Wasn't that the same guy singing: "I'm liiivvvinngg on dog food!" :-) Hope the wait is not too looonngg and I wish you heaps of fun. Kind regards Jaap PS, in those days, an old friend thought it was a good idea to take Tom Petty's recipy proposal for granted... Turned out he prefered the dog food cooked! :-) :-) Yuck!

Well, the case arrived Friday. The beast is alive, after the usual slew of technical challenges. It's now running though a slew of burn-ins and benchmarks, but looks to be really stable at 3.6 GHz on air only (but with 6x120 mm fans at work, so it's a *lot* of air). There were some BIOS teething pains with the eVGA/nVidia 680i-based mobo above 800MHz on the RAM bus (it's a new design, out only a month or so), but the beauty of the Extreme edition CPUs like the X6800 is the ability to change the CPU clock multiplier in addition to the FSB freq...it's running like a scalded dog at 400MHz FSB and a clock mult of 9. BIOS issues are keeping me from pushing the RAM all the way to its rated 1000 MHz, but it's nearly as good with with a 1:1 FSB-to-DDR ratio at 800MHz and tight 3-3-3-9 timing.Next weekend is a three day weekend here in Chile...can't wait to get FS9 up and running on this one. I just booted into WinXP and it took like 5 sec from the BIOS screen to the Windows desktop.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

Don't you just love the X6800 ;)

Well, just got the new machine installed and hooked up to everything. The 2.93 GHz Conroe X6800 is running completely stable at 3.6GHz on air with CPU steady at ~52 deg C with FS9 running. eVGA 8800GTX vid card runs a little warmer at 63 deg C.Flew first test flight after installing complete set of FSGenesis mesh from 306m to 38m, Ground Environment and Ultimate Terrain, and FlyTampa Seattle scenery and the PMDG B744F. Wx set to "building storms" in FS. I locked the frames at 30, and set the PMDG gauge refresh rate to 25.Frame rate never came down from a steady 30fps through taxi, takeoff, and climbout from KSEA. No stutters at all, not even the occasional microstutters I've seen on some of the faster P4 machines. It's a joy to behold. Extremely dense scenery looked great on the climbout.First impression...worth every dime.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

Nice to hear that Bob good your having a blast ;)

And as a follow-up, it just keeps getting better.After a BIOS upgrade I dialed the CPU back to 3.2GHz, which it will do at stock voltage and ~50 deg C at full load, and now have my RAM running at its rated 1000MHz and 4-5-4-11-2T timings. The new eVGA/nVidia P23 BIOS fixed some issues with SATA and RAM above 800MHz.Loaded the PMDG B747 at the SimFlyers KDFW, a scenery which has been a consistent pig when it comes to performance on my previous P4 system. Full FSGenesis mesh kit and Ground Environment Pro textures. Weather at "Building storms." With frames locked at 30, it stays at 30 through taxi, takeoff, and climbout. Gauges are absolutely fluid. Even have the animated traffic running at KFDW. The only performance load I haven't yet thrown into the mix is an aftermarket traffic add-on, for which I am considering MyTraffic-X.I'm convinced beyond a doubt that my going-in theory...that FS9 is just now reaching its real capabilities on today's cutting edge systems...has been borne out.I'm really looking forward to a heavy week of holiday flying with the new system. For reference, here's what I ended up with:CPU: 2.93 MHz Intel X6800 Core 2 ExtremeCooling: Zalman 7700Cu + 6x 120mm fansMobo: eVGA NF68 680i-based motherboard P23 BIOSRAM: 2x1 GB 1000MHz Mushkin Redline DDR2-8000Video: eVGA 8800GTX 768MB PCIeSound: Creative Audigy 2 ZS PCIHDD1: 150MB 10K rpm WD Raptor SATA 150Mb/sHDD2: 500MB 7.2K rpm WD Caviar SATA-II 300Mb/sPS: PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer (60A on a single rail)OS: Windows XP Pro SP2Settings: FSB=266Mhz (default)CPU Clock Mult=12CPU Voltage defaultRAM Speed 1000MHz, 4-5-4-11-2TRAM voltage=2.2vPCIe bus (Linkboost enabled)GPU 525/900 MHz (default)CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

Hi Bob, muchas gra

Jaap;

Thanks for the infos, Bob. The only thing I worry about sometimes, is GPU-RAM (w/ FSX/DX9). On a single monitor setup at 1280x, I've seen GPU-mem levels rise to 400MB. Using twin monitors doing outside views, this theoretically gets doubled as far as I know. 2x400MB is more than 8800s have, ergo, I wonder why Nvidia chose lower RAM amounts compared to previous high-end GPUs? OTOH and as far as I understand, DX10 will allow a more efficient use of multiple, identical textures. Something many FS-elements should benefit from. Under DX10, they won't have to be loaded multiple times. So, from this angle the lower mem-amount could make sense? Oh well, just some tech bla-bla from a 'non-engineer'. :-) I share your impression the difference between 1280x and 1600x isn't very noticeable on large CRTs. I appreciate your updated flow of information. Guess I'm not the only one! It's very interesting to learn how things are going over time. Please keep us updated. Cheers, a jolly, merry X-mas and kind regards Jaap Of course, the same extends to Davis, Greg, Tom, Bill and the other regulars in this forum as well.

So... I am an experienced real-world pilot (5000+ turbine hours) but very inexperienced at building computers (less than 2 "screwdriver" hours--installed some RAM, put in a new video card, that's about it), so I think I'm going to have to get someone to build my new computer for me. For getting the type of FS9 performance you have: is the construction and subsequent tweaking pretty much impossible for a beginner like me? I also get the sense that what you've done is so custom that even if I bought the exact same components and had a store build it for me, something would be off somewhere and I'd never get FS9 to do its tricks the way you can. What stores can I can trust to build a fast, fast, fast system for me? Or is this type of performance available only to experts? Thanks.---Will

Well, getting the last 15-20% of performance via overclocking and tweaking of the system is, without a doubt, something of an art form. But construction of the basic system isn't necessarily rocket science. If you buy parts that are basically compatible--either by copying a known working config, or getting competent advice for something else--you can construct a system that will work very well, and which can form a platform to start branching off into that art form of advanced tweaking.There are also specialty shops, with Alienware being one of the largest and best known, that build fast gaming PCs that are put together and tested by pros and which do run very fast...but you'll spend probably $500-1000 more there than if you take on the challenge of building it yourself. If you're not into tweaking as an enjoyable pastime, and have the money, it may be the way to go.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile