Recently, I had a crash on my old ASUS P4C800 Deluxe Motherboard/Intel 3.2 CPU combination and would like to believe that I was forced into the following upgrade (without a great deal of arm twisting I might add.) My wife was tired of me working on it, and said just buy a new one. Of course she meant a shelf unit that would set me free. I am sure I don't have to go through any explaination on my feeling relative to that if you are into homebuilts and the cost of putting together your own system with premium components compared to buying from XXXX (Assuming that they even offer top notch combinations).Upgraded Components were as follows:1. ASUS P5N-E-SLI NF650I SLI 775 Motherboard2. Intel C2D E6600 2.4G 775 4M R CPU3. 4GB Kingston DII800 KVR800D2N5/1G R Memory4. PNY VCG8800XXPB 8800GTX 768MB R Video Card5. BFGR1000WOSU RT 1000 Watt Power Supply6. Super Power Beige ATX Full Tower Case7. Four 80mm each Case FansAll other components unless I forgot to list something were retained from my previous system before the upgrade. I did add round IDE cables.The motherboard is overclocked @ 10% by the ASUS preset overclocking option. The 8800GTX is overclocked @ 15% above factory settings. Anything higher than that was suspect.Results were pleasing, at least to me.FSX Settings:Note: No tweaks to speak of relative to FSX. I even reactivated the default.xml which I previously had renamed.1. I normally run full screen resolution @ 1260x960x32, sometimes changing to 1600x1200x322. Global texture resolution: Very High3. Advanced animations checked (Haven't tried Lens Flare or Light Bloom yet.4. Filtering has been set to either Trilinear or Anisotropic. Frankly, thus far I have not seen any difference.5. I also have not been able to determine much difference between program controlled anti-aliasing, or Video card control. Other posts have said use FSX control, a bit different from fS9.6. Global settings are ultra High7. 2d Instrument Panel default8. High Resolution 3-d virtual cockpit is checked9. Transparency % is set to 010. All Exterior settings are checked11. All scenery settings are full right with the exception of water effects, which is set at Low 2.x (Haven't experimented too much yet)12. Weather is at the default settings, global very low, rate medium. I have used the Jeppesen downloaded weather updating every 15 minutes but have not experimented here yet either.13. All traffic is set @ 50% with the exception of road vehicles @ 100%. All aircraft labels are checked with the exception of User Aircraft.14. Frame Rate Setting is set to 30.Results:Away from metropolitan cities like NY, frame rates are in the mid-twenties to 30. With a higher limit, it has run well above these figures, but with a pretty good deal of cycling. From KJFK for a scenic tour of Manhattan, frame rates still drop down into the low teens. Spot view seems to be affected more than the cockpit view. If you keep your eye on your aircraft, she is reasonably smooth. If you look at the horizon, you can still see a bit of the slide show. It is flyable and surprisingly smooth unless you are a firm purest.FSX Conclusions (IMHO). Things are improving. At places like NY, she if useable, but by no means perfect (Then on the other hand, neither was FS9 IN THE PAST). The GPS is a real hog on a secondary monitor much more than it has been in the past. Im beginning to buy into the FSX scenery but with Ultimate Terrain, Misty Fjords, FSGenesis, USA Roads etc. etc. in FS9, there still is not a decisive difference to me personally, but this probably needs some additional peeking. The traffic is just great (I may be carried away with the novelty). FS9:1. In short: Everything to the far right, checked, and maxed out.2. I use FSMETEO for real weather conditions3. FSNAV is always on my third monitor and one of my favorites.2. I have set the frame rate limit as high as 80, and under good conditions it has cycled in the 70's to that setting.3. With a limit set at 30, flying from SimFlyers KJFK over Manhattan she runs in the mid to high 20's to that setting and for the first time is smooth. With SimFlyers KJFK this should tell you something.4. For the first time, I can put a full screen spot view on the secondary monitor and fly as smooth as silk.Final conclusions:Frankly, school is still out to me personally on FSX, but ASSUMING that eventually third party aircraft, scenery, coastlines and other water scenery, and utilities equal to or better than FS9 evolve, there is hope and it may turn into the cat's whiskers in coming months.For FS9, with the new hardware it is like having a new flightsim package itself. Until new improved third party aircraft, utilities etc. appear for FSX it is going to be hard to leave the old girl.Future speculation: VISTA, but with a great deal of apprehension and a bit of suspicion. From what I read, some product reaction is that no drivers will ever be available, and they want you to just buy new equipment from them that is compatible with Vista. One of my Laser printers is in question there, and I will not negate it. I guess dual booting is a solution, but this scenario still sticks in my craw. It is like driving your one year old car into the garage, and the dealer telling you they want service it because we want you to buy a new one. This is not necessarily Microsoft's fault and may bepinned on the greed of other suppliers IMHO.The following is a complete list of my system components. I might mention that the P5N-E-SLI motherboard reduces to the 8x multiplier in SLI mode. The single card mode gives 16x performance like anything else available which makes this issue accademic to me personally as I will never implement SLI which negates multiple monitors. Multiple monitors are mandatory to me and have been for many years. In fact, if I ever get another 8800, I will probably add another 21" monitor I have in storage for a total of four.Happy flying, and I hope there is something here that might be of use to somebody:RTHASUS P5N-E-SLI NF650I SLI 775 MotherboardIntel C2D E6600 2.4G 775 4M R CPUZalman CNPS7700-CU RT CPU Cooling Fan4GB Kingston DII800 KVR800D2N5/1G R MemoryWinXP ProDirectX9.0cPNY VCG8800XXPB 8800GTX 768MB R Video CardLatest NVIDIA 8800 DriversSecondary Graphics Diamond Stealth III S540 PCI Video CardLatest S3 Graphics Inc. Savage4 Drivers for Stealth III card21

Excellent and detailed report on your upgrade experience RTH! Your FS9 and FSX conclusions are similar to mine, except I am finding that the more I use FSX, the harder it is to go back to FS9 from a graphical beauty perspective, so I now spend about equal time on both. I really hope that SP1 gives FSX the headroom it needs to allow future complex addons to run without killing the whole experience.Gary

Thanks for the reply Gary:I probably am behind the curve compared to you on FSX and just need to catch up. I still lean toward FS9 relative to usage time I guess, but primarily due to third party aircraft, airports, FSNAV, Active Camera etc. etc. I am sure (or at least sincerely hope) that I evolve in the direction that you have grown with equal pleasure.Thanks again:RTH

Use the AA and AF settings of your hardware (drver). Push that slider all the way to the right. Hwardware overrides applications. 16XQ.Don't do it while you are in FSX cayse you will not see any difference.Now loadup FSX...the AA of the GTX is amazing.. Manny

You would probably do a lot better in New York, if you dropped your automobile traffic slider down to 50%...100% is overkill in my opinion, and it will drag you down there.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Hello Rhett:Before I read your reply, I already did that but haven't been back in the NY area yet. Sure makes sense and I will take a peek.Home territory is in Lewisburg, West Virginia (KLWB) and the traffic was totally unrealistic here with the slider set that high. First time I was ever here was about 20 years ago, and I called my wife back in Houston,Tex. to tell her she wasn't going to believe me, but I had been on an interstate where mine was the only vehicle in site at times. Far from what I was used to in Houston and still is.I am still experimenting with settings, seeing what has the most impact one way or the other. Beginning to be a pleasing experience rather than frustration thanks to the new hardware.Thanks for the reply:RTH

Nice report. We really need some sort of database of hardware for guys like me that really don't know which components are best. I would love to see something like this:Date: Feb 24, 2007Bleeding Edge Motherboard 1 Motherboard 2 Graphics Card A Graphics Card B Etc. Etc.High End Motherboard 1 Motherboard 2 Graphics Card A Graphics Card B Etc. Etc.Middle of the Road but Acceptable Motherboard 1 Motherboard 2 Graphics Card A Graphics Card B Etc. Etc.

Hello Mark:A worthy idea, but I am not sure it is workable. Unfortunately, we are not all on the same page as to evaluation of what gives "bleeding edge" performance. To some it is only those little red numbers that appear when you press "shift + Z" twice. To others it is superb scenery that is apparently too good for some of our retarded eyes to recognize. It is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder. In addition to that, once all applicable supplieers start supplying products (Motherboards for example), there are so many. If we had a REASONABLY SIMPLE benchmark program unique TO FLIGHTSIM that everyone was willing to use for compiling HONEST data, your suggestion would provide a world of information we all could use. Certainly deserves some thought.There are sites, (Tom's Hardware for example) that provide your idea to some extent, but it does take a little work to figure out the format.Thanks for the suggestion.RTH

Mark,Take at look at this, the specs would be good for the database:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=23725&page=5Jimcooper1 recommends the hardware in this thread. I've just built this rig and it seriously rocks (Ta Jim)! I have FSX on a RAID 0 Array and the OS on its own drive. Performance in FSX is fantastic without any tweaking at all, I'm not even bothering to shut down the services and have left system restore running in XP pro. Personally I don't like autogen so have it switched off, this gives me 40-50 FPS in FSX most of the time, no stutters, no little lock-ups whilst taxing, no pausing to load scenery, this is with a Sapphire X1950 XTX. This system cost me just over