Something I was going to ask. Back in 2006 when FSX came out, CPU speed determined how much performance you would get. Is that still the case today (eg. GHz is everything)? With CPUs using less power, doing more per clock cycle, and better architectures, does the whole GHz thing still apply? Or can you get better FPS and better performance without needing to have high clock speeds? Is GHz still the sole deciding factor in how much FPS you'll get?

 

I'm not looking to run everything on the highest settings. This is just a general inquiry. My FSX setup is tuned for performance, rather than eye candy.

Back in 2006 when FSX came out, CPU speed determined how much performance you would get. Is that still the case today (eg. GHz is everything)?

Yes, and no. It's never been that GHz is everything.

 

Different CPU architectures and cache sizes offers different performance. (It has always been that way.) So you can never compare different CPUs with just clockspeed. You can see how different architectures performs at the same GHz here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/412162-cpus-compared-clock-for-clock-fsxmarkcpu/

After that you can factor in the GHz.

 

For example, the Intel i7 4770K of today set to run @ only 3.2GHz offers the same performance as Intel i7 860 @ 4.0GHz from 2009.

Think can get decent settings like mid-high range most settings off 500 dollar desktop nowdays it was not possible in 2006. First time pop in fsx in 2006 it was slow and decided to skip it till 2010 as had pc could run it somewhat decent. If your poor person i3 with high single threaded performance could run fsx adqautely.

A lot has changed since 2006 thou. The way FSX handles multi core means that you need at least 3 cores to get maximum performance. The price of a quad core has gone down quite a lot since the first release of the q6600 in beginning of 2007.

Earlier this year I upgraded from a Q6600 to a 3770k. I had the Q6600 overclocked to 3.5ghz and it had an FSMark11 benchmark score of about 24. With the same 285gtx video card installed the 3770k at 3.6 ghz had a score of 35. So with about the same CPU ghz I got approximately a 45% increase in score from the change in technology and an increase in RAM speed. I also got a noticable improvement in visual quality.  After overclocking the 3770k to 4.5 ghz the score only increased to 38. I'm hoping that my 285 gtx is holding back the overclock results of the 3770k, but I will not know that until the 780 gtx I want to replace it with becomes available again.

 

Ted

CPU architecture and clock speed are both important. With the same architecture, FSX scales almost linearly with clock speed. With two different architectures, you can't compare directly. This is no different from 2006, though.