Capt Sim L-1011

[PaulC]

I know in figure my 2.6 GHz isn't far off 3, but how far off is it in real terms?

[DaveB]

Hi Paul

Sri this got missed. I was out early (early for me) yesterday and didn't get back in until around 21:30.

It's not easy to quantify the relative speed of chips. For example.. my E8400 isn't, IMHO, noticeably slower than my i5 in the vast majority of things I do. The base speed (not under load) of the i5 is 3.3gig.. a mere .3 faster than the 3gig E8400 but when it's under load.. the i5 clocks itself up to 3.7gig and that difference is noticeable. Of course, the i5 has 4 cpus against the E8400's 2 so you get the load spread over multiple chips rather than having 2 bogged down.
When I moved from the E6600 (no slouch when it was released) to the E8400.. there seemed very little difference in normal use but both FS9 and FSX benefitted from those few extra mhz. Both these programs benefit from raw processing power and clock speed and as the old saying goes.. every little helps

While the faster chip showed a good increase in performance, the single biggest improvement I saw with the upgrade (ongoing as it was) was when my old GTX8800 died. I replaced it with an Asus GTX560Ti OCII BBC and bar and this transformed FSX into a.. yeah, ok-ish experience into something usable. At the end of the day, all your components have to do their bit so if any of them are lagging behind a bit, you'll see the consequences (though you may not be able to determine exactly which area is the bottle-neck).

Put simply.. I'd expect you to see an increase in performance between the E6600 and (for example) the E8400 but exactly how much (in FSX) depends on how 'tuned' your other components are. If you're thinking of getting an E8400.. you can pick them up used for £20.. secondhand of course and with no guarantee of their longevity. It might be worth a dabble if your mobo can take that chip

ATB
DaveB

[PaulC]

Hi Dave.

Thanks for that.
Putting it really basically, my processor is the slowest thing in the PC. I upgraded my graphics card when I spotted one cheap- it's an ATI HD4??? (I'm out at the mo and the number escapes me, but 4870 seems close). I took my RAM up to 4GB and got Win7 x64. If I look at the mystical "windows experience score" it's my processor that's holding it all back.

This overclocking business is not something I've ever looked into, nor would I know where to start.
Realistically I'm not going to be getting a new PC for some time, and I'm happy with what I've got but it seems that all the new releases are going to be beyond me now.
I'd love the Design Studio Concorde but at that price I don't think I'd get good enough performance on my machine to get fl use.

Paul

[DaveB]

Hello Mate

No.. there comes a point where you have to accept what you've got and live with it. I think the E6600 would overclock but like you.. it's not something I'm keen on. I inadvertantly built the Win7 pc without checking the mobo (I presumed the settings were all default) and found to my horror one evening when FSX went into some mystical white/negative world that the mobo was overclocking the i5 to 4.4max from it's top speed of 3.7. I nearly died! I found the relevant lines in the bios and put it back to default so all is running as it should be.

Incidentally.. I'm surprised your cpu is the bottle neck according to the windows experience (which is a load of rot anyway IMHO). The HD's have always shown to be the slow bits on my Win7 64 so when I got an SSD for the OS.. I was gobsmacked that it was THAT pulling the score down. I expected more but there you go

ATB
Dave

[PaulC]

I'll look at the scores when I get home but I'm sure it's that way.

[PaulC]

Ok, here we are;
Processor 5.6 (64x2 dual core 2.60GHz
RAM 5.9 (4GB)
Graphics 6.6
Gaming Graphics 6.6
Primary Hard Drive 5.9

[TSR2]

What make / model is the motherboard matey

[PaulC]

Hi Ben,

The original contraption was a Dell Inspiron 531. Like I said, I've upped the power, put a better graphics card in and added 2GB of RAM. It was originally on Vista so I dealt with that travesty too!

[Anders Nielsen]

They may have patched the 757 since, but it was their attitude that stunk. I do like the 757, but ill stick with the QW one.

Yes, the QW 757 has nearly only good reviews, opposed to the CS 757. But I took the chance with the CS at their latest 10 Euro sale, and after some tutorials and debate on their forum I am pretty happy with it. In fact, I have found their forum very useful.

Best regards,
Anders

[J0hn]

found to my horror one evening when FSX went into some mystical white/negative world that the mobo was overclocking the i5 to 4.4max from it's top speed of 3.7. I nearly died! I found the relevant lines in the bios and put it back to default so all is running as it should be.

That's pretty good - but i'd say it was very likely not getting enough juice - and that's a little warm for air cooling, too.

I used to overclock via the BIOS (and do again now, as my new mbo is no good and the progs it comes with are 'pants'), but my last motherboard was an Asus P8P67 Pro, which I got with my i5. You do know that the i5 k is actually intended to be overclocked, don't you? Any of the series with a 'k' at the end is unlocked for overclocking, and any without are locked at default multiplier. Even intel themselves provide an overclocking utility specifically for this family of processors.

Asus provide fantastic overclocking programmes with their motherboards - I just installed mine and let it do it's thang, and even though I had genned-up on how to do it in the BIOS with then new Sandy Bridge, I was so impressed with what the Asus utility achieved in just a couple of minutes, I didn't bother. I left it at the 4.3GHz the utility had set it at, with air cooling, for the 3 years until I upgraded and never had even a hint of a problem. Also, the hottest my i5 ever got was 57°C - and that's arctic-like temps for an air-cooled, stressed cpu!

The 'experts' of the time were saying that up to 4.5GHz is fine for the i5 2500k on air cooling alone and no changes to the voltage.

I know you don't care for overclocking, Dave - but if anyone else has an i5 and fancies it - there's a really excellent 'beginners' tutorial here:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2 ... i5-2500k/1

Look on the same site for fantastic tutes on overclocking just about anything (except your washing machine ) and to read good hardware reviews before you buy.

Even just setting one at 4GHz would be advantageous and very unlikely to damage anything at all.