I heard these babies can overclock to 4.8 GHZ -- http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

 

If FSX/P3D are so dependent on CPU clock speed, is performance relatively good for such a relatively cheap CPU? 

 

I am currently running a Intel 2500k OC to 4.5 GHZ and wondering if it would outperform it.

 

 

It would perform very similarly to the 2500k.  Not worth it.

I had a G3258 that a buddy of mine lent me for a while. I was able to OC the cpu to around 4.4ghz with the stock cooler, this was running the cpu with 1.250v. I've squeezed out 4.5ghz under 1.3v but crashes after an hour. I think my cpu was about average with the research I did on the web. Even with a water cooler, 4.8ghz running as high as 1.4v is pretty rare and can lead to a much shorter life for  the cpu. I think 4.2ghz under a water cooled solution at 1.3v would be the assumption I would take up when purchasing and think of any increase in performance as just pure luck. 

 

With that being said, I can run the game max settings and anisotropic filter at around 25fps. That's with traffic at their default levels. 

 

I usually run with an i7-4770 and I find it much more reliable and obtain 30fps with the same settings. I know what they say about FSX being only able to run on one core. But I do think multi cores does help the game smooth things out.

 

I run on a msi r7-260x OC, I just got myself a 970, so I'm excited to see if I get some fps bumps.

Cheers, thanks for the info. 

 

I will be planning to run an avionics suite (Jeehell FMGS -- see my signature), not too demanding; so it should do the job nicely.