Hi Guys, I have been reading the forums for a few months now, lots of useful knowledge here – will all come in handy when I start building my dedicated FSX machine. Thank you.

 

I was wondering about a couple of things though – I keep hearing people say that FSX cannot utilize multi core processors. I would take this to mean that in theory if you only run FSX (besides the OS itself and related background services) – an i7 should not offer any performance advantage over i5 (other things being equal – cache, clock speed etc). Yet I see most people here using i7 and the i7’s do seem to post better benchmarking results (though this may be a selection effect).

 

Also the Wikipedia entry says SP2 added multi core to FSX. Contrary to my statement above and what others have said, does this mean that FSX can utilize multi core processors?

Finally, I have a dual core processor (2.1 GHz over clocked to 2.9 GHz). In the task manager, while running FSX only, I can see both the CPU’s being utilized 100%. Again this would suggest FSX is multi core capable.

 

Have I got this right? The reason I started thinking about this issue was a mate of mine who works in IT suggested I use the i5 instead of i7 for FSX and use the extra money on something else (SSD, better graphics card etc).For Context - I use REX + Orbx scenery + AccuFeel and relatively simple payware aircraft (Duke, Bronco etc - not into tubeliners, at least not yet). Not sure if other addons I don't use - EZCA, AI traffic programs etc - are able to use multi cores so that may be a factor in other people's choice of sim rigs.

Hello

FSX after SP2 can use multiple cores as a quick look at task manager will confirm.

The i5 and i7 are essentially the same chip as far as FSX is concerned, both having four physical cores.

SP1 started to include some multicore support and SP2 is fully multicore aware

Phil taylor, Ex ACES lead developer had this to say around the time of the SP1 release :

http://blogs.msdn.co...ntel-quote.aspx

Yes, FSX can actually make use of Hyperthreading. But:

1. You'll have to configure the AffinityMask yourself.

2. It won't give you better FPS (on a quad core). It will give you better texture loading.

 

You can read a lot more about it here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/377105-texture-loading-ssd-vs-hdd/

Hypterthreading won't be that much of an advantage apart from texture loading, but according to the benchmarks i7's are slightly better than i5's when it comes to FPS, probably due to the larger cache of the i7's. Also most i7's overclock better but you gotta be lucky of course.