to upgrade to a asus Z68 board with ivy bridge cpu support, but I'll only be getting the 2500k.

 

Why you ask?

 

I find it strange why the new Z77 boards don't have Intel SRT support -- I have an SSD and a 1TB HD I would like to try this out with. I'm sticking with the 2500k because reports show that it can overclock to the same cpu speeds as the 3570k but at a lower temperature.

new Z77 boards don't have Intel SRT support

 

I just checked and some Asus boards like the P8z77-V support it, I don't see why GB Asrock or MSI wouldn't too

i forgot to add i'm looking for a micro-atx version.

Simple question: If you have a i7-2600k along with the rest shown in my sig and running rock-solid stable, is performance increase (if any) worth the expense of upgrading? Or is this still an unknown?