Will FS benefit from these new techs if I were to upgrade to something like:Intel 955XBKLKR MoBoIntel P4 extreme Edition 840Windows X64 2 Westen Digital Serial ATA 36 gig HD with 10000 rpm set as a RAIDGeForce 7800 GTX 256MBKingston 1GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC 5-5-5 DIMMI know most items are high end here but how much of this new tech will FS really benefit from?Ar there any items that can but subsitiuded for less and still get simular preformance?I dont know exactly how much this Dual Core will make use of with FS since I know Hyper-Thread donts do anything.Then theres this PCI express and how much better if any is this over the norm?Please help cause I'm pricing out my new system and setting up for the next version as well.

If you must go with Dual Core cpu, and no one knows yet if you'll see any benefit from that in FS, I would go AMD X2 instead of Intel.I've read literally almost every review and the AMD X2 4800 beat Intel Extreme 840 in all games. I believe those two processors are priced the same too; I wish I can say the same about availability.

Dual Core - no gain with current FS versionPCI-E - neglible gain over AGP, but SLI becomes a possibility (again, no gain with current FS version)Gary

Thank you Gary for the reply.I really hope MS is working on using all these new technologies for the next version. Seems that we could benefit alot with a dual core HT.BTW what is SLI and how would it benefit the sim?Kilstorm

SLI allows you to run two video cards which in some games can give a huge performance increase, though for FS, nothing. In fact I have seen benchmarks where FS runs slower with 2 video cards instead of just one.

Seems like the hardware is at a point where it is moving ahead of the software. Until we know what direction MS plans to take FS2006 and beyond, from what I see none of the new technologies will serve any vast improvment. FS2004 just isn't designed to take advantage of it.Right now it is still the basics:1. The fastest CPU available2. A high end graphics card (anything over 256 MB is wasted)3. At least 1gig RAM (For me, nothing less than 1.5Gig will do).These would make good questions for the MS presentation at the AVSIM convention. Maybe we can get a feel what direction they are heading and we can prepare/purchase accordingly.

Don't waste your money on a dual core processor if you are doing it for MSFS!!!! The dual core WILL benefit you if you want to run MSFS and at the same time burn CDs, type out your manefesto on Microsoft Word while watching the latest Britney Spears video on Windows Media Player :-). It will allow you to multitask applications more efficiently and load times will be faster since you have another CPU to process the threads if one is 100% utilized as it will be under MSFS, thus negating the need to wait for a "timeslot" on a single CPU that is being highly utilized.Additionally, as has been said before, PCI Express or AGP 8x, will make very little difference performancewise in MSFS. Even a SLI PCI-E will make very little difference in performance.Instead if you have some cash to burn, get the fastest gaming CPU (currently AMD FX64 line of processors), get at least 1GB of very fast memory, get the fastest PCI-E or AGP 8x video card (currently ATI x850xt PE), get a fast mobo (recommend ASUS mobos), get WD SATA Raptors and configure them for RAID 0, and then overclock it all as high as you can get with an exotic liquid cooling (or refrigerated) system. And that my friend will have you grinning like an idiot at least 90% of the time.HTH,Mike T(Grins like an idiot 90% of the time)

Mike T,Thanks for the info. I was looking at the WD SATA Raptors as a raid config but then found the WD SATA Caviar SE16 with 16 MB cache with 300 MB/s transfer rate. Compare that to the Raptors which only have8MB cache and 150 MB/s feel that the faster fetch time of the 10000rpm doesn't really outpreform the bigger cache and MB/s. Am I wrong? I would like to set my HD's up as a RAID 0 but was told that for FS its not going to make a difference. Was I told incorrectly?For the Video card I was planning on going with the Asus GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB. Some Kingston Hyper X ram. (1gig)Pentium

It would be super if we knew the direction MS is going to take hardware-wise for the next version of Flight Simulator. That way, like you point out, folks could plan now for their next upgrade. I hope MS reveal more at this year's AVSIM convention than they did at Blackpool concerning the future of PC flight simulation. That is the leading factor in my book whether the AVSIM convention is a success.RH

Hey Mike,With a system like yours, why only grinning 90% of the time? I would have guessed 150%.Btw, with your system, do you get any micro-stutters (I'm referring to the graphical stutters) at all while on the ground taxiing and in turns?