snowpig

Bojote's tool points here for feedback. It looks to me that there is a bug in the tool with regard to AffinityMask. If you feed it a cfg with no AffinityMask it does the correct thing: 84 for hyper, 14 for no. If you feed it a cfg that was optimized by the tool for hyperthreading (with mask 84) and tell it you want only 4 cores no hyperthreading it tells you "Congratulations! you have an optimal AffinityMask value!". I think it is a common task when you get a new i7 - first with hyper, then hyper off. Great tool, but in future I think it is safer to always feed it the default FSX cfg.

Looking at the forums here, and at various overclock sites, the "PRO" of this board is BY FAR more popular than the regular -V variant. Is there a good reason for this? As far as I can see, there is little difference between these: PRO has more USB 3 ports. Both have plenty for my, many ;-) controllers and such. PRO has 12 phase power for the CPU, vs 8 phase in the plain -V. IMHO that may be on the diminishing returns side of things, but I do plan to overclock. PRO has 4 chassis fan connectors? I read this somewhere vs the -V has only 3? Unable to verify this at ASUS site. My RAM vendor's site (GSkill) lists the Premium, Deluxe and PRO variants in their "Qualified Motherboards" List. For my RAM they do not mention the LE LX etc. but I to me, if the PRO is listed, the regular -V should be fine too? Is there something I am missing? The PRO really seems to be the board of choice. Just now building i7-3770K, D14 cooler, GSkill 8GB 2133 11-11-11-30, GTX 570 (a gift), in a Corsair 550D case, ASUS P8V77-V.... or should that be -V PRO? Other build comments welcome.

I think the issue may be that the TH2G seems to have four video modes that you can set up for use at any one time. Of course you can choose which ones. I believe the defaults start at 800x600 and go up to 3840x1024. At least it stops at 3840 on my machine with 3x1280x1024. For the extra wide, I would look at replacing the 3840 mode, using the UI. I know, it shouldn't make you do this. But 3 monitors with bezel correction and a TrackIR is a great setup. Don't give up too easily! Rudder Sorry, I may have been premature. The Matrox site has this to say about the higher resolutions: "These widescreen modes are only available when TripleHead2Go Digital Edition is connected to the system's dual-link DVI output." Your GTX 470 seems to fit the bill, so it is a mystery to me too.

That sounds great! and consistent with what I have seen elsewhere. I am just now building a new FSX system and I think the D14 is what I will go with too. Yes the H80/100 were tempting but all the comments I have read complain about the noise. These choices are proving harder than I thought. I wonder if I have any chance of fitting a D14 into a MID-tower, a Solo II say.

Question in title. Get technical if you must. But I must say it seems very odd to me. I don't usually fly in circles and I suspect the O/S caches something that runs 2 - 4 get to use? FSMark11 is a fantastic resource when planning an upgrade (as I am right now), thanks to all who contributed. And thanks Kostas for the guide - helped a lot so far to pick my new components. Sorry if this has been explained somewhere - I have spent hours looking here. I thought an SSD would have helped the first run times, but from reading SSD posts here it seems not. Thinking of skipping the SSD. Tom