I am looking for opinions on the best graphics card for FSX.

With the ridiculous 20% V.A.T. I have to pay in sweden I got my new components for 4700sek:

Asus p8h67
Intel i5 2500k quad
4gb corsair ddr3 memory
Asus 560ti

The only issue I have on max is that stupid fsx bug that says it "ran out" of memory.

I of course have an old case, old psu, old drives and old screen. It's important you get those right so you don't have to get new ones every single time.

MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition

ArcticFox wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2011 at 2:28pm:


Come here in Italy, my friend. We here have an equivalent to VAT tax, called IVA, of ONLY 21%.

As a rule of thumb, do not bemoan your perceived misfortune, because there's always someone, somewhere who has a bigger and longer pole up his or hers <expletive deleted>.


F35LightningII wrote on Nov 5^th, 2011 at 3:01am:


This kind of statement, sadly read not only here, always incenses me, because it flies in the face of facts and makes bloody fun of them.

While it's true and all nice and good that simulators need a good CPU, but those who downplay the need of graphical power for any modern sims, FSX first and foremost among them, are misinformed in the best case and spreading their misconceptions (like here, I suspect), or in bad faith (like in some shop, when someone with a big and sincere smile wants to sell you, for a pittance of three numerals, a powerful Radeon 9500 capable to cater to all your gaming needs... happened for real not long ago... cannot repeat here what I told the slime because it would be ground for me to be banned immediately).

Do not bankrupt yourself (especially in the current conjuncture) for it, but go for a card you can afford that is powerful, or you WILL be sorry.

BigT-65 wrote on Nov 9^th, 2011 at 1:12am:


See, the problem is: you are not bringing examples of what is available where you live nor you state your FSX configuration.

My kids, to say, are happy with FSX used under the honest yet modest Gefo 9600GT 512Mb I have in the other rig, but the FSX installed for them is pretty much default, with some minor add-on to make it look less unrealistic (FSX Italy default seems a main branch of the Sahara desert... I mean, all right desertification is a problem, but THAT is quite too much at the present moment), but I am quite certain performances would go straight through the events horizon of intolerability if some pesky add-ons available around were installed there...

What kind of add-on are you going to install on your FSX? If you want to keep it almost default, you can go even with something comparable to my videocard, else you MUST rise the bar.

Ireland89 wrote on Nov 9^th, 2011 at 9:38am:


A laptop? You want to upgrade the video section of a laptop?

...to do miracles, we are not equipped yet...

From the net I can see your laptop has a ATI Mobility Radeon HD5430, which is quite the better deal than the infamous Intel integrated videochip with shared memory, but if you're not satisfied... either change laptop or change sim.

Strategic Retreat wrote on Nov 9^th, 2011 at 10:07am:


I guess it's ok for a laptop.

I won't say anything else to save myself from any embarrassment 

A random freeze of what kind?

If the kind that from time to time seem to trip the smoothness of your simflight, it does not forcibly mean your videocard is maxed out. Could mean you need to fine tune your FSX to use all the cores of your CPU, manipulating the Affinitymask= variable (in my kid's FSX, setting it to 3 for the dual core CPU that rig has, has cured a lot of micro-stutterings and even the odd transient random freeze).

That or your PC could have some other process in background that is time consuming and intensive enough to trip your sim from time to time... using FsAutoStart would help a lot, here.

If the random freeze is instead the kind where only a hard reset can get you out of, you have a hardware overheating somewhere. Could be either the CPU or GPU, and here I would recommend you to keep the heatsinks of both as clean as you can, with monthly check with a can of compressed air or garage compressor, and to keep an eye on the fans' working.

I am going to try the FSAutoStart. It looks like something I need. I forgot to mention that I have tried adjusting back on the graphics settings a bit. This doesn't seem to help much either.

I downloaded FSAutoStart and also found AlacrityPC which is an update of FSAutoStart. I thought they would be more automatic. I still have to decide which processes to shut down and that is the part I don't know how to do. How do you know which ones you can shut down without messing things up?

I fear, if NOTHING work and no help... helps, that you need the last resort.

In the time of old DOS it was called Format C:, nowadays you must make the OS install disk bootstrap and command it to format your disk before reinstalling everything from ground up.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. OS installations are not eternal, but must be redone from time to time.

BigT-65 wrote on Nov 15^th, 2011 at 10:46pm:


Aint that the troof!... ... ...!

Paul...FS 2004...nVidia GeForce 9500GT ....Joy!......!

.... ....!

Under Windows 7, and my 2.8 GHz Processor, I don't experience any fault problems with FSX, except for the fact that it performs very badly, poor frame rates, smoothness, etc, even on low settings on my system, compared to FS 2004 with everything maxed.

This is very VERY helpful!  Im bilding a new computer, and I also want to know what type of stuff I would put in it.

Hiya i was wondering what is better the zotac gtx560amp edition with the two fans or the asus gtx560 directcu ii
i am using a i5 760 clocked at 3.2ghz have 4gb ddr3 memory and using 64bit windows7 plus a 600watt power supply 

BigT-65 wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2011 at 11:05am:


Try this question in 'Hardware.'

jparnold wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2011 at 5:22pm:

Speed isnt that important. Get a quad core processor and set the right affinity mask in your fsx.cfg file for the best results.

The fastest videocard for FSX will probably be the AMD Radeon 7970, released in early January.

4.31 billion transistors and 264 GB/s of memory bandwidth. 

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/images/perfrel_2560.gif
(5970, 6990 and GTX 590 have two graphics chips in them, which FSX doesn't use)

Is it good value for money? Not really. However, if you already have a top end processor (i7-3930K or i7-3960X) then this will be the card to pair it with.

Quote:

It's all about balance. In FSX the balance is shifted towards to CPU side of things compared to games, but that doesn't mean the graphics card is unimportant either. And generally computer programs will only perform as well as the slowest part: there's no point having a $1000 i7-3960X using integrated graphics and there's no point having a $550 AMD Radeon 7970 paired up with a 5 year old Pentium 4. On the other hand, an i7-3960X and Radeon 7970 would be extremely impressive.

Also often very high end hardware is poor value for money compared to mid-end stuff. So spending all your money on one part while neglecting others can be a horrendous waste of money - both because you're upsetting a balance and because the really expensive part may not be much better. So it's not entirely correct. You should spend your money on the fastest CPU + mobo + ram + videocard combination you can get, because they're all important.

I rarely use FSX and my system isn't very balanced for FSX. A Q6600 @ 3.4ghz is way too slow to unleash a GTX 570 in FSX. Why did I get a GTX 570 then? Cause I got a free upgrade from a lower end card that turned out to be defective and in most computer are very graphics intensive compared to FSX. As a general rule of thumb, in my opinion, pair high end graphics cards with high end processors for best results. And mid end processors with mid end graphics cards.