First off, hello everyone It's ages since I've been on here, just caught the flight sim bug again though 

Anyway, I'm looking at a new PC build, mainly around FSX but also other games. My budget is around £1200-£1300 for:

Motherboard
Graphics Card
Processor
RAM
PSU
Extras (e.g. cooling etc).

Not sure what's best, i7 or sticking with the Q9 series?

I've found I can get this within my budget:

i7 920 (great overclocking potential I hear?)
Foxconn Renaissance intel X58 motherboard
2x OCZ 6Gb (3x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory CL7(7-7-7-20) -12 GB total
PowerColor HD 4870X2 2GB GDDR5
Hiper M1000 1000W PSU 8x SATA 6x PCI-E - 80plus certified 5 Year Warranty
Scythe SCZP-1000 Zipang Quiet Socket 478/775/754/939/940/AM2 with 140mm Fan Processor Cooler
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound Thermal paste 3.5gram

All from eBuyer and totals £1,240. Could probably bring this down after shopping around a bit.

The GTX295 can be got for about £80 more, which is really starting to push the budget a bit. Is it significantly better than the 4870 X2 though? In both FSX and in general gaming.

I'm guessing this will run FSX pretty well, correct me if I'm wrong please 

Of course, the other option is to keep my current motherboard, buy a Q9650, graphics card and 8GB DDR2 1066Mhz RAM. Comes to about £850-£900.... is the i7 system significantly better?

Many thanks,


Celtman

and yes, if you're going to build a new system, it might as well be an i7. you'll be happy when you're running FSX without any worries and it's looking great

Two video cards will do nothing for FSX. Go for the GTX 295.
Don't use a cooler made for 775, get the Thermalright 120 1366
Get 1600 memory.
Most here are going with the Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard.
The i7 is significantly better and worth every penny!

Overclock the i7 and fly away!

NickN wrote on Feb 26^th, 2009 at 9:30pm:

and it runs HOTT


EDIT: sorry lol on my first post I said "yea ATi is good" but I didn't finish the sentence (I was at work). I was going to say that ATi in FSX does not run nearly as well as Nvidia. those ATi cards run other games VERY well as well as the new Nvidias, but for FSX you want to stick with Nvidia. and as Nick says, I recommend the 285

I have a single GTX 260 (look at my specs down in my sig) and it runs Crysis and any other game I throw at it like a dream and no lag whatsoever. I would imagine a single GTX 285 would run it even better. I've played Crysis, FarCry2, CoD World at War, and of course FSX and they all run like a dream with this setup.

another thing is the price. the 295 is over $500 while the 285 is found for less than $350 and EASILY overclockable. my 260 is up to 670mhz from 576mhz, and the memory on it is from 999 to 1200 with temps running quite low for today's standards! (stock cooling)

Just a quick update:

Is the ASUS P6T motherboard (this one: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159360 ) The same as/better than the Foxconn one I posted in my original post? It's quite a bit cheaper......

Thanks,
Celtman

Foxconn? ... lol

get the P6T... trust us

the i7 makes a difference. period. get a thermalright cooler like the one I posted above and clock that beast easily to 3.8+ without any effort lol it's that easy

Looks good. But... you still need an HDD. Unless of course you already have one. But whatever you get, make sure it's at least a SATA II drive. Preferably, get one of these two to run just FSX in them:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

I didn't notice anyone else mention it while skimming through, but if you're paying extra for the arctic silver 5; don't. It won't provide any noticeable difference for your application of the hardware and the stock thermal paste that comes with the 120 is more than enough for the job.
easy way to knock off a couple $$

I second the nomination on OCZ freeze. Works great for me.

As for motherboards the Asus P6T Deluxe is a solid i7 board which overclocks well. The one issue I found with it is that it does not go into S3 Sleep mode at overclock speed. For many simmers that's not a big deal, but for my method of computing it is. I went to a Gigabyte UD5 to get S3 to work at overclock speed and I'm happy with the board. The Asus has better load-line calibration than the Gigabyte, but for me the S3 issue was a biggie. BTW, the EVGA X58 also cannot S3 Sleep and recover at overclock speed, and for MSFS X, you really need a good overclock to take maximum advantage of the program.

If you go RAID, you're going to need a good RAID controller card which goes for $300+. Otherwise, you're going to have performance problems in FSX such as stuttering. So that's something to consider...

If you decide on the ATi... they don't do well in FSX, although they are awesome in other games... but then again so is Nvidia.. LOL. So if you're building a system for flight sim, I'd go with the GTX260 at least.

The 12GB memory... I don't know why you'd need so much memory, but I don't know what you use that computer for. So again, that's up to you to consider.

Remember that although DX11 may be coming out at the end of the year, the first generation of the next DX version cards may have problems. I would get a cheaper card now such as the GTX260 and then wait until DX11 settles in with good, reliable cards for you to make a switch.

So.... If you go with a GTX260, you can still get a VelociRaptor (no RAID) to put FSX in for awesome performance.