Motherboard and CPU for FSX

[Jetmechanic]

I am looking to get a new motherboard and CPU soon for FSX. does anyone have any recommendations? I want to run FSX really smooth. I have a GTX 470 to go in it motherboard.

[Stefano Zibell]

Today I would look for one of those second generation Core i5. Motherboards have little to no impact on performance, so it generally comes down to what features you want, and what kind of memory you plan to use.

[Hitchhiker]

Hi Jetmechanic,

I am sure there are plenty of motherboard and CPU combinations out there that will work out, but I am going to tell you how it has panned out for me with an Asus P8P67LE, a Core i5 2500k and 6GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3-2000 RAM.

I could not believe the jump in performance from my previous Core 2 Duo machine. I am overclocking comfortably with a (now vintage) Zalman 9500 cooler at 4.3GHz. I have taken it up to stable 4.6GHz and while the cooler could manage to cool it while using FSX, it didn't quite cut it when testing for stability with Intel Burn Test. I reckon if I got a Corsair H60 or similar I'd take it much closer to 5GHz. Nonetheless 4.3 seems to give as much performance as 4.6 in FSX.

Back to FSX performance... I was given some help from an Italian friend of mine, one of the people in the Skunkworks F-104 team (these people have got FSX down to a science) setting up FSX (over and above the standard NickN advice for setting up Windows and FSX and the bojote fsx.cfg tweaks) for silky smooth performance after I built this machine and I get with most aircraft a stable 60fps in most areas. I was given advice to lock it with FSX's own FPS limiter to 36 to optimise it for multiplayer mode and again with most aircraft and most places it DOES NOT fps stays solidly locked between 35.2 to 36fps. No stutters, microstutters etc. Just silky smooth 36fps. Blurries? A thing of the past. I can fly at 700knots in low level flight and my machine is keeping up with loading ground textures.. with barely a hint of texture loading. Granted I am running FSX on two Seagate SATA3 500GB drives in RAID0 on a dedicated RAID controller card but I reckon you'd see the same with a single Raptor.

Not all planes run at a solid 36. My RealAir Duke runs at 30.. but again silky smooth. I can actually for the first time really enjoy flying this amazing bird and flare as I always wanted.

In all my FSX experience has changed overnight and I cannot still believe how much pleasure I get from using FSX.

If you were hesitating or wondering if there is a machine capable of running FSX... Sandy Bridge is the answer.

Hope that helps!

P.S. I should add that I currently only have an nVidia 8800 GTS 512 which is bottlenecking my performance to a certain degree.

[Jetmechanic]

Thanks for all the help guys. I mught be alittle stubborn but I would like to stick with ASUS motherboard and a AMD processor. I know its like chevy and ford they both get the job done just different manufactors

[Hitchhiker]

I think I saw a post about FSX performance with the Phenom II 1090 over at Avsim. Didn't read it so I have no idea if they got decent results. Might be worth checking. However it's quite clear that for the sort of performance you are looking for the Nahelam and especially, the Sandy Bridge CPUs have been a breakthrough for FSX.

[spotlope]

Thanks for all the help guys. I mught be alittle stubborn but I would like to stick with ASUS motherboard and a AMD processor. I know its like chevy and ford they both get the job done just different manufactors

I don't think that comparison is necessarily true for the current crop of CPUs. Every FS computer expert I've talked to says go Intel. I did a few years ago after a decade of being an AMD loyalist, and I haven't looked back. It's a little more complicated than apples, oranges, Chevys and Fords in this case.

[XLR8]

If you want AMD the new Bulldozer cpu is do out any time. Its a AM3 based chip. Reports have its performance with the sandy bridge 2500k.

If you want intel,microceter had the core i7-950 for $199 and get a AUSU saber tooth x58 motherboard. I have the MB paired with a core i7-975 at 4.2 ghz.With a 470. FSX runs like a game should.

[Smudge]

I'm running an Intel i7 960 3.22Ghz Overclocked to 4.1Ghz using the stock fan (which works quite well I might add) I've got an MSI X58 Gold mainboard, 14Gb DDR3 RAM and a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti gfx card...

FSX runs smooth as silk, but the advantage I've found is running photoshop and large texture editing.. :)

Anyway, I used to be a die hard AMD fan for many moons, but changed to Intel back about 10 years ago...never looked back.. ;)

DB.

[kilo delta]

Intel i2500k or i2600k with a new P68 or a good P67 mobo,with a decent overclock....best gaming performance by a long shot.