BIG BUCKS RESULTS
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No light bloom in urban areas AT ALL, but, can use it bush flying, with massive reduction in performance but acceptable.

Autogen running with no limits lines in the config file and at ½ or ¾ slider depending on the location and how large it is for urban and airport traffic.

Limited AI traffic @ 65% airline and 50% GA.. and the traffic is REPLACED with very friendly AI models and schedules that FILL UP all the airports. I would not be able to come close to 65%-50% traffic that on the default AI and it takes an extra 25 seconds for my sim to boot the program because of the massive amount of Sim-Objects I have added.

10-15% road traffic, 25% boats and ships

Airport vehicles at MEDIUM

Ultimate Terrain X which adds CAR traffic to every side-street and bridge.

Water slider at 2x LOW unless I am in bush or other areas that does not need those shader resources.

All other sliders at 100% except mesh resolution which sits at 10m because you don’t raise that slider past the mesh scale you have installed and I use FSGenesis 10m mesh.

All this and I still get a stutter or 2 in heavy weather under heavy visual loads in big cities

I average 28-48 frames with dips in the low 20’s and spikes as high as 60 or more depending on the area.

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The above ALSO requires knowledge in replacing the cooler on the video card and installing a massive heatsink on the CPU, and then overclocking the system and the video card to their max safe levels.

I do not spend my time tweaking and enjoy my flights very much, although I still tweak from time to time and I do not have perfect flights in big cities under very hard load conditions, especially with overcast weather on top ove everything else. In fact, under those conditions I can see frame-dips in the teens.



What I have done is taken a 3500 dollar purchase and made it a 5000 dollar purchase by overclocking.

OK, so now that I have your attention about what it takes to run FSX with FS9 visuals and performance, let’s talk about what you want to spend. 

Most post they are looking to spend about 1300-1500 dollars

This is real simple, Take my system purchase at 3500+ and divide it by your number

That’s what you will get. And remember, I am massively overclocked.

So if I am getting an average of 28-48 frames with dips in the low 20’s and spikes in the 50’s on your 1500 dollar system and the max settings possible, you can expect 14-24 frames with dips in the single digits and spikes in the high 20’s

And lots of stutters with lower autogen and visuals


Now, if you are willing to go without jetways, reduced or no city buildings, reduced traffic, reduced or no airport vehicles, reduced or no autogen, and, other perks, you CAN do MUCH BETTER and probably run very smooth.



There you have it.

Go cheaper, it gets worse. Buy the wrong parts and that makes it even worse.


Your best bet if you are buying a system today and you have limited funds is to BUY A SYSTEM THAT CAN BE ADDED TO FOR THE FUTURE

You are not going to be getting FS9 results in FSX on 1500 bucks running a 7950GT 512 or even a 8800GTS 640, its not going to happen 


So, your best bet IF YOU WANT TO BUY TODAY is to make sure you can upgrade to the next generation of processor and video cards when they are released, accept you are not going to be flying FSX maxed, high or anywhere near it and plan to upgrade later when you can spend another 1000 or so.

Otherwise WAIT till November, at which time you can STILL expect to pay but the hardware may have better properties for the same money.



Otherwise, accept that what you buy WILL RUN FSX but the results may not be what you expect for 1500 bucks





FSX is the ipso-fact-o, drop-dead, most demanding game application ever produced to date. Just like FS9 would not run flat on the hardware available in 2003-2004, neither will FSX in 2006-2007. You will start to get close around the mid-end of 2008, if you SPEND the money.

And those on very strict budget WONT be seeing that hardware become affordable to do MAX FSX until well into 2009


And let’s NOT FORGET the MONITOR MUST BE HIGH RESOLUTION in order to take advantage of the better video hardware

You ARE THROWING your money down the drain if you are running an 8800GTX 768 on 1280x1024. It needs to be 1600x1200 or higher

Yes you will get better performance but you can also get the same performance on a cheaper card running low resolution. At the same time your visual results running low res will suck because the software looks sooooo much better on 1600x and above.

For that I use this: 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824014124

Which is not top of the line but does an AWESOME job without spending an arm and a leg.

When I got that unit new last year it was close to $1100. Today’s price with the rebate is well worth it.

If you spend 400-500+ on a video card and run it on a 1280x1024 monitor you are throttling the card and not seeing the 400-500 dollar core being used, at all.

Thanks Nick for the great information. I was looking for some accurate info regarding running FSX for sometime now.

How much knowledge do I need to put these thing together and make a PC out of it?

I have once ( 7 years ago ) put a PC together with little trouble; However it seems to me the technology has become much more complicated. Do I need considerable knowledge to put this thing together? Since I am going to be paying a lot of money buying these parts I want to make sure I can assemble it without any hit on performance ( becuase of doing something wrong).

I am trained as an Electrical Engineer ( Although not in the field of ciruits, but E&M and lasers) so I have the capacity to read and learn quickly the technical skills I shall need.

could you please refer me to a book/articla/post or something regarding assembeling these state of the art ( if I can call them that ) parts? I would greatly appreciate your assistance.

With Regards

Just so you understand

Even with every single slider MAXED and the config file edited to allow 6000 buildings and 6000 trees per cell, and, edited to allow the scenery radius to increase to 10+ miles, you ARE NOT getting 100% FSX ability... not even close

The software will not allow you to see everything because the hardware to do that as of now does not exist.

The X38 chipsets are out now and the new AMD/Nvidia motherboards and cards will be out early next year.. even with those you can expect another year or two befor FSX can be run as I listed above and the hardware allow you to see everything in a playable environment

I am running an Intel E6750 Processor @1333 mHz on anNvidia 680i SLi motherboard, four gb of Corsair PC6400 RAM, a 7200 rpm Raptor harddrive, and a 768mb EVGA 8800GTX video card with an ANTEC 600W power supply in the ANTEC 900 case.  This case has two intake fans in the front of the case that blow in directly over the hard drive, an exhaust fan in the rear of the case, and a huge 120mm exhaust fan in the top of the case.  Add to this the processor cooler fan, a cooler fan and heatsink over the northbridge chips,and you get an amazingly cool running machine.  This thing has yet to blow hot air from the vents.  Make sure you have good airflow though.

Now as for performance...  I am running FSX with all the sliders maxed out (with the exception of the water slider, it auto adjusts as the land sliders reach max).  I am achieving approx 20 - 25 fps constant, slightly higher in less populated areas such as deserts or over water where the program doesnt have to render much else.
Occasionally, I will hit a snag, but for the most part, it is smooth seamless flying.

The bottom line is, you get what you pay for, but if you are savvy enough, you can find a lot of the really good stuff on sale, or with some really good rebates.  I am happy with my system, and it performs well for me.  Hope this helps.

Wayne

homebrewer wrote on Mar 25^th, 2008 at 1:53am:


I think that might be a little harsh.  Sure FSX is really hardware demanding, but you don't need to spend a fortune to fly it.  Most current hardware will be able to fly it, maybe not maxed out at 1920x1280, but they will be able to run the sim smoothly at lower settings.  There are a lot of simmers out there on nVidia 7X00s & 8600s, or ATI 3850s, 2X00, & X1X00 series cards that can run this game and be satisfied with their performance. These are by no means top of the line cards, but they can still run the sim. Also not everyone has a Quad core CPU, but they can be happy with the look and performance in a midrange dual core. Heck, I was running it just a few months ago on a 3.0GHz p4 laptop with an ATI Mobile X300 GPU and getting very playable framerates. By setting lofty standards for FSX, microsoft can wait longer before they release the next version. Having said that though, there is nothing wrong with that strategy. You are still getting the best looking Flight Sim out right now, even on mid level settings.

As for Vista, current hardware can run Vista almost as fast as XP.  If you disable much of the extra features of Vista, you will find that it runs more or less the same speed.  You have to realize that XP has been around since 2001. It has been optimized and tweaked and optimized hundreds of times over those 8 years.  Vista is still relatively new and hasn't had 8 years of software engineers tinkering with its performance.  Many people (including myself) prefer Vista over XP. I had been running a Dual boot Visa/XP configuration for about 6 months before I switched to Vista only because I never used XP anymore.

I'm thinking the GTX 280 will help out the framerates quite a bit. From what I've heard, ~50% faster than the 9800GX2. Although, it'll still come down to the cpu.