speccing a FSX PC

ih8modem

ih8modem

ih8modem

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Joined
20 Dec 2004
Posts
623
Right I am so tired of not being able to play FSX with decent settings, so I have reached the point of spending more money on getting a good rig, specifically for this. Everything else will go on my existing machine. So, here is what I am thinking.

Budget is really £1000-00 to £1200-00, but I am willing to push it a bit if I have to. I probably will have to if I go with the extreme Quad.

I do not need HDD (will use two WD 320AAKs for OS in RAID 0, and 2 x 32GB SSD in RAID 0 for FSX).
I do not need RAM, for 4GB OCZ is available for this already.

I need, case, PSU , CPU , GFX card (this may be passed on at this time if budget is too tight).

Current thinking :
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition QX9650 "LGA775 Yorkfield" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £538.99
(£633.31) £538.99
(£633.31)
Asus P5Q Deluxe Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £119.99
(£140.99) £119.99
(£140.99)
BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £399.99
(£469.99) £399.99
(£469.99)
Samsung SH-S203P/RSMN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £56.99
(£66.96) £56.99
(£66.96)
Sub Total : £1,133.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £200.36
Total : £1,345.26
 
topgun06 said:
Whats your spec at the mo?
Click to expand...

Gigabyte DS3 / 4GB RAM (OCZ) / Q6600 @2.88 (wont go higher stable) / Samsung F1 1TB / WD 6400AAKS / BFG 8800GTX 768mb / Antec P180B case / 700W power supply / G15 keyboard / G7 mouse / Pioneer DVDwriter

All running on both XP Pro and Vista Home Premium 32bit
 
ack, don't do it FFS. you think spending 633 quid on a cpu that runs 200mhz faster than your current one is a good idea? :eek:

i'd just get the gtx 280 if i was you. :)
 
Yeah, as marc said, get the GTX 280 first, pop it in and see what it's like. I doubt it's being bottlenecked by the CPU anyway.

Also have you got the latest service packs for FSX, they add better support for multi cores.
 
asim18 said:
Yeah, as marc said, get the GTX 280 first, pop it in and see what it's like. I doubt it's being bottlenecked by the CPU anyway.

Also have you got the latest service packs for FSX, they add better support for multi cores.
Click to expand...

or maybe wait for the 4870 instead. i have absolutely no doubt the nvidia card will be faster but it's damned expensive for what it is. i think the 4870 will offer a better bang for the buck. or if you can wait another month or so (not sure on the exact timescale), maybe a 4870x2 will be even better??
 
FSX doesn't support SLi or Crossfire. If you want to upgrade solely for FSX then wait as it would a huge waste of money. You may think now you will appreciate the performance gain but you will soon realise it was not worth over a grand for a few FPS. It is not worth it to upgrade for one game, especially if you won't be able to max that game's settings and get good performance. Just wait until you definately can max FSX as upgrading now from what you have which is very strong would be pointless. If you really want to go for the 280 and see how performance goes but really the processor won't make a lot of difference as FSX isn't great with quad cores anyway and doesn't use them to their full potential.
 
do not buy that cpu whatever you do. total waste of money

theres people in MM selling Q6600s that hit 4ghz+ stable for 130-150

id listen to the above post tbh though. its a LOT of money for something not really that much better than what youve got
 
FSX is very CPU dependent. Clock speed is eveything, extra cores make very little difference. This is because the code for the game was written before multicore became popular and the developers were expecting clock speeds to keep on increasing. I suggest you try an e8500 and overclock to 4+ gigs with your current rig. Failing that wait for Nehalem.
 
fireflyfx said:
FSX is very CPU dependent. Clock speed is eveything, extra cores make very little difference. This is because the code for the game was written before multicore became popular and the developers were expecting clock speeds to keep on increasing. I suggest you try an e8500 and overclock to 4+ gigs with your current rig. Failing that wait for Nehalem.
Click to expand...

i was under the impression fsx was one of the few games that took advantage of multicores, i remember a couple of months back there were video being banded about with a skulltrail with triple sli with 2xquads maxing all 8 cores (not that this was even enough)
 
dan653 said:
i was under the impression fsx was one of the few games that took advantage of multicores, i remember a couple of months back there were video being banded about with a skulltrail with triple sli with 2xquads maxing all 8 cores (not that this was even enough)
Click to expand...


Yes I saw that too, it was 8 cores at 4GHz and still struggling... However FSX benchmarks have shown identical FPS clock for clock between duals and quads. So if you want the highest fps possible in FSX, you want the chip thats capable of the highest clock.
 
ih8modem said:
Right I am so tired of not being able to play FSX with decent settings, so I have reached the point of spending more money on getting a good rig, specifically for this. Everything else will go on my existing machine. So, here is what I am thinking.

Budget is really £1000-00 to £1200-00, but I am willing to push it a bit if I have to. I probably will have to if I go with the extreme Quad.

I do not need HDD (will use two WD 320AAKs for OS in RAID 0, and 2 x 32GB SSD in RAID 0 for FSX).
I do not need RAM, for 4GB OCZ is available for this already.

I need, case, PSU , CPU , GFX card (this may be passed on at this time if budget is too tight).

Current thinking :
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition QX9650 "LGA775 Yorkfield" 3.00GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £538.99
(£633.31) £538.99
(£633.31)
Asus P5Q Deluxe Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £119.99
(£140.99) £119.99
(£140.99)
BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £399.99
(£469.99) £399.99
(£469.99)
Samsung SH-S203P/RSMN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £56.99
(£66.96) £56.99
(£66.96)
Sub Total : £1,133.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £200.36
Total : £1,345.26
Click to expand...

£1,345.26 for maybe a 5fps Gain :/
 
yeah I can say that FSX is all about the CPU.

My Q6600 stock at 2.4 wasn't running it that well but after a OC to 3.0ghz it's eating up that autogen playing addon planes with very dense autogen at around 25 -30 fps.

Wouldn't spend that much on that gfx card.. sureley the new radeon one or the 9800?
 
hmmm

Loads of good info thanks guys.

From my research, FSX is absolutely the worlds worst CPU hog. I had a e6700 then e6750 (different machine) and now the q6600, and at all times, the cores will sit at 100%. I noticed a marked difference from the e6750 to the q6600 - definitely a lot smoother. I was looking for even more smoothness though. Perhaps I will just buy a new motherboard and try to really release the q6600's potential.

Are there any thoughts on getting a Q6700 over another Q6600? What about a q9450/q9550 ?

As far as GPU goes, apparently FSX will not gain anything from the new cards, the 8800GTX is idling with FSX apparently. I wish there was a way to measure GPU load - but if temps are anything to go by, they only increase by 5-6 degrees with FSX, compared to a 10 degree increase when playing unreal.
 
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