Spec Levels for FSX

[AndyG43]

Yes, I'm sure the question has been asked a million times before; yes, I'm sure I can search for the answer - but I'm a Brit still reeling from a whole 4 days of political uncertainty, so please humour me! :wiggle:

After a period without a PC (finding out the hard way that opening your PC to upgrade it with a pint of Guinness next to it was not the brightest idea) I am now looking to start my new build - so the question is, do I go for FS9 or FSX, the answer to which dictates my build.

I know what I need to do to get a PC that will run FS9 to my satisfaction; but I don't know what the sensible spec levels are to run FSX without it looking like a bad stop-frame animation? Budget is a big consideration, I will be buying items piece by piece, as I can afford it so this system won't be built overnight. So what are the spec levels needed to get at least a reasonable performance with an FSX Accel install?

[peter12213]

As a fellow Brit also sick of politics, I over the past few weeks have been gathering intelligence on my future PC and after looking at several off the shelf PC's and custom built one's the on I have decided on now is an Alpine system from Alpine computers, http://www.alpinesystems.co.uk/ , the one I decided on is the EGGD system which got a great review from computer pilot magazine and other members on here, the specs are...

Intel i7 930 2.80Ghz CPU
MSI X58 PRO Motherboard
6Gb Corsair TR3 Tri Channel Memory 1600Mhz
Samsung 1 Terrabyte 32Mb Cache HDD SATA
22x DVD Re-Writer Dual Layer
NVidia GTX 480 DDR5 PCie 1GB Graphics
On Board 7.1 Stereo Sound
Gigabit Lan
Firewire
Deluxe Midi Tower Case with Superior 750w PSU
USB 2.0 x 8 (2 on front)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

The price is about £1600 including VAT, expensive but as FSX is my main hobby I feel it is worth it!

[kilo delta]

As a fellow Brit also sick of politics, I over the past few weeks have been gathering intelligence on my future PC and after looking at several off the shelf PC's and custom built one's the on I have decided on now is an Alpine system from Alpine computers, http://www.alpinesystems.co.uk/ , the one I decided on is the EGGD system which got a great review from computer pilot magazine and other members on here, the specs are...

Intel i7 930 2.80Ghz CPU
MSI X58 PRO Motherboard
6Gb Corsair TR3 Tri Channel Memory 1600Mhz
Samsung 1 Terrabyte 32Mb Cache HDD SATA
22x DVD Re-Writer Dual Layer
NVidia GTX 480 DDR5 PCie 1GB Graphics
On Board 7.1 Stereo Sound
Gigabit Lan
Firewire
Deluxe Midi Tower Case with Superior 750w PSU
USB 2.0 x 8 (2 on front)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

The price is about £1600 including VAT, expensive but as FSX is my main hobby I feel it is worth it!

Just did a very quick comparison on Hardwareversand.de


Article Availebility Price per unit Quantity Price
Sum:
1.162,44 €
Article No. HV0233309701DE entfernen
Special item: Intel Core i7-930 Box 8192Kb, LGA1366
Single piece
247,10 €

247,10 €
Article No. HV0214635901DE entfernen
Special item: MSI X58 Pro-E, Intel X58, ATX, DDR3, LGA1366
Single piece
165,99 €

165,99 €
Article No. HV20C1G6DE entfernen
6GB-Triple-Kit Corsair TR3X6G1600C8 DDR3, CL8
ready for dispatch
189,98 €

189,98 €
Article No. HV13103SDE entfernen
Samsung HD103UJ 1TB 32MB SATA II
ready for dispatch
67,38 €

67,38 €
Article No. HV1022PEDE entfernen
Point of View GeForce GTX480, 1536MB DDR5
ready for dispatch
491,99 €

491,99 €

Add a case,PSU,DVD drive an OS and shipping to that and your looking at ~€1500...which is about £1280 today. Enough of a saving to buy a nice LCD monitor. :)

[AndyG43]

As a fellow Brit also sick of politics, I over the past few weeks have been gathering intelligence on my future PC and after looking at several off the shelf PC's and custom built one's the on I have decided on now is an Alpine system from Alpine computers, http://www.alpinesystems.co.uk/ , the one I decided on is the EGGD system which got a great review from computer pilot magazine and other members on here, the specs are...

Intel i7 930 2.80Ghz CPU
MSI X58 PRO Motherboard
6Gb Corsair TR3 Tri Channel Memory 1600Mhz
Samsung 1 Terrabyte 32Mb Cache HDD SATA
22x DVD Re-Writer Dual Layer
NVidia GTX 480 DDR5 PCie 1GB Graphics
On Board 7.1 Stereo Sound
Gigabit Lan
Firewire
Deluxe Midi Tower Case with Superior 750w PSU
USB 2.0 x 8 (2 on front)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

The price is about £1600 including VAT, expensive but as FSX is my main hobby I feel it is worth it!

Looks like I'm sticking with FS9 for the moment then! :kilroy:

[peter12213]

Looks like I'm sticking with FS9 for the moment then! :kilroy:

If you are able to build one yourself it is a lot cheaper, but I have no time, skill nor patience to do that, I'm sure somewhere you can get a cheaper one to too, but I'm sticking with Alpine as I know its such a well known company and a well tried and tested computer system! The price reflects it however and I will be paying for it for a long time lol, remeber though this is the intermediate system and they doa cheaper one for £1200 or the top end for £2500 but thats well out of my league at the moment anyway! Always praying for that lottery win though!

@ Kilo I'm sure those parts a cheaper however over here in blighty we do pay a lot more for stuff than you guys on the continent!

[IanHenry]

I'm on my second Alpine computer and I think they are great. The service from Paul is second to none.

Ian.

[kilo delta]

@ Kilo I'm sure those parts a cheaper however over here in blighty we do pay a lot more for stuff than you guys on the continent!

Those prices are inc. delivery to the UK, Peter. :d

I'm not on the continent either (I'm a couple of hundred miles west of the UK ;) ) where prices are generally a LOT more than the UK prices...hence I buy my pc components from the UK and Europe. :)

[cheezyflier]

i don't understand the idea of building a computer to run fs9 . you maybe save money building a slower computer but spend the savings buying all the stuff it takes to make 9 look like X.

[MarkH]

Looks like I'm sticking with FS9 for the moment then! :kilroy:

You can build a decent FSX machine for half that if you plan around a Core 2 Duo. Better potential if you overclock - get an ASUS mobo and it will do it for you. I'm not including a monitor in that, so budget a bit more according to need.

[ryanbatc]

You don't have to get a i7 for FSX to run it well. i7 is the flagship CPU to run FSX these days.

Since you're on a budget (don't know what it is though), you can shoot for a C2D model, the E8500 or E8600 CPU.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-E8600-Core-Duo-Proccessor/dp/B001D0T8O0

RAM, 4GB DDR2 of whatever is fine
Video card: budget card would be a 9800GT or GTS250.... better would be a GTX 275 or Radeon 5850

Mobo: Asus P5 series with DDR2 standard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131377

And don't forget a good power supply, something like this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-011-CS

As a baseline the system built around an E8600 cpu will be pretty good but you'd want to overclock the processor to around 4.0GHz to really get FSX moving. For that you'd need a good case and good aftermarket cooler, like this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-076-TR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

[2Low]

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x210/RobD_13/p47/FSXcomputer.jpg


What's in the above picture with a GTX 275 runs FSX very well. That site did not have any. Overclocking to 3.8GHZ should be easy.

That's 500 pounds plus operating system, plus the best card you can afford.

There is sexier stuff out there but on a budget this comp will kick FSX butt.

[mal998]

I've been flying since FS98 and as a former FS9 zealot, I call say with some certainty that FSX is now the sim of choice for so many reasons.

Buy or build the biggest, best system you can to run FSX and you will not be disppointed in the results.

FSX...say goodby to the blurries.

Good Luck!

System Config:

300 GB VelociRaptor main drive/w Vista 64 Bit
ASUS P6T Deluxe V.2
Intel Core I7 - 975/X58 Extreme Edition 3.33 GHz
Corsair XMS3 12 GB Memory
BFG Tech GeForce GTX OC 295
Corsair H50 Hydro Cooling
Ultra X3 1200W Power
Backup Storage Drives: Maxtor SATA 500GB, VelociRaptor 300GB, WD SATA 320GB, WD My Book 1TB External drive
Apevia XPleasure Extended Tower
VIZIO 37" HDMI Monitor

7647 7648

[AndyE1976]

Although the headlines always go to graphics cards and cpu's the bottleneck on most systems these days is actually the disk read rate and network speed.

Using the W7 performance rating, my quad core cpu is rated 7.1, ram about 6.4 and disk at 5.8 - hence a good case of the blurries.

My next build will concentrate on a fast IO system with the best read-rate/capacity that I can manage, matched to good controllers. Next will be at least 12gb of RAM - the PC Pilot review of computer systems showed that the RAM rather than the graphics or CPU had the biggest impact on performance. Then I'll stick a GTX480 and an i7 in there.

Basically it doesn't matter how fast your CPU or graphics card is if you can't get the data off the disk to the processor it can't process it.

[MarkH]

the PC Pilot review of computer systems showed that the RAM rather than the graphics or CPU had the biggest impact on performance

With all due respect, why would you base a system build on something you read in 'PC Pilot'?! The target demographic for such a magazine is, charitably, at the low end of technical expertise and it's primarily aimed at aviations enthusiasts who can just about work out where to plug the joystick.

I don't know if they've done another such computer 'roundup' since issue #64, but to claim you can tell anything meaningful from that article is just nonsense. In my experience PC Pilot's hardware 'reviews' are inevitably vacuous space-fillers that rarely say say anything beyond the manufacturers' own literature.

Even if Computer Pilot had the expertise and resources to do a proper computer hardware comparison, they don't have the space to print it in anything like enough detail to be useful.

[Skittles]

Agreed with Mark.

CPU has by far the biggest effect on performance in FSX.

About 75% of your FSX performance is founded in CPU performance.