Hi,

I am getting a new system this week. Bottom line, i must be able to max out FSX. I've not been keeping up to speed with hardware, and to be honest i was a little surprised that years afters the release of FSX many systems still struggle to max it out.

I have been looking at this system, with an upgraded card to the HD 5870.............

System Specification
- Case: Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower - Black
- Power Supply: Corsair Extreme 600W
- CPU: Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz Overclocked to 4.00GHz
- Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalem w/ Sharkoon Silent Eagle 2000rpm 120mm Fan
- RAM: Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel
- Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 16MB Cache
- Graphics Card: A choice of the latest graphics cards
- Sound: 7.1 Channel Sound (On-Board)
- Optical Drive: LG DVD+/-RW SATA Drive

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-025-OP&groupid=43&catid=...

Would that do the trick? 

Thanks for any help.

Yeah i was a little vague. What i really want to be able to max out is the scenery. I am fed up of flying into citys that look like villages. Is it possible to max the scenery with current systems? If not i will just hold off an get one next year.

bgyuk wrote on Sep 16^th, 2010 at 3:38am:


Also, it may just be that you don't have the right add-ons to make the cities look good. Do you have Ground Environment X? Ultimate Terrain X? Depending on what your current system is, these might make a huge difference. I just got them recently (along with Real Environment X) and it's like an entirely different game, all at 30 fps with my quad core 2.66 ghz system that's 2 years old now. Not a bad deal...

bgyuk wrote on Sep 15^th, 2010 at 4:40pm:


Sounds good, and go for it!
On a different note, I also have been running FSX at full max settings for almost a year now. I see so many people having such a hard time running FSX that I try to help folks out with how I did it.

FSX CFG has been modified, for even better than stock performance. I changed this setting:
LevelOfDetailRadius:4.500000// changed it to 7.500000 so the buildings and scenery load sooner in flight!
I run AMD Phenom2 965 @ 4.0 GHz, an 850W PSU, ATI 4870 512MB video card, 8GB DDR3 OC 1600MHz, and anything comparable or better should do the trick. I run no less than 15 FPS with ManhattanX using PMDG 747 (FriscoX is a lot harder on it, maybe 10 FPS) but anywhere else is never less than 30+, and hit well over 100+ in some areas, with REX2 running full on, and everything maxxed. Everyone has the same fix for this, and it seems to be a CPU intensive game, so better to go hard, or keep having issues. Even some of the i7 920 operating folks OC it and still get FPS issues. That one is a great deal for your $, but go with 930 or better, or Phenom2 (a guy named IdahoSurge OC'd his i7 930 to 4.2 stable and I imagine he isn't having any problems at all, either)
I haven't had ANY of the problems that people typically have with FSX (usually FPS) for some time now, and am VERY satisfied with it's graphics and performance. Gotta get really expensive hardware, from what it seems. That ought to do it.

You're headed in the right direction. Hope this helps...

snippyfsxer wrote on Sep 26^th, 2010 at 3:38pm:


Yes, you are right - maxed out means every slider full right and all applications turned on. But does it mean maxed out for best performance and graphics? I don't believe so.

Full right on water or cars makes no sense as REX handles the water graphics quite well at 2.X and UTX floods the landscape with vehicles with the slider at around 25%. As for Light Bloom, I have yet to figured out why this was added in the first place. Screen Resolution, Air Traffic, Autogen Density, Scenery Complexity and Filtering makes sense to keep them as high as possible depending on your specs. And keeping in step with your definition of a maxed out system, why would one with a high end system turn the 2-D panel transparency fully right - of course, you would not have it turned on. As for all the settings in FSX, each one has or had a purpose mostly good and should be set based on your system spec and just common sense. And what is the difference between a resolution of 5760 X 1200 compared to 1920 X 1200. For me - visually - none.

Now, can one turn all FSX applications on with all sliders to the right and still get a satisfactory performance?  I can and did a few minutes ago in Rio. At Low altitude in weather at sunup over the populous area my frame rate was between 25 and 30. Everything was turned on and/or maxed out. Can I maintain the same or improve the performance by selectively adjusting or turning off settings. Yes by lowering the water setting, Lowering vehicle traffic, turning off Light Bloom, and a few other minor adjustments. By doing this my frame rate jumped to 70 plus(over 100 at times). The graphics presentation did not change - still outstanding. And remember I am running GEX, UTX, REX, and a number of other associated software packages. Air Traffic, Scenery Complexity, Autogen Density, and Filtering remained at max settings.

I will sum up this discussion with this statement. If you have a well balanced computer with good components (motherboard (easy to overclock), CPU running at 3.8GHz and above, upscale video card with 1 GB or more memory, high end power unit - preferably 800 watts and above, Good RAM - preferably CL 6 or 7, and good cooling and I always prefer in a full case)then the chances are great that one will be able to run FSX in a manner it was intended. I just recently added a solid state drive with both FSX and my OS on it and it is like having a new computer. It did not improve much on my already outstanding performance but boot, read, and write times are significantly faster - and many times instantaneous. My next improvement on my rig, before building a new one, will be to upgrade my GTX 285 OC which has 1GB of DDR3 to one of the new advanced video card offerings.

The above works for me but remember this is only one persons opinion.

snippyfsxer wrote on Sep 28^th, 2010 at 2:53am:

Might do it, 'cept it runs Linux.

RaptorF22 wrote on Sep 29^th, 2010 at 3:40pm:


Create and load Cray version of Windows 7. See how easy that was?