There have been some past inquirees as to what a good configuration would be for running FSX. I would like to address this subject as I just completed a new build for running FSX. My new Tech Spec is as follows.

Gigabyte Aluminum Full Tower ATX Case  
EVGA nForce 680i SLI NVIDIA 775 ATX Motherboard
PSU OCZ 700 Watt Power Supply
E6850 3Ghz Dual Core CPU
V1 CPU Cooler
4 GB CORSAIR RAM
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX Graphics Card
Two 250 Watt SATA Hard Drive
Audigy Sound Card with Game Port
22 inch SAMSUNG LCD Monitor
DVD RW CDROM Drive
Floppy Drive
Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse
Microsoft  Windows XP Home Addition

With the above configuration I am running FSX with the following settings.

Resolution                              1680X1050X32
Target Frame Rate                        Unlimited            
Global Texture Resolution                  Max
Lens Flare and Advanced Animations                      On
Light Bloom                                  Off—On in some areas
Filtering                              Trilinear
3D Virtual Cockpit                        On
Cockpit Settings                        All Checked
Global Settings                        Ultra High
Exterior Settings                        All Checked
Level of Detail Radius Large                  Max
Mesh Complexity                        Max
Mesh Resolution                        Max
Texture Resolution                        Max
Water Effects                        High
Scenery Complexity                        Max
Autogen Density                        Max
Special effects Detail                        Max
Cloud Coverage Density                  Max
Air Line Traffic                        61 Percent
Gen Avn Traffic                        55 Percent
Airport Vehicle Density                  Medium
Road Veh 51%, Ships and Ferries 40%. Leisure Boats 40%

Being an ex military pilot, I enjoy flying on the deck and through highly populated areas in and around airfields – type flying not possible in the real world. Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Rio (with Light Bloom on), Toronto with their colorful graphics (Especially at night) are some of my favorites. During these flights there are aircraft parked and taking off from airfields, aircraft in the air and landing, vehicles moving about the airfields, heavy traffic on the roads, boats moving about on the water, birds flying and all the while I enjoy 20 to 40 FPS with an occasional dip in the teens. In fact I don’t have a need to keep the frame counter on.

The point of all this is that there are PCs, when properly configured, that can run XPS with sliders at their max. For all practical purposes I am already there. My next upgrade to this new configuration of mine is to add Vista OS taking advantage of DX10 when the bugs are shaken out and adding a second GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card. And my Motherboard can accept a Quad Core when there is one that in my opinion will improve performance over the dual core I am currently using. As a matter of interest with rebates, my new system was under 2K.

Hope this information proves useful.

sounds like a sweet set-up.... mind if i ask about how much it cost to build it?

Monkey, Nick’s discussion of a flight Simulator running at something less than its full capability is interesting and is what prompted me to make my posting. My new PC hardware component can run FS9 with all sliders at max at 60 FPS. My old system can run FS9 with all sliders at max at 25 FPS. The kicker is that you can’t tell the difference the way the system looks on the monitor between the new and the old system. The movement, resolution, focus, color, etc appears the same. Yes, you could pour in a great deal of money for a new PC that would allow FSX at max settings to achieve 60 to 80 FPS which now approaches 100 percent of its software capability but it will not look or appear any better than a machine getting 50 percent of the software capability with sliders at max getting 25 FPS. So from an engineering and cost point of view I believe one should avoid overkill unless you are designing your system to take on the next generation of Flight Simulator.

I think you guys are missing the point, fps doesnt matter when it comes down to if the sim is displaying what it is capable of or not.

Quote:

As Flite Ace points out the most important need in FSX or any other game is FPS.....once you pass 20FPS and constantly keep them you are home!!!! But, display quality is defenitly a second "Need" which can easily be gotten with a good Video card and the latest drivers.......going above 30 fps is just great and the Sim really comes alive.....I have Vista and a cheap Video card and am happy up to now. Santa will bring me (I hope) a DeLuxe Video card and with that I will be totally happy. May I point out that it is also desirable to have a hard drive with a lot of space!!!!! the more "empty" space you have the better FSX will behave. If you only have 10 GIG left for playing you are in a rut!!!! disk swapping will be awfull and degrade the Sim.....am sure that SP2 will be a great upgrade for all but specially for those with Vista.......Have fun everyone, that´s the name of the game.....

My initial post and subsequent submissions were intended to just provide factual information from the experience gained in building a new system to run FSX. I am a happy camper with this new system as it runs FSX beyond my expectations. I do hope that the information provided is informative and useful. My response to Camel_Moe is that I agree that in the end, if a person is satisfied, that certainly is what counts.