etien 16 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 I was wondering, what would be the best PC money can buy for FSX. Not trying to get a good price/FPS ratio, just the max FPS money can buy. I am not a specialist, would be nice if we could agree on specific parts, feel free to modify: My intuition is the following: Fastest CPU: i7 975 Extreme ? Water Cooling for OC? What board card? OS: window 7 on a velocipator ? (which one) FSX: on a pentville X-25 160M SSD ? additional pentville X-25 160M SSD for additional sceneries ? Backup of SSD, system drive on big slow extra HD ? Memory: 6GB (would give the full 4GB to FSX under Window 7 isnt it?), never really understood the frequency stuff, but I guess high ? Sound: A good soundbaster Card ? Or useless ? GPU: no SLI, no multiple GPU, I know that a simple card is ok (8800 GTX 756Meg, ati hd 4670 1G), but wouldn't a ati hd 5870 1G better ? Or is it just a mistake ? What tower ? One big with big fans I guess . What power? Any suggestions welcome. Etienne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panadar 0 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 I was wondering, what would be the best PC money can buy for FSX. Not trying to get a good price/FPS ratio, just the max FPS money can buy. I am not a specialist, would be nice if we could agree on specific parts, feel free to modify: My intuition is the following: Fastest CPU: i7 975 Extreme ? Water Cooling for OC? What board card? OS: window 7 on a velocipator ? (which one) FSX: on a pentville X-25 160M SSD ? additional pentville X-25 160M SSD for additional sceneries ? Backup of SSD, system drive on big slow extra HD ? Memory: 6GB (would give the full 4GB to FSX under Window 7 isnt it?), never really understood the frequency stuff, but I guess high ? Sound: A good soundbaster Card ? Or useless ? GPU: no SLI, no multiple GPU, I know that a simple card is ok (8800 GTX 756Meg, ati hd 4670 1G), but wouldn't a ati hd 5870 1G better ? Or is it just a mistake ? What tower ? One big with big fans I guess . What power? Any suggestions welcome. Etienne Be warned. You will get a lot of opinions on this questions. So, please understand that what I am saying is just an opinion with some personal observations. First, if you want to get the most FPS, and money is no object, then get yourself a Intel based PowerMac G5. You will be able to get around 80+ FPS including the most complex sceneries and aircraft FSX has to offer. Now, here is the catch. That rig will cost around $7000 to $9500 depending on the options you get. That is just for the computer hardware alone!!! GHowever, you will enjoy FSX so much, that someone will most likely have to blast you away from your computer because the performance for FSX on that machine is impressive!!!!! And yes, I have personally witnessed this performance at the store with complex aircraft and scenery as the guy was kind enough to let me see what my wild FSX fantasy looked like. Everybody that saw that demo was amazed. Even people who don't play that game wanted to go out and get that game. It really was an impressive demo. Even they were thinking of buying the software with some addons just to demo what that computer could do. Now, back to reality as most people will not spend that much just for a gaming computer. 1st, I do think FPS is important, but for me, it is oimportant enough so that the illusion of flight is not spoiled. How much FPS is needed to have that illusion? Television is USA is shot at 30 FPS, and movies are shot at 24 FPS. That being said, if you are able to maintain that fps with complex aircraft and complex scenery on multiple monitors, then most people (w/o monitoring software, will not be able to "see" the difference between 30-35 fps and 80 fps in FSX. In my gaming group, we get together about once a month, so I have had a chance to see some cool rigs. If you are overclocking, for the money that a i7 975 Extreme costs, you will really see that much more performance than an overclocked i7 920, 860, 870, or 940, or 950 as ALL of those processors run in the 4 ghz to 4.5 ghz range for 24/7 operation.(even though the gamers in our group don't run their overclocked computer 24/7) The personal experience of people in our gaming group has taught us that while liquid cooling may run cooler, there are also plumbing leaks. Any of these leaks could harm or destroy your computer as that has happened to a couple people in our group. So, now, everybody is running air. Thermalright is a good heatsink choice, but, there are others out there as well. Also, I will say that I have the slowest computer in the gaming group as mine is NOT overclocked. But, I will be getting a new machine that I do intend to overclock. But, I want to say that the people in our group have computers ranging from an i5 750 to a i7 975 extreme. They have allowed me to install FSX with some complex addons as a test fps performance. The performance was very similiar, and in some cases I could not tell the difference between the overclocked i7 975 extreme and the i7 950. The reason for that was the final overclocked speed of the chip. While the i7 975 extreme is the easiest to overclock, the final speed (for safe long term operation) was about 4.5 or 4.6. He could get a higher speed, but not a speed that he felt comfortable with. The price of that chip does not make him feel like he wants to risk a suicide run in overclocking. BTW, he has air-cooling. After seeing the collective experience in my gaming group, I have concluded that a good and SAFE goal for my machine is 4.2-4.5 ghz. You can do that on a i7 870, 920, 950, maybe even an 860 or even a i5 750. But, the i5 750 does not have hyperthreading, which can make a difference if you run multiple applications while playing FSX. The Lynnfield processors do run cooler than the 920 series. There is so much information on this subject that I think the best thing to do is to just provide you with a link to some really good places that talk about this subject in super-detail. Also, you want ot do a search on the interent for a guy named "NickN" and "FSX" . He is really considered to be a expert when it comes to FSX and computers for FSX. http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041 http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634&p=14&cp=32 http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=647 Try these three out for now I hope that my information has helped you some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton 97 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 The ultimate PC for FSX doesn't exist, and probably never will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimon 3 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 Well, I began to think about that as well once PMDG announce two days ago that chances for FS9 version of NGX are close to zero. I don't want to overclock, since I'm not a tech guy. That's absolutely ugly situation that you cannot afford the hobby not because of lack of funds, but because lack of out-of-the-box hardware. I don't want to find myself one day with fried CPU and MB. I'd rather pay 1.5 price for stock, reliable hardware. Perhaps, it's better to wait until the day when 4-4.5GHz will be considered as average stock CPU frequency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aerosoft Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558 Posted January 20, 2010 Aerosoft Share Posted January 20, 2010 Might I softly suggest to move all hardware issues regarding FSX to this. Or if you want to be less specific, move it here. If you want to waste money, there is a lot of forums regarding cars, houses, woman, drugs that will help you. It is not possible to buy FPS for FSX because of the way it is build. You get solid fps for $750, you can get a bit better for $1250 but anything over that just means you load FSX faster or get a bigger screen. PMDG knows they cannot get their FS2004 models a lot better then the great job they done and they also know that there simply is not a large FS2004 market any more. We got far more people willing to post they like FS2004 then we got people willing to buy FS2004 addons. Robert said it on the forum as clearly as can be: "The bottom line is that <20% of our sales are taking place to the FS9 market, and this statistic when combined with other available information is making it clear that FS9 users are in the minority when it comes to purchasing products." They can not afford big time development on the FS2004 platform. (quote) For FS2004 hardware things are about the same, other then that you need a CPU that does very well on single core operations. And what do you know, that the same one, Core i5 if you want to save some money or Core i7 if you got money. Don't go AMD. I love the company but for some reason FS does not like it. Topic closed here but I hope you will continue it on the other forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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