Simviation Forums

Hey everyone, great to be on this forum.
I have a dilemma: should I or should I not upgrade my CPU to E8600?

Currently I use E4500 with ASUS P5B motherboard along with 2 gigs of RAM and 8600GT graphics card.

I max out my settings except some (scenery densities are "very dense", not "extremely dense"; also for the weather settings I use the "Ultra high" preset with detailed clouds set to maximum). And I use 4XAA and set traffic to 100%.

The FPS I get from VC at the LAX is around 35-40 with stock 747, but with PMDG 747 it's something like 21-26 (mostly low-ish 20s).

I would buy the E8600 processor if that would get me 30-40% higher FPS figures, but I have my reservations. I mean, I read (even on this forum) people stating that they get those kind of FPSs with E8600 processors, not with E4500s.

Not to mention the fact that the problem could be easily solved if there was a patch for the FS9 that makes it use multiple CPU cores.

Maybe it would be helpful if I rephrased my question: what kind of hardware would I need to run the most demanding scenario in FS9, with FPS that never dips below 40? I'm talking about things like LAX or Dallas airport, totally maxed settings, PMDG Boeing 747, and AA & AF at least 4X.

Any suggestion from people with experience would be appreciated.

Regards
Ivan

Enyone?

Well i do know that the E8600 can do more with each cycle, so it will give a you a performance boost, but i'm not sure how much, but it is a good upgrade

If you lock your frame rate to 20 or 21 you won't have those stutters or frame rate jumps... If you're gonna be sticking to FS9 I wouldn't do it... I would just clock what you have and that would yield good results

I would actually recommend the E8500 OR the E8400 (3.16GHz and 3.0GHz respectively) as you can still overclock these chips up to 4GHz with an appropriate cooler (such as the Thermalright Ultra-120) - you can easily get the E8500 for like $NZ390 (from www.notebookcity.co.nz) and why would you spend like $30-$40 more for a small speed in both cores?? Unless you're REALLY wishing to push your system, I would doubt you would notice a difference overall.

Ok, here's a little update: I bought ASUS Radeon HD 4850. Flight Simulator runs very slurry on it now, but FSX demo works pretty nice. So, now I have two new questions:

1) Did enyone else experience this massive performance setback with this card, what could be the cause for this kind of behavior and what might be the solution (somehow I think it's a matter of FS 2004 not recognizing shader X or pipeline Z on newer cards)?

2) What kind of performance might I expect from FSX? What if i upgraded my CPU to Q6600?

AFAIK ATi doesn't perform well in fsx... maybe Nick will reply.