• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Is an AMD X6 overkill for these games?

lukefinch

lukefinch

lukefinch

Associate
Joined
12 Jun 2010
Posts
585
Location
Near Sheffield
I am in the process of building my first gaming PC and i was planning on using an AMD X6 processor in it.

The reason behind this is i mainly want to play Microsoft Flight Simulator on it and i hear that game is very CPU dependant, however is an AMD X4 enough for this game?

The other games i plan to play are not going to really test the system at all, they are games like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Zoo Tycoon 2 and GTA San Andreas.
 
If your looking at the athlon X4's then the price difference is a massive jump up.

If looking a the phenom X4's then is only like £30 difference, and at that point i personally would opt for the X6, never know when the extra cores will come in handy, and its only a liitle more cost.
 
FSX or FS9?
FSX is CPU bound.

I guess FSX so:

Go with intel (i5 or i7 8xx as FSX won't take advantage of tripple channel) and although it can somewhat use all cores, it won't perform any better on 6.

FSX is a 32 bit app so 4GB of RAM is enough. You'll need a 64b OS preferably W7

NVidia is the card of choice for FSX. ATI drivers have issues there, but don't go crazy. A 460 is the best bang for the buck, but a 260 will do too. Any better is a waste of money. Make sure it's a 1GB memory GPU to avoid crashes

Are you overclocking?
 
For gaming, I really would recommend Intel/Nvidia at the moment. The GTX460 is a cracking card, and you don't get the issues that ATI are having with naff drivers at the moment. (Loads of people say they're fine, but I've just gone to 10.7 from 10.6 and i'm having issues that they got rid of in 10.5a).
 
I am using the AMD Phenom II X4 995 and it has been overclocked @ 3.6 and is running the FSX very smoothly. Not only for FSX but for many other games also.

Another point I want to make regarding the quad core, I have disabled two of my cores in the bios and I am still getting the FSX running at the same frame rates and running smoothly.
 
same here. I pull my hair when peeps keep recomending overkill quads and whatnot. let alone sli, triple channel mem, hyperthreading... that does nothing for fsx.

but Intel is the way to go when it comes to FSX, just stay away from x58 if you don't want to waste your money

do what I say, not what I did

modez said:
I have disabled two of my cores in the bios and I am still getting the FSX running at the same frame rates and running smoothly.
Click to expand...
 
dazz said:
FSX or FS9?
FSX is CPU bound.

I guess FSX so:

Go with intel (i5 or i7 8xx as FSX won't take advantage of tripple channel) and although it can somewhat use all cores, it won't perform any better on 6.

FSX is a 32 bit app so 4GB of RAM is enough. You'll need a 64b OS preferably W7

NVidia is the card of choice for FSX. ATI drivers have issues there, but don't go crazy. A 460 is the best bang for the buck, but a 260 will do too. Any better is a waste of money. Make sure it's a 1GB memory GPU to avoid crashes

Are you overclocking?
Click to expand...

Yes, it will be FSX

Would a highly overclocked i3 CPU, say 4.0GHz+, do the job because the i5 and i7 CPU's are very expensive and pretty much out of my budget?

I will be getting 4gb of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and i already have Win7 64bit ready to install.

As for the graphics card, how much of a real difference is there between an ATI or Nvidia card for FSX?
 
Hyperthreading does nothing for FSX so an I5 7xx would be the best bang for the buck CPU for FSX. I don't really know how those I3 perform core for core & clock for clock compared to the I5, but the fact that they only have two cores should be no problem (I've disabled 4 cores of my 1090T with no frame rate impact)

As for the VGA, ATI drivers are a pain in the ass, and things get worse with FSX. Now there's tweaks you can use to make them work, but nVidia will work out of the box.

EDIT: something that I should have asked in the beginning is what's your flying style:
- what planes will you be flying? default planes or heavy addons?
- Virtual cockpit or 2D panels?
- Do you need traffic or you fly online?
- Do you mind not having much autogen?

if you fly in the virtual cockpit of payware airliners, with loads of traffic & autogen, you'll need all the CPU power you can get, especially at large hubs like Heathrow



lukefinch said:
Yes, it will be FSX

Would a highly overclocked i3 CPU, say 4.0GHz+, do the job because the i5 and i7 CPU's are very expensive and pretty much out of my budget?

I will be getting 4gb of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and i already have Win7 64bit ready to install.

As for the graphics card, how much of a real difference is there between an ATI or Nvidia card for FSX?
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
dazz said:
Hyperthreading does nothing for FSX so an I5 7xx would be the best bang for the buck CPU for FSX. I don't really know how those I3 perform core for core & clock for clock compared to the I5, but the fact that they only have two cores should be no problem (I've disabled 4 cores of my 1090T with no frame rate impact)

As for the VGA, ATI drivers are a pain in the ass, and things get worse with FSX. Now there's tweaks you can use to make them work, but nVidia will work out of the box.
Click to expand...

Im going to go with an Nvidia card then because i don't wantr to mess around altering many setting etc. Well, any more than i need to;)

As for your questions...

- what planes will you be flying? default planes or heavy addons?
A, Hopefully when i get this new PC done i can start using heavy addons like the PMDG planes etc.
- Virtual cockpit or 2D panels?
A, 95% of the time is the 3D virtual cockpit
- Do you need traffic or you fly online?
A, I use WOAI and play online for about 30 mins a week, maybe not even that long before it crashes
- Do you mind not having much autogen?
A, ATM, i have basically no buildings or autogen, just the airports

dazz said:
if you fly in the virtual cockpit of payware airliners, with loads of traffic & autogen, you'll need all the CPU power you can get, especially at large hubs like Heathrow
Click to expand...

This is basically what i want to do, I've just made a video using FRAPS to show you how my system runs in both large payware hubs and sceneries and also the default stuff.

Here is the link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwf-aXdebhE
 
Ok there's no Anisotropic filtering there. I had that happen with my 5770 too. It's a driver issue (unless yo have selected bilinear or trilinear filter in the FSX settings)
Macbooks use ATI cards if I'm not wrong

It would be cool if someone could confirm how the I3 performs compared to lynnfield I5 quads on single core benchmarks. I've looked up the Fritz thread and looks like it's a fast chip, and it overclocks to 4.2GHz easy.

If you go with I3 in the end, there's another thread in the CPU section about overclocking I3 530. Overclocking should give you a nice performance boost so pick a H55 board as suggested there, a good cooler like a Prolimatech Megahalems or a Venomous X and get it passed 4GHz.
 
dazz said:
Ok there's no Anisotropic filtering there. I had that happen with my 5770 too. It's a driver issue (unless yo have selected bilinear or trilinear filter in the FSX settings)
Macbooks use ATI cards if I'm not wrong

It would be cool if someone could confirm how the I3 performs compared to lynnfield I5 quads on single core benchmarks. I've looked up the Fritz thread and looks like it's a fast chip, and it overclocks to 4.2GHz easy.

If you go with I3 in the end, there's another thread in the CPU section about overclocking I3 530. Overclocking should give you a nice performance boost so pick a H55 board as suggested there, a good cooler like a Prolimatech Megahalems or a Venomous X and get it passed 4GHz.
Click to expand...

No, my macbook uses an Nvidia GeForce 9400M card actually.

Would a 4.20GHz i3 be fast enough to handle lots of payware scenery and aircraft at high settings? Or would i NEED to go for an i5?
 
Last edited:
lukefinch said:
Would a 4.20GHz i3 be fast enough to handle lots of payware scenery and aircraft at high settings? Or would i NEED to go for an i5?
Click to expand...

I don't know if it's slower. i3 are all Clarkdale (32nm) dual cores with integrated graphics, smaller caches and hyperthreading

Lynnfield i5 7xx are 45nm quads without hyperthreading (and since FSX doesn't use HT it's like having a I7 8xx)
 
fsx only does multithreading from SP1 onwards. Even then, i think it only really makes use of two cores at best (owing to quads still being pretty rare at the time of release).

dont quote me on that though.
 
I agree. but is the I3 slower than lynnfield I5's core for core and clock for clock? (with no HT in the I3)

thingemajib said:
fsx only does multithreading from SP1 onwards. Even then, i think it only really makes use of two cores at best (owing to quads still being pretty rare at the time of release).

dont quote me on that though.
Click to expand...
 
I remember seeing an interview on YouTube with one of the Aces programers when FSX was first released and he said that FSX will utilize as many cores as your processor's got. But I've read elsewhere on SimForums that FSX doesn't even use a quad core processor correctly, apparently duel core processors will run FSX almost as fast as quad core processors if their running at the same clock speed.
 
FSX uses all cores after SP1 as stated before, but it's core 0 at 100% all the time running the main thread and then the others to run the "fibers". 1 extra core is enough to run the fibers and there's little to no benefit in quads or hexas. you will typicaly see cores 1 to 5 work ocasionally


And no. HT is useless in FSX

modez said:
I remember seeing an interview on YouTube with one of the Aces programers when FSX was first released and he said that FSX will utilize as many cores as your processor's got. But I've read elsewhere on SimForums that FSX doesn't even use a quad core processor correctly, apparently duel core processors will run FSX almost as fast as quad core processors if their running at the same clock speed.
Click to expand...
 
dazz said:
FSX uses all cores after SP1 as stated before, but it's core 0 at 100% all the time running the main thread and then the others to run the "fibers". 1 extra core is enough to run the fibers and there's little to no benefit in quads or hexas. you will typicaly see cores 1 to 5 work ocasionally


And no. HT is useless in FSX
Click to expand...

So you're basically saying that you only need two cores for FSX, one for the main game and one for the extra stuff?

In that case, would a core i3 @ 4.0GHz work just as well as an X6 @ 4.0GHz when both are used in FSX?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom