>>>Glenn,>>>>>>Thats exactly right, which is why I posted this, as I'm>>>considering spending

Bah, now I'm just plain confused. See you guys next spring, maybe somone will understand FSX by then :-lol

Maybe we should all hibernate till next spring and then go and buy new PC's and FSX! :-lol

Unfortunately I need to buy in the next 4 weeks and would love to know what we can expect from FSX Gold in October with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM. I'm upgrading from a P4 1.8GHz which can just run the demo and no more!

>>I am 'expecting' that the Core 2 Duo will perform better in>FSX than a comparable X2 because it appears to handle 'number>crunching' tasks better than the X2's.>Well, the main reason is because a Core 2 Duo is a faster cpu than any of the AMD x2's.Rhett

Talking of systems lets not forget the official requirements:Windows XP SP2 / Windows VistaProcessor: 1.0 GhzRAM: Windows XP SP2 - 256MB, Windows Vista

nels,In all honesty, I am in the same boat as you. I have decided to wait until FSX is actually released and go for the Core 2 Duo option. ~ Mid October.I can manage for e-mail and internet on my crappy PII 366 mhz laptop for now!A few reasons:1) availability of Core 2 Duo CPU's without price gouging2) larger MB selection, hopefully with better prices and BIOS3) price cuts on this generation of GPU's as G80 and R600 approach (dont want DX10 yet)4) cheaper DDR25) did I mention motherboard selection? :-lol

>nels,>>In all honesty, I am in the same boat as you. I have decided>to wait until FSX is actually released and go for the Core 2>Duo option. ~ Mid October.>>I can manage for e-mail and internet on my crappy PII 366 mhz>laptop for now!>>A few reasons:>>1) availability of Core 2 Duo CPU's without price gouging>>2) larger MB selection, hopefully with better prices and BIOS>>3) price cuts on this generation of GPU's as G80 and R600>approach (dont want DX10 yet)>>4) cheaper DDR2>>5) did I mention motherboard selection? :-lolThe motherboard selection is rather limited at the moment, but I've been waiting for three years to have the opportunity to upgrade, so I'm going to end up being impatient.Considering the improvement I'll see over my current system, I'm ok with that.

OK, I think I've put together something that we all can run and gives a repeatable measurement within +/-5% from the runs I have done so far. I've written this so that it is hopefully for everyone to use, so please don't be insulted if I appear to be over prescriptive in my explanation for your level of FSX and computer experience. To run the benchmark, you will need to extract and copy the files from the attached FSDemo3.zip file into your Flight Simulator X Files in your My Documents directory. This contains the benchmark flight, weather and video files.You will also need to get a hold of a copy of FRAPS, which you can get from here http://www.fraps.com/download.php. I am using version 2.3.2, which can be used unregistered (ie. free) to do what we need to do now and hopefully the latest version allows this too.Set up your system as follows:1. Disable any secondary monitors you have such that you are only running the primary display. Besides FSX demo freezing when I use my PCI adaptor, I get incorrect FPS readings (double what is actual in fact) even if I have the secondary adaptor of my X800 running a monitor. You don't have to disable the hardware, just go into Display Properties and deselect "Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor" for all secondary monitors.2. Set your graphics card AA and AF settings in your graphics card control panel to Application Preference. These can be controlled within the FSX demo (well partially anyway) and provide much more consistent and comparable results between our systems.3. Shut down as many applications and system tray tasks as you can, without knobbling windows!4. Run FRAPs and ensure the following settings are made: Benchmarking hotkey - change to F1 (default F11 undesirably changes views in FSX and we don't need throttle control), check "stop benchmark automatically after ..." and type in 50 into the seconds box. Also check all options under the "save detailed benchmark statistics" section. Ensure at least one corner is selected for the Overlay (ie. not disabled) Minimise FRAPS and it should go to the system tray.5. Run the FSX demo, which should take you to the free flight page. Click on the settings tab, then the customise button to make the following changes for what I propose be the baseline benchmark for people with mid-high level systems:a. Graphics tab - initially set Global Settings to "Ultra High", then move the target frame rate to "unlimited", select "Ansiotropic" for filteriing and check the Anit-Aliasing checkbox. Also ensure the full screen resolution is set to 1024x768x32.b. Aircraft, Scenery, Weather and Traffic tabs - set global settings for each of these tabs to "Ultra High", then click on OK.c. Your display settings should now show as "customised" for graphics and "Ultra High" for everything else.6. Go to the free flight tab and click on load, select the FSDemo3 flight and click "Fly Now" to start loading the benchmark flight. Once loaded, you should see the FRAPS counter in what ever corner you picked for the FRAPS overlay corner option. Also ensure you are in full screen mode (again for consistency and comparability of results)7. On the FSX menu select options->flight video then double-click on FSDemo3. The video will start and you will have about 10 seconds before the benchmark starts to get everything looking right. By looking right I mean that you are looking straight ahead in the VC view (hit F9 if it is not) with no significant texture problems. If your textures are black/blue/purple as some have been experiencing, hit S then shift-S to toggle views, which clears the problem for my black screen issue in full screen.8. Get ready to hit F1 to start the benchmark as soon as the left side of the windshield frame of the ultralight touches the bottom right corner of the painted runway number 0. I have attached a screen point of the exact point to hit F1. You will know you have triggered FRAPS into action when the overlay numbers quickly change colour then disappear entirely for 50 seconds while the plane flys.9. Watch the recorded flight and don't be too critical of my flying skills - the aim was to maximise eye candy, AI coverage and weather within a 50 second window! Not the recording will look jerky as it runs as a result of the recording rate of 1/4 sec, but it does not seem to impact FPS as you might think it would.10. After 50 seconds, FRAPS will signal the end of the benchmark by quickly flashing an FPS number with a dark background in your selected overlay corner. Again, a screen shot is attached of approximately where this should occur. Don't worry if you miss it because it has all been saved to file.11. Repeat steps 7 through 10 a couple of times to make sure you are getting a consistent FPS reading at the end.12. Minimise FSX and go into windows explorer to your C;FRAPSbenchmarks directory, where you should see a series of .CSV files containing the results of each run you did. The two useful files are the fps.csv (gives you and FPS reading for every second) and the minmaxavg.csv which gives you - you guessed it - min, max and average FPS for the 50 second run.13. Report back here with your results, indicating the following minimum information (if not readily evident in your sig): FSX settings, CPU & speed, RAM & speed, video card & speed, sound card, and min / max and average FPS for the run.In my case, I get:Baseline medium-high level system settings, Athlon 64 3000+ @ 2.35GHz (~3700+), 1G DDR 3200 RAM, ATI X800XT AIW at stock 500/500, onboard AC97 sound, min 10 / max 20 / avg 13.52 FPS If this works, I may define a few more baseline settings (eg. for mid and low end systems), including a Quake2-like "Crusher" config with all sliders to the right to see what sort of slide show we all get :-lol. These baselines are important, as FPS numbers without explicit confirmation that all game settings are exactly the same between computers is quite useless really. The demo gives us the best chance to have a comparison of truly stock FSX installations on our various rigs. Please give this a go and let me know a) if you can understand what I have written here and :( what your results are. I hope others give it a try as well.GaryEdit: sorry, forgot to include the benchmark flight in the originally attached FSDemo3.zip file. If you don't have these files, you will get a clear sky during the benchmark, thus skewing the results - your skys must be clouding and it should be raining! Please redownload the FS3Demo3.zip file if this is the case.

<No, just a warning that simplifying my comments down to "Tdragger says it basically doesn't do much" missed the point.

I'm not a system builder so relying heavily on systems available from DELL and the little players in the UK such as MESH and EVESHAM.Dell told me today they need to do a lot of testing before they're launching their range of Core 2 Duos. I've always bought DELL so having to sit tight until they do I think. I think I'm going to take a risk and purchase a Core 2 Duo in the UK before FSX is released, I'm presuming they'll get these performance issues sorted and it'll run smooth on a VISTA capable machine. I'll then upgrade to a DX10 card when they ship.

NAS,You might take a look at the MSI P965 Neo (Intel P965 Express chipset)Listed at ~$100 which is WAY cheaper than anything I have seen.Good review over at Neoseeker....No VCORE or DRAM voltage adjustment and max 333 FSB right now, but a BIOS update in the future will probably take care of that.Not a big problem it seems as the Conroes will OC great on stock voltages and keep the crazy low temperatures. 333 mhz FSB may be an issue though....333 x 7 (E6300) = 2331 mhz333 x 8 (E6400) = 2664 mhz (I think this is what I will go for)333 x 9 (E6600) = 2997 mhz Depends how far you are planning on pushing it....assuming you want to OC of course.I may be tempted now after all............!!

Yeah London Heathrow, because it is loaded with buildings and aircraft, close to abig city like London.If I were you I wouldn't draw any conclusions from the beta. I have tested betas of past FS editions and apart from the bugs (they were full of them) I would also get significantly lower frame rates than in the final edition.Hope this was usefulE

OK, here are my results.RUN 1 :Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg 2742, 50000, 38, 114, 54.840RUN 2:Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg 2750, 50000, 38, 88, 55.000RUN 3:Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg 2772, 50000, 38, 88, 55.440Duo core 2 E6600 @ 3200 Mhz.Asus P5B Deluxe wifi2 gig pc6400 ram @ 1065 Mhz 5-5-5-15 timingsGeforce 7900 512 mbRaptor disks.Sound Blaster X-Fi PlatinumHowever i did discover a new bug in the process.If i switch from dual-view to a single display, i can no longer start fsx. It just hangs at the loading screen.I tried several times, and also tried rebooting.So my test is done in dual-view with main monitor showing the test, and the secondary just being black.Other than that ive followed the instructions to the letter.

><will run pretty much the same on all of the 'newer' dual core>processors regardless of Intel or AMD origin?>>>>No, just a warning that simplifying my comments down to>"Tdragger says it basically doesn't do much" missed the>point.wait for the quad-cores atleast and multi-core 3rd party support for FS X