If you want a new MB/CPU combo, and have a few extra $$, why not wait a month or two for Haswell? If you really want an Ivy Bridge, I'd still wait  for Haswell release and take advantage of the price reductions that usually occur.

 

Ah...cool.  As long as my existing sim holds up I'll wait.  Not sure what it is about this machine but its having some stability issues.

Gregg

 

What ever you do you really must get a SSD.

 

I have a i7 oc @ 4.6 & FSX took 3min 5sec to load (i know this depends on 100's of factors) AFTER installing Samsung 500gb 840 SSD FSX now loads same FSX flight after just less than 25 seconds with no oc yet!

 

Total no brainer

 

Enjoy your new rig

Gregg

 

 

What ever you do you really must get a SSD.

 

 

I have a i7 oc @ 4.6 & FSX took 3min 5sec to load (i know this depends on 100's of factors) AFTER installing Samsung 500gb 840 SSD FSX now loads same FSX flight after just less than 25 seconds with no oc yet!

 

 

Total no brainer

 

 

Enjoy your new rig

That's an amazing loadtime. I am projecting my new rig now and I'm planning to go all out with a 890 Gb PCI-E SSD, it's still expensive but I'll get one. My next rig will be for FSX only and I don't mind forking out as long as I have 3-5 years fun in it

 

 

That's an amazing loadtime.

 

I bet it takes some of the pain out of restarts.

Im in the UK & at dabs.com you can get the Samsung 840 500gb SSD inc fitting kit & cloning sw for £278 with £50 cashback from Samsung after 15 days .. So £228 in real money ... Awsome deal, wife wouldnt let me get 2 but use my org 1tb hdd for extra storage if required, will get a 2nd one later.

 

I was going to clone my org HDD as didnt want the hassle of a total re-install of my FSX rig as its running sweet. In the end i opted for a new install & im so glad i did, totally happy, my rig is hi end & the SSD makes it out of this world.

 

Check out dabs.com for a great SSD deal.

 

Enjoy

 

Rich

Just as an addition: the current intel generation doesn't overclock as good as sandy bridges. You can archive 4,5GHz, yes but only with a decent cooling. SandyBridges you could punish to some 4,8-4,9GHz.

 

The reason is the new technice used and much higher temperatures with high voltages which are necessary to get higher voltages. I use a Corsair H100 and can get 4,5GHz without problems. But CPU is getting pretty hot. Frames were higher on my i5 2500k @4800MHz. I had to buy the i7 for video editing purposes.

Im in the UK & at dabs.com you can get the Samsung 840 500gb SSD inc fitting kit & cloning sw for £278 with £50 cashback from Samsung after 15 days .. So £228 in real money ... Awsome deal, wife wouldnt let me get 2 but use my org 1tb hdd for extra storage if required, will get a 2nd one later.

 

I was going to clone my org HDD as didnt want the hassle of a total re-install of my FSX rig as its running sweet. In the end i opted for a new install & im so glad i did, totally happy, my rig is hi end & the SSD makes it out of this world.

 

Check out dabs.com for a great SSD deal.

 

Enjoy

 

Rich

scan.co.uk offer them even cheaper @ £209 after cashback. It's crazy how cheap SSDs have become now. I payed more than that for my 1TB velociraptor a year ago. I remember that back then the price/GB of the velociraptor was around a quarter of the price of getting SSDs. A year later an the price difference is halved.

If you want a new MB/CPU combo, and have a few extra $$, why not wait a month or two for Haswell? If you really want an Ivy Bridge, I'd still wait  for Haswell release and take advantage of the price reductions that usually occur.

 

 

Ah...cool.  As long as my existing sim holds up I'll wait.  Not sure what it is about this machine but its having some stability issues.

 

Unless you have a Micro Center near you, Greg. Just checked and they have the 3770k on sale for 229.99, in-store pickup only.

 

I left a fairly close-by Micro Center down in Tustin, Kalifornia when I moved. It's still the closest to me, but I'm not hoping in the pickup and making any 12 hour drive to save $100!

Just as an addition: the current intel generation doesn't overclock as good as sandy bridges. You can archive 4,5GHz, yes but only with a decent cooling. SandyBridges you could punish to some 4,8-4,9GHz.

 

The reason is the new technice used and much higher temperatures with high voltages which are necessary to get higher voltages. I use a Corsair H100 and can get 4,5GHz without problems. But CPU is getting pretty hot. Frames were higher on my i5 2500k @4800MHz. I had to buy the i7 for video editing purposes.

 

This isn't entirely true.  I run my 3770k at 4.9GHz.  The key is changing the stock thermal paste between the CPU die and the IHS via a procedure known as "de-lidding".  I've outlined it in the guide linked in my signature.  

Yes you CAN run it as high as 4,9GHz with decent cooling equipment. My Corsair H100 run's in lowest possible speed to not disturb the silence. As thermal paste I have Arctic MX-4.

 

But the IvyBridge WILL get hotter at same clock/voltage as the SandyBridge will do. If you want to OC to maximum, you should buy a sandybridge cpu. The Ivy has the advantage of lower power consumption though. Also speed at same clockspeeds will be the same, only the integrated GPU is a bit faster. But this will only be relevant if you use lucid-mvp in some other games.

Yes you CAN run it as high as 4,9GHz with decent cooling equipment. My Corsair H100 run's in lowest possible speed to not disturb the silence. As thermal paste I have Arctic MX-4.

 

But the IvyBridge WILL get hotter at same clock/voltage as the SandyBridge will do. If you want to OC to maximum, you should buy a sandybridge cpu. The Ivy has the advantage of lower power consumption though. Also speed at same clockspeeds will be the same, only the integrated GPU is a bit faster. But this will only be relevant if you use lucid-mvp in some other games.

 

There are a few misconceptions here, allow me to clear them up for you:

 

The thermal issues can be dealt with via de-lidding.  I hit a maximum temperature of 80 degrees C during extreme stress testing with Prime 95 or Linpack at 4.9GHz and 1.5V on water cooling.  That's just as good as Sandy Bridge.  As for raw CPU speed, it has been demonstrated here in the FSXMark 11 thread that Ivy Bridge is approximately 10% faster than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speed and with fast memory.  Ivy Bridge supports faster RAM than Sandy so there is a benefit because of that.  

There are a few misconceptions here, allow me to clear them up for you:

 

The thermal issues can be dealt with via de-lidding.  I hit a maximum temperature of 80 degrees C during extreme stress testing with Prime 95 or Linpack at 4.9GHz and 1.5V on water cooling.  That's just as good as Sandy Bridge.  As for raw CPU speed, it has been demonstrated here in the FSXMark 11 thread that Ivy Bridge is approximately 10% faster than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speed and with fast memory.  Ivy Bridge supports faster RAM than Sandy so there is a benefit because of that.  

 

All I wanted to say: If you want to overclock, you'll get better results with Sandy. Sure, you can buy a water cooling to overclock the Ivy as high as a Sandy, but on a Sandy, you'll get these extreme speeds even with the stock fan/thermal paste. My workstation i7 2700k runs @4,9GHz on same mobo with just a Noctua DH12 while my I7 3770k runs @4,9GHz only with my Corsair H100 in high (and loudy) RPM mode.

 

Yes, you can de-lid that thing... but you also loose your $20 warranty puchasable to your k-cpu for oc'ing. I crashed my old i5 2500k as this one was running at about 90 degree all the time. After 1,5 years it was dead. I got a new one within 5 working day's. In fact: with these k-ones you WILL damage your cpu soon or later when running these hot temp's. But de-lidding is not the only problem, also the lithography which is much smaller than before and these lattice structure used on the ivy's. I don't think a new cpu owner will void it's warranty so fast.

 

Further reading on the Ivy-Heatproblem (you can even google on that topic): http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ivy-bridge-overclocking-high-temp,15512.html

 

So short to say: For a normal user who want to have it's warranty and overclock it's cpu should go for the sandy ones. Also these are getting much more cheaper here in germany.

All I wanted to say: If you want to overclock, you'll get better results with Sandy. Sure, you can buy a water cooling to overclock the Ivy as high as a Sandy, but on a Sandy, you'll get these extreme speeds even with the stock fan/thermal paste. My workstation i7 2700k runs @4,9GHz on same mobo with just a Noctua DH12 while my I7 3770k runs @4,9GHz only with my Corsair H100 in high (and loudy) RPM mode.

 

Yes, you can de-lid that thing... but you also loose your $20 warranty puchasable to your k-cpu for oc'ing. I crashed my old i5 2500k as this one was running at about 90 degree all the time. After 1,5 years it was dead. I got a new one within 5 working day's. In fact: with these k-ones you WILL damage your cpu soon or later when running these hot temp's. But de-lidding is not the only problem, also the lithography which is much smaller than before and these lattice structure used on the ivy's. I don't think a new cpu owner will void it's warranty so fast.

 

Further reading on the Ivy-Heatproblem (you can even google on that topic): http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ivy-bridge-overclocking-high-temp,15512.html

 

So short to say: For a normal user who want to have it's warranty and overclock it's cpu should go for the sandy ones. Also these are getting much more cheaper here in germany.

Your comment re: "you WILL damage your CPU" etc., I must take contention with. My CPU rarely sees temperatures in excess of 50 degrees C during normal operation. Idle temps are just above ambient (in the low 20's C). Hardly dangerous. In fact, I'll bet they're lower than yours or just about anyone else's on this forum (Hasse aside) so if you believe temperature is the primary deteriorating agent that acts upon a CPU, mine will actually last LONGER than yours. Temperature is a critical aspect of CPU life span, I'd suggest voltage is just as great a factor though and I will concede that my chip requires a very high voltage to operate at such speeds but again, temperatures are kept at very low levels so that mitigates potential damage greatly.

 

Yes, you void your warranty when you de-lid, so I don't recommend it to everyone, but with CPUs as cheap as they are now and the fact that flight simmers just don't keep their systems for years and years without upgrading/replacing (on average), there's not a high risk involved keeping these things in mind.

I agree with Chase, I'm having good luck with my Alienware which is factory overclocked.

 

Lee

If your MB comes with the UEFI bios, you can automatically overclock to 4.3 with a click of the mouse inside the bios.