thinking of upgrade....

[tonymadge]

Ok I havea reasonable single core CPU so from what you guys are saying changing this to adual/quad core wont make much diff as the single core I have is not much slower than one of the dual/quad cores. 2gb ram is sufficient for me ( acknowledge that the new cpu would require faster ram which I was planning on) and was abig imporvement over my 1gb. My graphics card is decent enough without playing to the "fashion models and excessive prices"
Now then if I went for a quad core running at 2.4ghz I guess from what your saying is that I can expect little if any improvement over my present set up. So I guess that means when FS and the oter stuff run one core does all the work the others sit with thier thumbs up their arse doing bugger all?? No1 core fires away gets a bit overworked shouts to his mates "any chance of a hand here guys?" the other cores pipe up in unison " sorry mate union rules your on your own, anyway were too busy poking a digit up our rectums"
In which case I have to ask the question.....Why bother with multicore?? Ok I can run PSP7 and word at the same time and maybe a video editing package, but then again my brain has only one core and that can only do one thing ata time if I want to paint a plane I cant write my memoirs and edit the family vid at once?

I read others saying how good FS is with dual core etc..are they misled or is it real???

[DaveB]

Hi Tony..

I think a lot has to do with the OS and sim you're using. I've read that FS9 can access both cores with a patch but I honestly don't know FSX probably does with Vista. You really have to have all new bits (hardware/OS) to get the full benefits of the new CPU's so on something like FS9.. to see a vast increase in performance will be down to raw single core clock speed and increased performance of the chips technology rather than it using all the new CPU's performance.

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Sl4yer]

Now then if I went for a quad core running at 2.4ghz I guess from what your saying is that I can expect little if any improvement over my present set up. So I guess that means when FS and the oter stuff run one core does all the work the others sit with thier thumbs up their arse doing bugger all?? No1 core fires away gets a bit overworked shouts to his mates "any chance of a hand here guys?" the other cores pipe up in unison " sorry mate union rules your on your own, anyway were too busy poking a digit up our rectums"

With FS9, that's about what you'll get. FSX will use the extra cores to load textures, which is especially useful with the VFR scenery stuff. However, it will improve image quality, whilst doing relatively little for framerates.

Newer games (e.g. RaceDriver Grid) use all available cores, as do many multimedia programs. It's fun to see an audio converter doing 4 tracks at once... More cores will certainly be future-proof.

I recall that the clock for clock performance of the Core2 series is 30% better than a Pentium4. I don't know how your AMD CPU compares to those though.

James

[tonymadge]

Thnaks guys for all the info I think I will stay with what I have got and at least I wont have to flex the "card" just yet especially as I will not see any improvemnet over what I have in FS9. I have FSX but it gathers dust as I am less impressed by it every time it fires up :@
But thats another story

[SkippyBing]

Certainly if I leave the task manager open on the CPU usage page when running FSX all four cores are doing a similar level of work (Core 1 always doing a bit more because a lot of legacy background programmes will only use it). Similarly if you do a lot of fiddling with FS you can leave a lot more stuff open without having snags e.g. phot shop, gMax, FSX, Firefox, Thunderbird, Edit Pad Pro etc. etc. seriously I have snags checking what I've got on the taskbar at times!
The single core equivalent to a multi core can be guessed at by multiplying the clock speed by the number of cores, and then taking about 10% off for the admin overhead. So for things that only use a single core e.g FS9 a fast single core may actually have the edge on a quad core as the individual cores are running slower. Multi-core are the future, I think current plans are working up to 32 core chips, if only because you couldn't physically run a single core at the equivalent clock speed, however the software including the OS has to be written to take advantage of them so if FS9 is your thing, do I hear a cry of 'dinosaur', it may be worth sticking with one of the last top of the range single cores.

[tonymadge]

so if FS9 is your thing, do I hear a cry of 'dinosaur'

That'll be me then..I expect David attenboro round my gaff with a camera crew every time I crawl out of bed to rest on the patio waitng for the sun to warm me up
Seriously after reading this and just having a go on my PC with Heathrow Xtreme full AS6.5 weather etc I will stick with what I have got and look at eBay for bits for my bike that I cant use till my digit works