Yeah that's cool Plainsman I know I am probably going through what many people have in the last 4 years. To be hones though I should've done more research before purchasing and really just waited for MS Flight OR bought more ROF planes!! All good though, tweaking this thing is half the fun.....right?!!?!?

One thing though although my CPU is an i5 it's a 2500k @ 3.3 the only diff with that and the 2600k i7 is as far as I know they hyperthreading which apparently isn't used by games at all. So if that's right my CPU should be performing as well as an i7 at the same clock speed.

Well for your interest I have only a dual core 4800 (2x2.4GHz) but with Windows 7 and a good HD 4850 card and 4Gb RAM and Flight Sim X runs very well except over large cities when it does get slowish. I cant put most of the setting on max. I did use the config recommendations as mentioned in a previous post but actually went back to my own settings as they looked better and were smoother. I have most graphics settings on about 75% and it looks great - I just messed about with them to get what I thought looked acceptable - also I run it in Directx 10 preview mode which is very nice, but precludes you from many free plane add-ons, but its too nice to ignore.

I am presently upgrading my computer to an AMD Phenom II X6 so we will see how that improves flying around the cities! I am mainly upgrading for the new career mode of Rise of Flight more than FSX though as I love that game and it is too slow on my computer during the new career dogfights. Cant wait to get the new Bristol Fighter once I have upgraded!