Upgrade time for me want to play FSX

jas72 · 1 Sep 2011 at 11:45

Last time I upgraded a few years ago FSX (MS Flight Simulator X) was still running like mince on my PC.

C2D E6400 @ 2.18
4870 512 card
Old ASUS board with 4GB mem.

I want to spend around 350 quid on an upgrade since FSX is more CPU intensive would prefer to concentrate on that side of things. Will need new MOBO, CPU and RAM I have the rest.

Anyone got any advice on the best system for FSX ?

stulid · 1 Sep 2011 at 11:47

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £173.99
(£144.99) £173.99
(£144.99)
Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £74.99
(£62.49) £74.99
(£62.49)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £53.99
(£44.99) £53.99
(£44.99)
Sub Total : £252.47
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £52.39
Total : £314.36

You get free delivery so thats £302, maybe add a big aftermarket heatsink (if your case is big enough) if you want to go well over 4GHZ, if not the stock item is ok.

jas72 · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:43

Do you think that mobo is ok for an overclock. it doesn't get great reviews.

I would only be doing a slight oc since I have stock cooler for the moment.

shadow_boxer · 21 Sep 2011 at 02:59

Given that fsx is very CPU intensive I'd be inclined to get a better P67 board and a decent aftermarket cooler to add to the i5 2500k/8GB RAM so you can try to get a decent overclock.

Will you stuck with the 4870?

jas72 · 21 Sep 2011 at 14:10

I did it shadow boxer and stulid went for 2500K and got the full P8P67 ASUS board (from third party) and a coolermaster 212+ cooler.

Haven't installed it yet planned to do it sunday but forgot to buy a SATA diskdrive forgot that the new boards don't have IDE.

facepalm).

+ my system was dual boot with XP and the boot manager was on the XP Hard Drive so I've had to have a fivestep plan before upgrade

Step 1) create disk image of Win 7 and XP drive (incase it went belly up)

Step 2) set win 7 HD to (active) in diskmgmnt.msc

Step 3) unplug the XP HD

Step 4) use windows repair disk to create a new Win 7 MBR.

Step 5) change the drive from IDE to ACHI to avoid http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 since the new boards are default ACHI.

I'm now at step 4 lol.

I'm sticking with the 4870 for the moment (until after christmas at least sadly) but my next buy is going to be a SSD to speed up load times since my new board has 6GB SATA I might as well take advantage of it.

shadow_boxer · 21 Sep 2011 at 14:54

The 212+ should allow you to get a fairly decent overclock.

Would probably be better to do a full clean installation. The 4870 will be OK with FSX if you turn the eye candy down a little.

As for installing FSX I always point everyone to SETTING UP FSX and HOW TO TUNE IT, will give you a good starting point.

jas72 · 21 Sep 2011 at 16:31

Aye this is why I want a SSD although I wonder if 60GB will be enough to run FSX and addons

it is possible to run the addons on a different HDD?