Quad or Duo?

[G]

I am building a new machine, mainly for Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX
version. Can someone tell me is it would be worth me buying a Core 2 Quad
CPU or would FSX not make full use of it? I was looking at the Core 2 Duo
E6850 would this be just as good for my Flight Sim?

Cheers for any help!

Graham

 

[Paul]

I am building a new machine, mainly for Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX
version. Can someone tell me is it would be worth me buying a Core 2 Quad
CPU or would FSX not make full use of it? I was looking at the Core 2 Duo
E6850 would this be just as good for my Flight Sim?

Cheers for any help!

Graham

There is an article here. I think the author is implying FSX is multithreaded,
but if so, I'd prefer a clearer description of average and peak number of
threads to expect. I take it some "worker" threads are spawned as you are flying,
but it is unclear to me how many threads there are besides the ones described.

http://www.fsinsider.com/tips/Pages/SP1HowtoPrepareforSP1andWhatYouGetWhenYouInstallIt.aspx

So it looks like maybe you might see some benefit from a quad core.

There is another reference here to dual and quad cores for FSX.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/fsx-sp1-news-amd-quote.aspx

First post here claims FSX SP1 load balanced nicely across his quad core.
http://www.flightsim.co.za/viewtopic.php?p=91126

So now the only detail, is how much to spend (A Q6700 2.66GHz is $540. G0 stepping
overclocks above 3GHz. Q6600 2.4GHz is $278, and you can make it to 3GHz with
one of those as well. Read the reviews on Newegg, to get some idea of the spread
of overclocking results. Since those quads are FSB1066, you should have room
with a capable motherboard, to do some overclocking.)

Paul

 

[G]

There is an article here. I think the author is implying FSX is
multithreaded,
but if so, I'd prefer a clearer description of average and peak number of
threads to expect. I take it some "worker" threads are spawned as you are
flying,
but it is unclear to me how many threads there are besides the ones
described.

http://www.fsinsider.com/tips/Pages/SP1HowtoPrepareforSP1andWhatYouGetWhenYouInstallIt.aspx

So it looks like maybe you might see some benefit from a quad core.

There is another reference here to dual and quad cores for FSX.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/fsx-sp1-news-amd-quote.aspx

First post here claims FSX SP1 load balanced nicely across his quad core.
http://www.flightsim.co.za/viewtopic.php?p=91126

So now the only detail, is how much to spend (A Q6700 2.66GHz is $540.
G0 stepping
overclocks above 3GHz. Q6600 2.4GHz is $278, and you can make it to 3GHz
with
one of those as well. Read the reviews on Newegg, to get some idea of the
spread
of overclocking results. Since those quads are FSB1066, you should have
room
with a capable motherboard, to do some overclocking.)

Paul

Cheers Paul for the helpful reply!

Graham

 

[Ed M.]

I am building a new machine, mainly for Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX
version. Can someone tell me is it would be worth me buying a Core 2 Quad
CPU or would FSX not make full use of it? I was looking at the Core 2 Duo
E6850 would this be just as good for my Flight Sim?

Cheers for any help!

Graham

I just recently went from a C2D E6600 OC'd to 3.5ghz to a Q6600 OC'd to
3.35Ghz and the Q6600 even at the lower speed runs circles around the E6600
in FSX SP1 (which added multithreading). It seems that it is even faster in
apps that are not optimized for 4 cores. With just the processor change in
3DMark 06 my scores went from 13500 to 17500. No other changes to the system
were made, so I would say that the Quad is the best way to go. The only
reason I went with the Quad was that I decided to build my son a system
around the E6600 and got a good deal at $235.00 for the Q6600 for myself.

Ed

 

[G]

I just recently went from a C2D E6600 OC'd to 3.5ghz to a Q6600 OC'd to
3.35Ghz and the Q6600 even at the lower speed runs circles around the
E6600 in FSX SP1 (which added multithreading). It seems that it is even
faster in apps that are not optimized for 4 cores. With just the processor
change in 3DMark 06 my scores went from 13500 to 17500. No other changes
to the system were made, so I would say that the Quad is the best way to
go. The only reason I went with the Quad was that I decided to build my
son a system around the E6600 and got a good deal at $235.00 for the Q6600
for myself.

Ed

Brilliant thanks Ed, that has helped a lot!

Graham

 

[John Weiss]

Brilliant thanks Ed, that has helped a lot!

While Ed's results are impressive, you may not get the same results if you
don't overclock. Note that he OC'ed the C2Q to within 3% of the clock
speed of his C2D. Given the normal clock speeds of a C2D 6850 at 3.0 GHz
and a C2Q 6700 at 2.66 GHz (a 10% difference), you will not see the same
comparative results, especially if your MoBo supports the 1333 MHz FSB of
the 6850.

However, if you have many background apps running (Antivirus, firewall,
anti-malware, anti-spam...), the C2Q may work as well for you as the C2D,
since they will each be taking less of each core's potential.

 

[G]

While Ed's results are impressive, you may not get the same results if you
don't overclock. Note that he OC'ed the C2Q to within 3% of the clock
speed of his C2D. Given the normal clock speeds of a C2D 6850 at 3.0 GHz
and a C2Q 6700 at 2.66 GHz (a 10% difference), you will not see the same
comparative results, especially if your MoBo supports the 1333 MHz FSB of
the 6850.

However, if you have many background apps running (Antivirus, firewall,
anti-malware, anti-spam...), the C2Q may work as well for you as the C2D,
since they will each be taking less of each core's potential.

Ok point taken, thanks for the tip!

Graham