Upgrading to INTEL i5 for FSX SP2

[BHILL2]

I am looking at upgrading my computer to an 'i5' P55 Socket. My current specs are as follows

Q6600 Core Quad 2.40ghz (O.C. to 2.70ghz)
ASUS P5N-D Mobo nforce750 chipset
6GB 800mhz DDR2 RAM
ASUS 8800GTX 869mb GPU
600W PSU

And I want it to look something like the Following (with Slash's dividing the Options)

Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Quad Core)

[Thai09]

Not sure if this is an upgrade!

Why not clock the Q6600 up to around 3.6 or 3.8?

Should be easy with proper cooling...

IMO a real upgrade for running FSX is no less than an i7 920 @ 4.0 Ghz / 285 GTX / DDR 3 RAM low lat.

[Slotback]

I don't think the Core i5 750 performance increase over the Q6600 warrants the price of upgrading. I'd probably overclock the Q6600 some more, should go to 3.0ghz on stock cooling, and 3.6ghz on improved cooling, maybe more, maybe less depending on your chip.

[Daube]

I agree with the two comments above.
Although a i5 @ 2,6 GHz might be a bit faster than a Q6600 @ 2,6 GHz, the CPUs you're listing above are not so interesting for FSX:
- an i5 @ 2,66GHz is too slow for good FPS.
- a dual core is not good for blurries, especially with photoreal sceneries.

Now, if you can overclok that i5 at more than 3GHz, then it might be interesting. A speed below 3GHz is not enough for FSX.

[BHILL2]

Thanks for your replys and thoughts,

I have already tried overclocking the cpu more and I just keep getting boot errors or system lock ups after 30mins or so. And I have already been on tomshardware website to try and resolve it but it seems i cannot go above 2.7 without problems.

The i5 would still have a faster speed than my q6600 and has lot of new features which come with it like turbo boost which will automaticlly overclock the quad core from 2.66ghz to 3.2ghz on one of its cores , and the daul core from 3.33ghz up to 3.6ghz. And DDR3 running at a faster speed must also make a difference.... surely it would still be an upgrade.