so im in the process of building a new rig, and here are the core specs:Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 (when it comes out in a few weeks)Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (on order)2x Sapphire HD3870 in Crossfire Mode2x1024 OCZ Reaper PC-8500 @ 1066 mhz2x Hitachi 500gb 7200 SATA in Raid 0 configwill this be enough to run fsx with all the bells and whistles? (meshes, PMDG-like panels, addon scenery etc etc)thanks!Adam

Adam,I believe it will run FSX well, but that all depends on what resolution(s) you plan to run and other things like AA, AF etc. Can you fill us in on these details? Also, are you running XP or Vista? If it's Vista you might want to buy an extra 2GB RAM, as Vista utilises RAM in a different (more efficient) way to XP and soon eats through 2GB when gaming.One other thing. If your criteria is outright performance above all else, then prehaps you could consider a faster hard drive with smaller capacity for sililar cost. EG. something like a WD raptor SATA 10,000RPM or even SCSI drive (upto 15,000RPM).Scratch1964

Scratch,I probably wont be running it at anything more than 1600 x 1050 as i dont plan on upgrading my monitor (Acer 22" widescreen)OS is going to be XP Pro for now because i dont really like how vista is running for me...maybe switch back later when they get the bugs worked outas for aa and af settings, probably mild... nothing too high. FS9 looks good to me with 4x aa and 4x af and im quite happy with thatwill i benefit from a 10K RPM or SCSI over a normal 7200 drive? does it make a noticeable difference?cheersAdam

anyone else?

Hi Adam, I second Scratch, get more RAM from scratch! ;-) Would suggest 2x2GB. Two such GPUs might tend to be overkill at 1680x? Good large SATA drives are just as good as 10krpm WD Raptors IMHO, to get to the next league is fairly expensive and often noisier. Although Hitachis are great, I'm not sure whether the 500GB is optimal? I recall there was something with them a while ago. Good drives all around and hence an easy recommendation, are 320GB/7200rpm, Hitachi, WD (SE only) and Seagate all are very fine drives. IMHO, Hitachi often offers the best combination between low search times, cool operation and noise. But again, AFAIK, this doesn't bite for the 500GB Hitachi/SATA if it hasn't been corrected meanwhile(?). It was either relatively low transfer rates or relatively high seek times. Hope this adds to thoughts, kind regards Jaap

Adam,I have to agree with Jaap over the issue of 2 x 500GB Hitachi drives. Whilst I suggested Raptors over the SATA, I was thinking more so in terms of value for money than anything else. 1TB in RAID is a #### of a size for FS9 alone! A 150GB Raptor will probably cost less than 1TB of SATA storage and will certainly initially load quicker than the SATA drives, but, once the game is running then I think it has more to do with the size, speed and bandwidth of RAM than it does drive spindle speed. If you have a lot of heavy third party addons then a further 2GB DDR RAM would be a good investment. In which case I personally feel it might be a better investment than 2 x 500GB drives. I recently switched back from RAID 0 with my 2x 320GB Seagate Barracuda drives as I found no real benefit in FS9. I believe larger and faster HDD are not the ideal solution to optimise performance in FS9.When I compared FS9 with 4GB Corsair DDR2 @800MHz to 2GB, both over 1920x1200 res. I could only notice a fractional difference of 2-3FPS, but there was more fluidity in the game when it came to loading large textures. I like the combination of 4GB RAM and a 640MB GPU for high resolutions. There appears to be little or no loss of FPS between high and low resolutions for me. I doubt there would be no resulting FPS loss with with 2GB DDR RAM & a 320MB/256MB GPU. However, in terms of optimisation, there comes a point when extra RAM and GPU memory provide no further ceiling above that optimal level. I too happen to belive 1024MB GPU may be excessive for FS9 at 1650x1080 res. Unless of course you plan to run any of the latest GPU intensive shooting games out there too. These games have quite different engines to that of FS9. I find optimising RAM and CPU are the way to go for FS9 and FSX.Scratch1964