Hello mates,
Im thinking about upgrading my Core2Duo E7200. I was looking at all the quads but cant really see which of those has a good value for money. Im not into overclocking and such, so I’m just searching a good boost for low money :o
Remember that quads are only good for many apps at same time, or for apps that have multithreading. Right now maybe a faster Duo will give you better results than a quad.
But of course, we will see more and more apps with good multithreading programming…
So maybe if you want a processor for “many” years a quad is the best option…
Was I helpful? 
Yes
But flightsims will be mutlicore (like ROF) and they always demand alot of CPU-power, so I hope I can fly SOW next year (:D) somehow. Most likely I will be able to upgrade around christmas,maybe we have a fixed release-date for SOW then. Oleg says he has to realease soon (between christmas an spring 11), because of money …
Right now maybe a faster Duo will give you better results than a quad
RoF is not so good running under Core 2 Duo Nepe, some CPU-specific thing 
Intel quad core (specification in my RoF forums sig) I’m running Paf, very good it is and very overclockable (2.66Ghz to 4GHz. Seriously :))
Ming
My Core2Duo E8500 @3.16GHz runs ROF like a champ, the only thing I cant put on full is Landscape it requires 135% of my memory:rolleyes:. I am currently running 4Gigs of Corsair and a ATI Radeon 4870.
Paf, I think it’s time for you to get into overclocking. 
While a upgrade on your current system will give you a boost you can get almost as much (or even more!) for free (well, better CPU cooling is probably a good idea, especially if you’re still running the stock cooler) by overclocking.
I haven’t tried overclocking a E7200, but getting the speed up on dads E5200 was really easy. Getting the same speed (frequency) as Osprey should definetly be doable with very little work.
But good basic components in the rest of the computer helps a lot. If you have a ready built HP or something like that, well, you probably will not get so far.
In short, I don’t think you will gain enough by upgrading on the same basic system that it would be worth it, better to save the money and make a bigger upgrade when you can afford it. Then again, I might be wrong.
What’s the specs on the rest of your system. MB, RAM, graphics?
Yeah maybe you are right Mikke. As nothing is pushing me, I will use some time to get into overclocking and see what its doing 
I did some tests with CPU-Z, Core-Temp, Prime and ROF.
In Rise of flight my both cores get used 100% in heavy missions with a steady temp of 54°C.
With Prime95 they get full loaded and temperature is getting up to 60°C which should be absolute maximum temperature of CPU I think.
So first I need a better Fan, than the stock one.
Ok, a new Fan arrived.
My E7200 is now overclocked from 2,5Ghz to 3,1Ghz and temperature with Prime fully loaded had a maximum of 55°C in a 2hour test. Looks like its safe
Will see, how this will be on the long run :o
Got some immediate performance-increase in Rise of Flight with crowded missions. 
Welcome to the club!
Welcome and drinks on you Paf!
60°C
Pfft
I cant put on full is Landscape it requires 135% of my memory
The ‘memory’ specified there is local RAM onboard your videocard. Probably
Reason: local memory on a videocard is very fast to access, system RAM is much further away, so all the terrain stuff is probably (and usually apart from initial triangle setup) handled in that zippy memory space. That’s why expensive cards have masses of go-faster memory
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 159.0 (GeForce 285 spec, 1GB GDDR3 local RAM)
One gigabyte of GDDR3 at 159GB/sec is very quick indeed. And quite roomy too
Ming
The game performace bottleneck
This article from Tomshardware illustrates in a nice way how and where the CPU can be a bottleneck. IL-2 are not among the tested games and I do not expect it to be among the 20 they will test.
IL2 might not support more than one core, but the other(s) can offload from the one IL-2 use.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-performance-bottleneck,2737.html
Nice one Starfire!
Thinking about cooling, I reused my old CPU-Fan (80mm) as a backfan, now throwing out the warm air from the back. I also grabbed another Fan at the local store for just a few € and put it into the lower front sucking cold air into the case.
Now CPU and HDD temps went down notably. From 60°C to 52-51°C under full load.