Having had FSX running on my old machine (jeez its 2 years old) I cannot really enjoy the experience. I have tried most things but I am lucky if I get 14fps in country areas around the UK complete with stutters. I have tried numerous tweaks but no great results. My main restriction is the fact that I have an AGP card, albeit once it was a beast, so whatever I need to do effectively involves swapping the motherboard. The current specs are:-P4 3.4 HT 800fsbSapphire ATI 9800xt 256mb2gb Crucial ram1 x 200gb Sata HD (XP pro/FSX/FS9)plus other stuff but 100gb left1 x 80 gb Sata HDIntel D875pbz moboI am considering replacing this with the following:-Asus P5W DH Deluxe i975X Socket 775 MoboIntel Core 2 Duo E6700 RetailBFG GeForce 7950 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-8500C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-109-CS)Western Digital Raptor X 150GB WD1500AHFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache -Hiper 580W Modular PSU HPU-4B580 The dilemma now is with these bloomin DX10 cards, wow what a price. The cheapest one I have seen so far is about 350 quid. I am undecided whether to plump for the above spec as is, or forget the Raptor hard drive and get a DX10 card and a 600w power supply (according to Overclockers Uk thats the requirement). The trouble is I have seen so many posts on what delivers performance with this version of Flight sim that it is difficult to get a handle on it all, all I can say is thank goodness for tax refunds. Don't suppose anyone has a similar rig and can let me know if its worth it (bearing in mind I have done me a good deal for just over

I would forget the raptor. I have seen some benchmarks somewhere that shows the Seagate 7200.10 series with the perpindicular recording and 16mb cache are nearly as fast as the raptor for half the price.I have one of the 320GB versions and I am extremely happy with it. Mabe Gary (RESET MCP ALT) will chime in with a second opinion as I think he has two of the Seagate drives running in RAID......??I would certainly put the saved $$$ towards a 8800GTX or GTS, especially if you like playing in high resolutions.I would also go for one of the new nvidia 680i SLI chipset motherboards. It gives you 3 PCIe slots with full 16x SLI capability on two of them if you need it in the future. It's also the best motherboard for overclocking as you are surely going to want to do with that E6700. It even comes 'pre-approved' by nvidia to run at 1333mhz FSB (333x4), meaning your E6700 at 2.67GHZ is suddenly running at 3.33GHZ without breaking a sweat. On the anandtech review, they pushed it to over 500mhz FSB giving an effective FSB of 2000mhz!! 4GHZ is not out of the question with these C2D's.......Hope this helps a little.Glenn

Hi GlennThanks for coming back on this. Having read some of the reports on how power hungry some of the DX10 cards are it makes me shudder, more so for the electricity bill:) On the subject of the motherboard, is there a particular one that you mean, I have had a look and am struggling to see oneCheersPaul

I would wait as far as the DX10 boards are concerned. It will be a while before fsx can exploit them, and I for one want to see how well fsx can exploit them. dx10 means an upgrade to vista as well. I would like to hope future dx10 boards have a lower power footprint, I though I heard somewhere that the first ati board will be something like 250W. Heck my old 500mhz pentium had that power supply for the complete system. I will certainly not consider sli with the current technology. Of course other game requirements might change your mind!I think the biggest fsx bank for your buck you will get right now is a core duo plus overclockable memory. Get an above average dx9 card to keep you going. I'm looking at 7900gs, 7900gto and x1950pro 512mb.Simon

The only one out currently is the EVGA 680i SLISee the review from Anandtech here:http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2869As for the 8800 series, the DX9 performance is amazing plus you get DX10 compatability. It really depends on if you want to buy a stop-gap GPU or not.Glenn