Upgrades for Flight SIM PC

bilirubin

bilirubin

bilirubin

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Joined
8 Oct 2017
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53
Location
Kent, UK
Hi guys,

I have been given a PC that I intend to use solely for using FSX Steam Edition on. Flight SIMS need to achieve a good FPS (Frames Per Second) rate and I am aware I will need to add one or two upgrades so what would you advise?

I have been informed that Gigabyte PCB's do not support some of the more popular graphics cards, I am not sure if this is true or not.

The PC was built on the 12 April 2017.

PC Spec:

Large Dragon case, big enough to take upgrades.

Pentium P4 Model E-600BR 600w power supply unit

Gigabyte Ultra Durable Duel Graphics/Motherboard, GA-F2A78M-HD2

AMD A8-7600 Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores, 4C + 6G, 3.10Ghz Processor.

8 GB, FM2/DDR3 RAM

1 TB Hard Disk

DVD/RW Player.

1 x small cooling fan mounted on the Gigabyte PCB, 1 x large cooling fan mounted in the front of the case, 2 x large cooling fans mounted in the top of the case.

Thanks for looking.

Mike
 
bilirubin said:
Hi guys,

I have been given a PC that I intend to use solely for using FSX Steam Edition on. Flight SIMS need to achieve a good FPS (Frames Per Second) rate and I am aware I will need to add one or two upgrades so what would you advise?

I have been informed that Gigabyte PCB's do not support some of the more popular graphics cards, I am not sure if this is true or not.

The PC was built on the 12 April 2017.

PC Spec:

Large Dragon case, big enough to take upgrades.

Pentium P4 Model E-600BR 600w power supply unit

Gigabyte Ultra Durable Duel Graphics/Motherboard, GA-F2A78M-HD2

AMD A8-7600 Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores, 4C + 6G, 3.10Ghz Processor.

8 GB, FM2/DDR3 RAM

1 TB Hard Disk

DVD/RW Player.

1 x small cooling fan mounted on the Gigabyte PCB, 1 x large cooling fan mounted in the front of the case, 2 x large cooling fans mounted in the top of the case.

Thanks for looking.

Mike
Click to expand...

Not sure where you've heard the PCB thing but it's wrong, and wrong for any current vendor with current chipsets :)

Think you'll need more then one or two parts :)
AMD new Ryzen cpus are killer for their price to performance ratio which should help.

What's your budget and what resolution is your screen (s)
 
Thanks OB,

Budget wise I am happy to spend what I have too as long as it within reason, the PC works fine and I am flying the SIM on it without any problems, I just feel it needs better graphics and better frame rates.

Rather than throwing a lot of money at it in one go I was thinking more of upgrades one at a time if that is possible to assess the impact of the upgrade and spread the cost?

I am running 1 x Samsung 27" curved screen monitor on it and the resolution is 1920 x 1080
 
bilirubin said:
Thanks OB,

Budget wise I am happy to spend what I have too as long as it within reason, the PC works fine and I am flying the SIM on it without any problems, I just feel it needs better graphics and better frame rates.

Rather than throwing a lot of money at it in one go I was thinking more of upgrades one at a time if that is possible to assess the impact of the upgrade and spread the cost?

I am running 1 x Samsung 27" curved screen monitor on it and the resolution is 1920 x 1080
Click to expand...

It's more the fact those APU are god by themselves or with older budget GPU but thrown in a recent £200-250 card in to run constant 60fps at high settings and it may bottleneck that APU of yours.

You could try it and see. Doing the GPU first and PSU!!
See how it runs with monitoring software to see how much your APU is holding back the GPU and upgrade the rest in accord .
But even the budget £100 new Ryzen from AMD smashes their old APU units processor wise, very big gap!
 
Thanks OB, I really appreciate your time and input.

So just to bring you back a bit and to make sure I am understanding what you are suggesting is install a new Graphics card first and then see how the PC performs via usage and monitoring software?

Also you appear to have doubts over the PSU I have installed, is it because 600w is not powerful enough or is it because the one fitted is crap?
 
bilirubin said:
Thanks OB, I really appreciate your time and input.

So just to bring you back a bit and to make sure I am understanding what you are suggesting is install a new Graphics card first and then see how the PC performs via usage and monitoring software?

Also you appear to have doubts over the PSU I have installed, is it because 600w is not powerful enough or is it because the one fitted is crap?
Click to expand...
The one fitted doesn’t sound like a well known model and could be unstable. Good PSU’s are often overlooked but so vital to smooth running when the pc is drawing lots of power.
 
bilirubin said:
Thanks OB, I really appreciate your time and input.

So just to bring you back a bit and to make sure I am understanding what you are suggesting is install a new Graphics card first and then see how the PC performs via usage and monitoring software?

Also you appear to have doubts over the PSU I have installed, is it because 600w is not powerful enough or is it because the one fitted is crap?
Click to expand...

As mentioned above, you could installa W12 engine in a standard ford focus and take it around the track , should make it out alive... Just but you just wouldn't lol.

Not worth the risk .

To be fair you should upgrade it all, but if keeping costs down, GPU and PSU first
See how you get on . Then when you do upgrade, you'll get extra performance on top of the new GPU with the change, so it's a double win in small stages
 
That psu is only fit for the bin. Looking it up online shows it to be one of those awful Evo Labs models that you can pick up for £22. It also appears that they have taken one of the abysmal Ace psu's and rebadged it. Please listen to what the others are telling you and buy something decent.
 
Thanks for all the input guys and sorry for the late reply. I did consider Chillblast but seeing as I picked up the PC I have for nothing I thought I could keep costs down by upgrading.

Going back to some of the suggestions above could someone advise on the following please as I have never upgraded a PC before:

1/ Based on the PSU comments I am thinking of going for something in the region of 800w and buying a good brand from this site?

2/ I am happy to spend in the region of £250.00 for a graphics card but I am concerned I may buy one that is not compatible with the Gigabyte Ultra Durable Duel Graphics/Motherboard, GA-F2A78M-HD2 fitted, any suggestions?

As always thanks in advance.

Mike
 
bilirubin said:
Thanks for all the input guys and sorry for the late reply. I did consider Chillblast but seeing as I picked up the PC I have for nothing I thought I could keep costs down by upgrading.

Going back to some of the suggestions above could someone advise on the following please as I have never upgraded a PC before:

1/ Based on the PSU comments I am thinking of going for something in the region of 800w and buying a good brand from this site?

2/ I am happy to spend in the region of £250.00 for a graphics card but I am concerned I may buy one that is not compatible with the Gigabyte Ultra Durable Duel Graphics/Motherboard, GA-F2A78M-HD2 fitted, any suggestions?

As always thanks in advance.

Mike
Click to expand...

800w is over kill, unless you plan to slap in two 1080 Ti next year ?

As for your mobo and GPU, the board will handle the cards fine. @GIGA-Man and @AORUS UK - gigabyte reps should be able to confirm this or if there are any issues .

Range of prices for PSU , quality and price goes up


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £230.66 (includes shipping: £11.70)
​

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £258.89 (includes shipping: £9.90)


Since it's black Friday sales.


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £332.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​

Even a Ryzen 1200 for £100 would run rings around your current CPU :)​
 
Hello all,

All boards we now sell support the PCIe Gen 3.0 spec which means any all cards should work on the boards we have sold for the last few years.
 
depending on version of flight sim you are using or going to use then this is all you would need yo spend money on, your quad will be more than enough up to the task as its no slow version(under 2ghz) and the 1050ti will be miles better than the R7 graphics included in that APU, the power supply is on sale and hell of a lot better than what you have, in fact anything 80 plus will be better, hell the weakest VS range from corsair is better than EVO LABS which is the brand on your current psu, plus having 550w will be good enough for future upgrades and its fully modular so you could go small form if you ever needed the space.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £221.04 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​
 
If your primarily running FSX then CPU grunt is FAR more important than GPU, as an example I went from an i7 870 to an i7 4790 and my performance in FSX jumped from ~30 fps to 50+ fps with a GTX 780ti, I've since upgraded to a 1070 (I've got two in SLI but unfortunately FSX is not designed for nor compatible with SLI) and my fps rate hasn't changed at all!

Interestingly, I tried an old GTX 260 in my rig and the fps didn't change! It was still ~50fps.

FSX is a SIM designed in an era where developers thought cpu speeds (single core) would be by now 5Ghz +, unfortunately the hardware went multi core without much of a single core increase in speed, whilst the Steam edition does utilise multi core CPU's it isn't full utilization.

My advice would be a good SSD to reduce loading times, the fastest CPU your budget will allow and pretty much any mid range GPU from the last few years with the remaining budget.

The above only applies to a predominantly FSX oriented setup, it's an old SIM ultimately from an era where today's GPU tech was unheard of and therefore not anticipated nor designed in anticipation of by its developers.
 
With info from above

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £433.46 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​

Since i3 has now moved up to 4 cores of the old i5. Should be able to give a nice OC or let the board auto OC
 
Scania said:
If your primarily running FSX then CPU grunt is FAR more important than GPU, as an example I went from an i7 870 to an i7 4790 and my performance in FSX jumped from ~30 fps to 50+ fps with a GTX 780ti, I've since upgraded to a 1070 (I've got two in SLI but unfortunately FSX is not designed for nor compatible with SLI) and my fps rate hasn't changed at all!

Interestingly, I tried an old GTX 260 in my rig and the fps didn't change! It was still ~50fps.

FSX is a SIM designed in an era where developers thought cpu speeds (single core) would be by now 5Ghz +, unfortunately the hardware went multi core without much of a single core increase in speed, whilst the Steam edition does utilise multi core CPU's it isn't full utilization.

My advice would be a good SSD to reduce loading times, the fastest CPU your budget will allow and pretty much any mid range GPU from the last few years with the remaining budget.

The above only applies to a predominantly FSX oriented setup, it's an old SIM ultimately from an era where today's GPU tech was unheard of and therefore not anticipated nor designed in anticipation of by its developers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Scania and sorry for the late response, been a busy few days.

I can confirm the PC I am planning to upgrade is solely used for running FSX Steam Edition. The hard drive contains Windows 10, Steam, FSX and a few PC maintenance tools.

My readings are showing out of a possible 918 GB I am using 121 GB (13%) which leaves 797 GB free. I have never considered an SSD but if I do I assume a 250 GB will do the job?

If I upgrade the CPU do I need to upgrade the motherboard and RAM or can I work with what I have and go for a new CPU and SSD?

Thanks in advance

Mike
 
A 250Gb SSD should be ample, I’ve got a lot of add ons with my FSX install and it’s “only” 50Gb - you’d be going some to break 100gb imo.
As for your current cpu, a quick google shows it’s quite a bit slower than my old i7 870, given I got such a boost from my upgrade (I bought an i7 4790, 16Gb RAM and a motherboard to suit from the Members market here for ~ £250) I would expect yours to perhaps struggle a bit, but, it’s still a better chip than the designers ever envisaged so I’d certainly give it a try and see how it handles it.

Remember, FSX is all about smoothness of running rather than high fps rates- a we’ll optimised install will play just fine @30fps so long as you can maintain that frame rate,the last thing you want is an fps drop and stuttering whilst on final approach in a cross wind!

If you’ve got a spare hour or so, read and digest this....

http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html

An old but probably still one of if not the best FSX guides I’ve ever read- and I’ve read more than I care to recall!
 
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