Turnip Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 I'm looking at selling my dual core and getting a new Quad Core. I'm looking at the 2.4 LGA 775 Q6600. Here is a link to one at EWIZ.COM. I'm not familiar with the power callouts and such. Is this a good processor? I have a INTEL P5N-E-SLI motherboard which has a 1066 FSB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russ White Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 Hey Turnip, I can safely say go with the Q6600, i have one in my machine right now and it's great! The 4 cores will provide a smoother simming experience for you while keeping your budget sensible. There is also massive overclocking head room on these chips if you are so inclined. Just remember to get a third party cooler if your going to overclock much, £25 ($50) will get you a decent cooler, it's a darn site cheaper than replacing a cooked CPU! I have a Scythe Mugen Infinity cooler with twin 120mm fans on it (massive but effective) Q6600 overclocked to 3.2 Ghz under load = 28 degrees! Go for it mate, best bang for buck processor around at the moment. Russ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolter van der Spoel Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 Turnip, Sound advice there by Russ, you won't regret it, but make darned sure to get that cooler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Paul Mes Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 Can't agree more , I've got on myself as well. If you do a search for Q6600 in this forum, you will find quite a buch of happy users. Just do not expect an extraordinary jump in framerates. To achieve higher framerates than with your previous dual core CPU, you will have to overclock (start at a safe 3Ghz with a decent cooler). But with a quadcore, you wil get much faster texture loading as long as you add the magic lines to your fsx.cfg : [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=14 By doing this, 3 cores will be used by FSX, leaving the remaining one for the operating system and other programs. Jean-Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Webb Posted July 4, 2008 Share Posted July 4, 2008 I just went to a Quad 6600 2.4 - very happy and much better performance than my Pentium-D 3.4 Overclocked to 3.0 without any dramas. As the geeks might have guessed, already have a 3rd party heat sink (Zalman CNPS9500LED) as those Pentium-D's get REALLY hot. My overclocked Q6600 is MUCH cooler than the Pentium-D running at stock speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandit Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 ... But with a quadcore, you wil get much faster texture loading as long as you add the magic lines to your fsx.cfg : [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=14 By doing this, 3 cores will be used by FSX, leaving the remaining one for the operating system and other programs. Jean-Paul - I thought JOBSCHEDULER values were as follows [tt][JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=n n = number of cores scheduled 1 = 1 core 3 = 2 cores 7 = 3 cores 15 = 4 cores[/tt] Therfore to specify 3 cores you needed [tt][JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=7 [/tt] In any case why 3 cores? Why not use all 4? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Webb Posted July 5, 2008 Share Posted July 5, 2008 Jean-Paul - I thought JOBSCHEDULER values were as follows [tt][JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=n n = number of cores scheduled 1 = 1 core 3 = 2 cores 7 = 3 cores 15 = 4 cores[/tt] Therfore to specify 3 cores you needed [tt][JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=7 [/tt] In any case why 3 cores? Why not use all 4? It's a matter of personal taste. I have mine set to 15. In binary, 15 = 1111 ie it uses all cores. For people who use Active Sky and other programs that might chew up CPU (including OS services not shut down by AlcrityPC) , you can leave your first core exclusively to those programs by telling FSX not to use the first core, but the last 3. 14 = 1110 7 = 0111 14 seems to leave the first core idle (for OS, ActiveSky etc), run the main FSX process on the 2nd core and use core 3 and 4 for whatever it can. 7 seems to leave the last core idle, run the main FSX process on the 1st core and use core 2 and 3 for whatever it can. Following that, since all processes on my PC load to the first core by default, I would use 14, since the main idea is to give the FSX main process as much exclusive CPU as possible. With 14, it won't share its process with anything else. On the other hand, I also am happy with it set to 15 and use AlcrityPC to shut down any process that might chew up resources on the 1st core of the CPU that FSX would share under this configuration. Hope this helps. Cheers, Matt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turnip Posted July 6, 2008 Author Share Posted July 6, 2008 Thx for the info guys. I am not having many FPS issues. I am having the stutter issues tho and with tweeking it for months and my dul CPU usage up to 100% constantly, I feel that a CPU increase will be my best bet. I get 30 - 40 FPS but still have stutters. I am not comfortable with overclocking as it sounds really complicated. If I don't overclock, will the standard coller be OK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Bosch Posted July 6, 2008 Share Posted July 6, 2008 I use a non-overclocked 6600 with a standard cooler and have never had any overheating issues. I might look at overclocking one day but for now I don't see it as necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turnip Posted July 6, 2008 Author Share Posted July 6, 2008 With a 2.4 quad core, wouldn't that give me something like a 9.6 GHZ processor speed versus my dual core 2.33 ( 2.33 X 2 = 4.66 ) So I would be going rom a 4.66 to a 9. 6, is that how you look at it or am I wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Bosch Posted July 7, 2008 Share Posted July 7, 2008 Not exactly. If the application you were running was perfectly paralleled then yes that would be true. Essentially, an application can be broken into threads which perform their actions independant of each other to some degree (there are times like accessing the same data that they have to be gated so that only one accesses at a time). This allows you to do things like have a long background task run and still have a somewhat responsive GUI since the two are on different threads. A single CPU handles this by breaking up its time into small slices (about 50 milliseconds each) and giving a small slice to each thread currently running. So each thread gets to run a bit then it is paused and another thread gets to run for a while. This switching from thread to thread comes at a cost though since it takes time to switch from thread to thread and the CPU's clock cycles need to be divided up between the various threads. With a multi-processor machine the different threads can be split among complete processors so that thread to thread switch time disappears and there is less dividing of the CPU's clock speed between threads. However, to take advantage of a multi-processor machine an application has to be written with them in mind. FSX can use as many processors as you give it. The main application still runs on one thread (so only 1 CPU) but things like AI processing can be hived off to another CPU rather than take up time on the one running the main app. Still, even with single threaded apps only you have an advantage because the applications you run all the time (all that background stuff that's always running) are spread about on the various CPUs so there would simply be less load on any one. For most games currently on the market (FSK being a partial exception) a dual-core running at 3.3Ghz may perform better overall than a Quad-core at 2.4Ghz simply because the game is single threaded and therefore locked to one processor. However, that is rapidly changing! That's said though, if you have background stuff running then the quad may give better performance. I was playing Silent Hunter 3 (a single threaded game) the other day while do a large code compilation and didn't notice a hick-up. If I tried that on a single core (maybe even a dual) the game would have been almost unplayable. I hope that helps a bit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turnip Posted July 7, 2008 Author Share Posted July 7, 2008 Thx Wirraway, That was explained very well. ( I actually understood something this time ) hehe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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