My latest build has the new ivy bridge chip set but an i5 2700k sandy bridge processor. The ivy bridge mantra to add lots of graphics improvements for notebooks, that do not use add on graphics boards, kind of turned me off. Right or wrong, any way, the i5 is overclocked at 4.4. My graphics processor a 6990 with 4 gb video RAM. FSX and win7 x64 is installed on two separate SSD drives.
My Concluion: i7 with ivy might be better and of couse the letter k tells us the chips batch quality. Many believe that processing lots of data is the most important factor for good FSX Perfomance but lots of monitors, high video settings, complex aircraft and scenery will bring any system to its knees. I also think that processor selection may not be the defining solution. What is your weakest link, will overclock of processor and/or video card cause a specific combination of software to run stable? Will your lust for processor speed cause random USB, sound configuration, video processing, CDT glitches?