fm hyperthreading new rig cpu decision 2500k or 2600k

HI there,

was wondering if anyone could shed any light on the number of threads that FM can utilise at any one time?

i'm speccing upa new rig atm and i'm torn between a 2500k and a 2600k now for those not in the know the 2600k has hyperthreading so 8 threads instead of the 2500k's 4 and it has 8meg l3 cache compared to 6meg

questions

how many threads (or in this case cores physical and logical) can FM make use of

if its the 8 am i likely to see a major gain going 2600k over 2500k if both are clocked to the same speed? i know its not a genuine 100% gain in cpu power more along the lines of 30-40% but can fm utilise this?

is there any way to get the fm exe to make use of more than 3 gig of ram or whatever the 32 bit address limit is for this?

ok last q is a bit wrong(sorry had a few beers tonight)

how do i set my fm.exe to be large address aware? allowing it to access 4 gig of ram rather than the standard 2gig?

FM has one of the best multi core optimizations available it uses all cores even 2011 does this

about the ram usage you cant do anything unless SI makes a 64bit version

People say that it should use 4 cores, I've had two different quad core processors in the past and never seen it use more than 2 despite both being at 100% (so either it doesn't, or the performance monitor in game doesn't work).

There's no way to make FM address more than 3.5gb of RAM because it's a 32 bit application. I'm not actually sure that it can address that much either.

You should see a difference due to the amount of threading, but in general the i5-2500K is much better value for money.

So it really comes down to your budget. There is little point in going for the i7-2600K unless you are splurging. If you aren't, bump up your video card or get an SSD instead.

I got 6 cores, and FM utilizes all of them. Put FM on an SSD aswell, and it will be flying.