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Duo Core6700 vs Quad Core Q6600

Last response: in CPUs
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For MS Flight Sim X, a Q6600 will be the better choice. It will allow you to have more eye candy up while getting better performance but thats probably if you overclock it. From what I have seen and heard a quad is better for it.

As for the Dell XPS, it is probably able to handle up to a maximum of 8GB of RAM.

Probably, because Flight Sim X is a lot more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, but higher clock speeds would help out a lot too - so even mild overclocking would be pretty beneficial. As for the RAM amount - a Core­™ 2 series system from Dell could probably handle at most between 4GB-8GB, but I don't think any more than 3GB-4GB would help at all for FSX.
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Hi BSOD,

My office system is a Dell XPS420 running a QuadCore Q6600 (2.4GHz), 4GB RAM (667MHz) and nVidia 8600 (256MB).

My game system is a Dell XPS 710 running a Duo Core 6700 (2.66GHz), 4GB RAM (667MHz), and an nVidia 9800GTX+ (512).

The idea is to upgrade the power supply on the XPS420 to handle the 9800GTX+, and upgrade the RAM to 6GB at 1066MHz.
Since FSX is processor limited I didn't know if after everything was done, the lower speed quad core would even show a performance increase over the higher speed duo core.
Philip

Even on a locked down Dell you can overclock a Q6600 to 3.3 GHz on stock voltage in less than 20 minutes. There are 2 simple steps to doing so, and neither cost you anything.

1) You take out the CPU and put a tiny sliver of electrical tape over one of the pins (just google Q6600 pin mod and you can find lots of pictures- it's simple enough that you don't even need a guide, the picture of the taped-up pin is explanation enough).

2) Download a free program called SetFSB- you have to find the MoBo in a dropdown menu, but basically you adjust the FSB speed from this program while in windows and you can go from 3.0-3.3. My XPS420 is perfectly stable at 3.3 on stock voltage. I tried going above this but got instability at any higher speeds.

That should nudge you over the edge and create some value by making the Q6600 run about 40% faster. Cheers.
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