>>Is there something different about that demo setup, or are we>missing a .cfg line that will enable this capability or . . .>. what? This demo Should mean that any Quad owner Should be>capable of a quick DOUBLE in performance Right Now . . . but>how? Well I doubt double the performance. But certainly a nice boost if......maybe there is something in the update to look forward to, regarding multiple core usage.Hopeful, anyway...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

SP1 and the terrain worker threads will take advantage of as many cores as are there. As you see here.How much that helps frame rate vs stutters is an open question. I think the tests show that while we run jobs on those cores, there isnt a clear frame rate advantage at the same clock rate. When the Wolfdale/Penryn CPUs come out with more GHz, higher L1 cache, and more cores that may change.

Wouldn't there be a diminishing returns after dual or quad core?....I wish..Intel would focus on increasing the core CPU speed to over the 4 and 5Ghz as well as the FSB in MBs.Manny

We have to composite terrain textures for the entire 64-tile radial grid around the plane. That work has to be done somewhere. Sure, its not 100% parallelizable. But I do not believe the benefit stops at 2 cores, and when Ghz and cache goes up more cores will show a stronger benefit.

hi, i think that every 2 fold increase of core amount should have real benefit to fps at least 50%.i dont want the terrain engine to sharpen up the terrain on the other side of the world, just show whats closer to the viewer. if the GPU is the limiting factor then its another story.example: you go from 2 to 4 cores then autogen shows twise the distance etc.PS. 4+ GHZ nehalems are coming summer 2008.

I get the impression that many folks missed the fact that this is a rather "old" interview. Wasn't this actually conducted just a few weeks after SP1 was released? :)So, there's nothing being seen that is "new" since SP1 was RTW...

So, based on what has been discussed in this thread, as we saying that a Quad Core will produce better frame rates than a dual core that contains about the same clock speed. Reason I ask is I am just about to order a dual core Intel e6750, but if the quad core Q6600 can give a significantly better result, I would opt for that. I know in the hardware forum Vic provided some results comparing dual and quad, but I am wondering if this information has changed anything. Phil, your comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

I think the cameraman must have had one too many at lunchtime. :-lol

>I get the impression that many folks missed the fact that>this is a rather "old" interview. Wasn't this actually>conducted just a few weeks after SP1 was released? :)>>So, there's nothing being seen that is "new" since SP1 was>RTW...Yes but it was just posted yesterday apparently by XtremeQuest themselves. Whether it was posted somewhere else before, I don't know. Also it is the first chance we see FSX running on a Penryn system, a dual Penryn at that! Unfortunately from the apparent settings used, and the appearance of blurries, it doesn't give a good representation of just what kind of performance the Penryn can deliver. Also no framerate was displayed, but I would say it was in the neighborhood of 20+ at least.

Good point, yes this was shortly after SP1. And any comments I made were about products beyond SP2.

Thanks Phil. So based on those comments, would you see a Quad core working better than a dual core with comparable clock speeds post SP2? Also, I just want to say thanks for all of your involvement in the forums. Class act.

Argh!! If my FSX looked like that, I'd donate it to a soup kitchen!

As GHz and cache per core climbs, yes I would expect that more cores would benefit FPS as well as stutters/smoothness. Right now the extra cores primarily benefit stutters/smoothness.Note, SP2 is primarily a feature/fix release and not a performance release. Yes, we did do some perf work, but nothing like SP1.

Oh, and thanks for the thanks. Its nice to be appreciated occasionally and not just flamed. :-).

Why that video looked the way it looked will become clearer when I can make the SP2 details post. Next week-ish.And yes, SP2 fixes that particular issue. :-).