Well this is a funny thing, that is the only option it gives me. I think I maybe calling my mobo manufacturer on Monday. Though I will say I'm getting great performance from both FS9 and FSX, so it must not be an issue, when I go to the system app in the control panel, it says Intel Core 2 CPU E6600 at 2.40 GhzJeff

Alrighty, well I've spent some time on developing a good all round dynamic benchmark of 12 mins duration. The benchmark has a CRJ700 taking off from KPAE to the south on autopilot, overflying the city of Seattle and KSEA at 1500ft / 250kts, then heading out towards Mt Rainier to finish off, for a total distance of around 53nm. Now surely this taxes what ever second or more cores is being used, however the results so far speak for themselves:Core 2 only:2007-05-19 17:33:23 - fsxFrames: 20536 - Time: 720000ms - Avg: 28.522 - Min: 16 - Max: 41Cores 1 and 2:2007-05-19 17:52:18 - fsxFrames: 19984 - Time: 720000ms - Avg: 27.755 - Min: 13 - Max: 40Settings were global high across the board, except AA/AF enabled, frame rate set to unlimited ;), and vsync off.Now it's not a huge difference I know, but single core is beating out dual core over a good 12 min dynamic stretch, with city scape, suburban scape, forests, water, and busy airports - just when is my second core going to swing into action?Gary

I'm really interested in your results, Gary. Here's another question for you: do you notice a difference in quality?

Quality is the same as far as I can tell David.Gary

Very strange. What motherboard do you have (looks like a Gigabyte to me from your desktop icon)?Gary

>- just when is my second core going to swing into action?Gary, frame rates alone aren't the only measure of what's going on. Since the threads that are spawned off to core #2 when running as ACES intended is exclusively dedicated to texture fetching, compositing and blitting, none of those operations are going to get "reported" to the frame rate counter...Don't get so focused on one thing that you become a "frame rate junkie..." ;)There's a TON of stuff that FSX does in the background that must be done before a single frame gets drawn. The more "processor power" you give to the rendering process (aka: frame rate), the less you give to the "pre-rendering processing" that must be done.FS is a delicate balancing act, and that is precisely why "tweaking" must be done. No two systems are identical, so there's no "one size fits all" combination of settings that can be applied across the board.The goal is to find the "sweet spot" on your system that gives just enough time to the rendering process while allowing the compositing process to remain efficient.

It's an MSI board, they kind of do things weird, for example, there are five SATA ports on the board itself, yet only one of those ports is manufactured by them, the other four are supplied by Intel as far as I understand it and so I am unable to RAID, because the other four ports I mentioned are seen as IDE drives by Windows, Intel admits that there is no support for ACHI for this particular chipset, so basically I need a new motherboard, though this one overclocks very well. I also want to say that ever since installing SP1, my cpu temp has broken 100 degrees F, so I know that both cores are now being utilized.Jeff

Try opening performance monitor then going into the View | CPU History, is the "One Graphh" option selected?

Bill,>There's a TON of stuff that FSX does in the background that>must be done before a single frame gets drawn. The more>"processor power" you give to the rendering process (aka:>frame rate), the less you give to the "pre-rendering>processing" that must be done.This was my theory behind giving FSX a good 10+ mins of flying through intense scenery to have the second core start paying me back for all the work it has been doing in tbe background. Unfortunately, my experience so far shows it seems the microphone is turned off whenever this backing vocalist should be singing.Gary

>>"1" for 1 core>>"3" for 2 cores>>>>Am I wrong? I don't think affinity = 2 should ever be used.>>>>Why not? That's what a mask does - allows you to pick which>specific cores FSX will use. Try the different values and see>which cores get used if you want to confirm for yourself.>>GaryYes but it seems to me that by using the value of '2' you are using some oddball value, not usng 1 core, but not using two cores, either. So how much of each core were you directing your sim to use?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Hi GaryGreat tests as always. I must admit that I was baffled about the tiny performance change when setting the mask to 2. One thing I did notice was that the stutters went away. As you haven't mentioned it I assume it is not the same for you.

>thing I did notice was that the stutters went away. That would agree with what Phil brags about in his blog:the multi-core work really shines for load balancing and reducing stutters and blurriesMichael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

I had a similar interesting result. Although not quite as scientifically set up as Gary's, I did pay close attention to what the difference would be when going from an E6600 overclocked to 2,66 to a QX6700 Quad (I had OCd the 6600 to match the Ghz of the Quad). My frames also decreased. This was flying back and forth in the area over and around KJFK, and - keeping all other settings equal - I experienced a drop of about five frames: From approximately 25 average to 20 average (20%!). Affinity mask wise I tried going from 3 (when running two cores) to 15 (when four) and then with no setting at all (leaving it to the program to figure out). Same results.Since I had not done the SP1 install on a completely pristine FSX (although it was fairly clean), I decided to reinstall/defrag everything. The performance is fine now (and SP1 did make a positive difference - as it also had before - thank you very much ACES!), so I have not bothered to try any comparisons by going back to the 6600. Now I'd just rather spend my time flying! But I hope this observation (FPS drop from two to four cores) can help a little somewhere just the same./Hans

>Well this is a funny thing, that is the only option it gives>me. I think I maybe calling my mobo manufacturer on Monday. >Though I will say I'm getting great performance from both FS9>and FSX, so it must not be an issue, when I go to the system>app in the control panel, it says Intel Core 2 CPU E6600 at>2.40 Ghz>>JeffJust to be sure here.You do run XP proffessional do you? You did a fresh install with your current hardware?Both are needed to support dual cores....

Tried to put my setup in my signature, but it's not showing. Here it is: Windows XP, Intel QX6700 Quad, 2GB Corsair, eVGA 8800GTX, Asus P5B-Deluxe, 600GB RAID5 (250+350) on 7200.10 SATAII, Creative Sound Blaster xFI, Corsair 620HXEU PSU.