FS9 PC - on a budget!

What res are you going to be playing at? Flight sim is more cpu than gpu heavy so i would get a slightly cheaper graphics card and a better processor. I sometimes play fsx on my htpc which has an i5 760 and a 5570 and it runs pretty well on medium to high settings so fs9 would probably run fine with that hardware. personally i think a 5830 would be a tad overkill for fsx yet alone fs9 even if your running at 1080p. I play fsx pretty much maxed using bojotes config thing at 5040x1050 and both of my 6870's are only using between 50-70% even with dx10 enabled...
 
Indeed i think the graphics card is over kill for FSX as said i went from a 9800gtx to a 480 with hardly any noticeable difference. Of course in other games a big difference, So spend your money on the CPU and not GPU

BTW there is a nice Gainward Bliss 9800GTX on the Bay with a aftermarket cooler ;) HEHE
 
I have to ressurect this thread as I never took the plunge and bought anything! I seriously need to now as 8fps on the current system is useless. Budget is tight as usual so looking as near to £400 as on top I'll need monitor and OS. Not overly confident on building my own so would prefer pre-built. What would the OCuk Primo range be like, I hear conflicting reports on the Phenom FX-4 with the i3 or i5-2500K being suggested as best with a GT-430 or similar.
Appreciate your help chaps.
 
i3 system, if the onboard gfx don't cut it upgrade to a mid spec card when you have saved a bit more. i3 with 8gb of system ram should get you more than 8fps on FS9. Others here will fill thrash out the details. My son has a i3 using the onboard gfx I'm willing to donate one of my 5770's when I upgrade. For now its fine plays the games he likes on playable settings. Should be plenty for a budget FS9 system.
 
Up until three weeks ago I played fs9 on max settings with a 7 year old build, consisting of an athlon 64 3200+, 2gb of pc3200 ram, and an 8800gts. It ran between 25-60fps constantly, and that includes loads of scenery addons etc. No weather addons though. I am certain that any recent processor will be able to handle it without any trouble, especially if paired with a half decent gpu (my 8800gts had no problems with it).

That said, maybe you have plans to go to FSX now? Or maybe X-plane?
 
I se two options,

quad core and a weaker GFX card,

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £137.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £57.98
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £45.98
1 x Gigabyte H61M-S2PV Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £41.99
1 x OcUK GeForce 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card - OEM £41.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £22.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £413.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).




Or a dual core and faster GFX card,

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked *** 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (01G-P3-1363-KR) £113.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £57.98
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £45.98
1 x Gigabyte H61M-S2PV Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £41.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £22.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £437.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
I may be wrong here, but I'm thinking you could probably fit llano into that price range and it might well do you well. I'm sure Stulid will either tell me that's a stupid idea, or put together a reasonable spec.

Then again, I can't see it beating the i3 and 460 above...

kd
 
Thanks, some good things to go on. If I do buy seperates do they come with all the cables etc? I keep reading that CPU is more important than the GPU for FS9 so that helps keep cost down? Thats why I thought a faster i3 would be better than slower i5?
It's when I read posts by danjama I wonder about getting away with an older rig or AMD powered! No plans for FSX.
 
Those builds contain,

Retail CPU with a cooler and thermal paste applied.

SATA data cables in the motherboard box.

PSU has all the power cables needed.
 
Stubee said:
Thanks, some good things to go on. If I do buy seperates do they come with all the cables etc? I keep reading that CPU is more important than the GPU for FS9 so that helps keep cost down? Thats why I thought a faster i3 would be better than slower i5?
It's when I read posts by danjama I wonder about getting away with an older rig or AMD powered! No plans for FSX.
Click to expand...

FS9 is definitely more CPU dependant, but luckily most of todays processors are advanced enough to run it comfortably. And of course, a decent graphics card will take a large load off of the CPU.

Basically, go with a budget AMD or Intel processor and motherboard, and get a decent graphics card, 8gb of ram dirt cheap, and small hard drives (250gb+) are stupidly cheap.
 
AMD Bulldozer FX-4 Quad Core 4100 Black Edition 3.60Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail with FREE Deus Ex PC Game [FD4100WMGUSBX ]
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£86.39 inc VAT

Gigabyte GA-880GM-USB3 AMD 880G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard [GA 880GM-USB3]
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£64.98 inc VAT

Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) [CMX8GX3M2A1600C9]
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£41.99 inc VAT

PowerColor HD 6770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
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£79.99 inc VAT

OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
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£17.99 inc VAT

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) [ST500DM002]
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£57.98 inc VAT

These are all OcUK prices. All you've left to do is grab a case/power supply and whatever else you might need or desire, such as an OS and monitor.
 
On a tangent, what about Athlon X2 260 or am I being a silly penny pincher?
There's some good suggestions here (and conflict when it comes to AMD!) Going to have to dust off the wallet.
 
How serious are you about playing the flight sim? And what exactly do you need for the £400? Is that just the tower? Or do you need a screen and OS as well?

If you want to keep a tight budget you could consider temporarily raiding (borrow) the HDD from the laptop (which is sata we hope and yes it will be spinning at 5400rpm but you are pinching pennies here) to save you £50-60.

A SSD would be a wise addition you could upgrade to later (giving you the laptop back again), it's improved read speeds benefit both games and the OS itself when installed to it.

FSX is notoriously badly coded. It needs a lot of tweaking by YOU the user, it might well be worth you checking in on one of the flight sims forums and asking advice. I'd be interested to hear what they suggest....I know if you don't tweak it, the sim won't use more than two CPU cores and i believe it needed a service pack to use more than 4GB of RAM.

Which brings me back to my first question.....if this is something you are willing to devote time and money on. Ideally you want to start with something like this to get you up and going whilst still being an excellent performing home computer (it overclocks too)

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £167.99
1 x Asus P8Z68-V LX Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.59
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £37.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £399.53 (includes shipping : £12.50).



then look to add the storage (SSD maybe) and a budget dedicated GPU too at some point.

Have a look on youtube, should be very easy to find footage of an overclocked i5K running the flight sim on a 6850 (£100) GPU. Just to give you an idea (and help credit stulids specs) i found this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXEIeDxhRzM
 
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I use it semi realistically. I don't go on line or do airliner flights etc but fly light A/C around, having held a PPL I like to keep my hand in. What's important to me is realisitc Wx an clouds and some air traffic. Currently I don't use autogen and would be happy if I couldn't. That vid you showed pretty good if you ask me, considering that was FSX and I won't be upgrading to that, just sticking with FS2004 will do me. Ideally I want my £400 to cover monitor & OS as well.
Sorry for being a pain, but I can't justify spending more than I need!
 
I think you'll really be struggling to the the whole lot within your £400 budget, whilst getting something worthwhile. I would go with an Intel/Nvidia build as both are better suited for FS9/FSX. FS9 isn't very demanding at all and even a basic dual core Sandy Bridge i3 will perform well. As for graphics card, if you plan on getting something like Real Environment Xtreme for weather etc you'll see the benefits of gettings a mid range card.

I know it's over budget but includes Windows 7. Can you use a TV as the screen in the meantime and buy a monitor at a later date?

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked *** 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (01G-P3-1363-KR) £113.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £57.98
1 x Gigabyte H61M-S2PV Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £41.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £39.98
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1333C9D3B1K2/4G) £22.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £511.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
Im going to re-visit something King Damager said....Llano,


YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Llano A8-3870K 3.00GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor (AD3870WNGXBOX) £109.99
1 x Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H AMD A75 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £69.38
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £57.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £39.98
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £37.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £31.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £380.32 (includes shipping : £12.50).




The built-in GFX core of Llano may surprise you and in the higher A8 chips, its roughly on par with a £50 GFX card from ATI.

My review (including vids of Llano GFX vs the i5 2500K built-in solution) - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18338581

But the actual CPU power of a Llano isnt close to a i5 2500K etc.
 
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I went for an i3 2120 with GTX550ti graphics card, hopefully it will run ok. I'll post back once everything is loaded and set up again.
Thanks for your help.
 
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