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I'm also looking for a new FSX PC by Christmas, and have been reading up on the choices today.I was amazed to see the 8800GTX performing worse than the 8800GTS and 7900GTX on Toms Hardware chart. Is this just down to the drivers though as the 8800 Ultra is at the top of the pile?? If there's no advantage to buying the 8800GTX it would be tempting to just get the 8800GTS. For a CPU, I've read that SP1 lets FSX use all the cores available whenn loading scenery etc so it seems that a Quad CPU is better. (The tests I've seen on CPUs though seem to predate SP1 so may now be unreliable.) I'm looking at the E6850 or Q6600. On pure clock speed the E6850 would seem to be the winner (and worth the extra over the E6750 in my opinion), but does SP1 pull the Q6600 into contention? 2GB of RAM seems to be accepted as quite sufficient for FSX. I'm planning on using Vista though and had wondered about 4GB - but then realised that the 32 bit version will only be able to use about 3 1/2 GB of it! If you go to 64 bit Vista then you see all the 4GB but presumably have even greater problems with drivers for older printers etc. You need a hefty power supply for the 8800 cards, but I've read that 2 hard drives in a RAID set up are the best solution, possibly with a separate fast drive just for FSX?Chris

Chris, I've been reading up a lot on hardware issues as well. Until the more knowledgeable folks step in to correct me :-) here is my understanding of some of the issues you raise: 1. The general consensus seems to be that the 8800GTX still has some serious driver bugs that prevent it from achieving its theoretical performance limits, at least in FSX. (Sorry, I don't follow other games very closely.) So the BIG question is... Will the 8800GTX significantly outperform the 8800GTS if nVidia ever gets around to eliminating the bugs from their drivers? And a corollary... will the DX10 patch benefit from the 8800GTX's additional performance features, even though it's not the top performer right now? We may not have answers to these questions anytime soon, given the glacial pace at which nVidia develops its drivers. 2. Regarding dual-core vs. quad-core, take a look at some of the other CPU-oriented threads in this forum. The reports to date are that FSX benefits greatly from the higher clock speeds of the upper-end Core 2 Duos, but doesn't see much advantage from quad cores. Gary Dunne, in particular, is testing the relationship between clock speed and FSX performance. I have not yet seen a test yet where a quad-core CPU outperforms the fastest Core 2 Duo (currently the E6850, as you know). To the best of my knowledge, these test results were achieved with SP1 installed. 3. It would be welcome news to my wallet if 2 GB of system RAM is sufficient for FSX! I would be reluctant to migrate to 64-bit Vista in any event, for exactly the reason you mention: driver problems with many of my peripherals. 4. From everything I've read, my 750W PSU should be more than sufficient. I don't really know much about the potential benefits of a RAID setup for FSX, and would be interested to learn. It's incredible to me that I can now purchase an excellent-quality 500GB hard drive for under 100 bucks. Wow! If I've stated anything incorrectly, I hope that the hardware "gurus" will step in and set me straight. Ultimately, I think it would be very helpful to have a sticky in this forum with a FAQ on the relationship between various hardware choices and FSX performance. I'm sure a lot of people have similar questions to the ones you and I are asking. I see my planned PC as lasting me through the remaining life cycle of FSX, which I'm guessing will be 2-3 years from now. ACES seems to have their collective hands full before they can turn their attention fully to development of FS11. Thanks! Lee

Hi Lee,In October 2001 I bought a top end PC for

Chris,>>I was amazed to see the 8800GTX performing worse than the 8800GTS and 7900GTX on Toms Hardware chart.<http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_8800.htmlhttp://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/downloads/..._HP_MWP_x64.pdfjb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]

Hi Chris, I've been running an AthlonXP system myself, which I've also updated with newer hard drives (no RAID yet), a Radeon (unfortunately limited by AGP), and extra RAM. So our situations are not too dissimilar. Remarkably, I still get acceptable performance in FSX, with most sliders at around two-thirds of the way up. But it's definitely time for me to switch to a more capable system! Regarding the Flightsim.com article on the "Jetline Systems" PC, I'm sorry to say that I just haven't trusted Flightsim.com's hardware reviews since they kept pushing Dell's Pentium-based systems a few years ago while claiming that the newer Athlon64's were no good for flight simming because there weren't any 64-bit systems (at the time) that could utilize their features. Huh? This was at a time when truly INDEPENDENT reviews (like SimHQ) showed that the Athlon64 consistently smoked any Intel CPU in actual FS performance! Of course, Flightsim.com had a commercial deal with Dell (which didn't use AMD processors at the time), as I assume they must now have with "Jetline Systems." As far as I'm concerned there's a clear conflict of interest at Flightsim.com that totally destroys their credibility. And to make matters worse, Flightsim.com uses the pre-SP1 version of FSX for their "review," even though the review was written two months after SP1 was released!!! Who cares about a version of FSX that no one in their right mind would actually run, especially on a high-end system? It just makes the reviewers look like a bunch of amateurs. Sorry for the rant. Anyway, I'm reading in other threads in this forum that you can get very impressive FSX performance, even with an overclocked "entry-level" Core 2 Duo CPU. Seems it won't be necessary to break the bank to get greatly improved FSX performance. Definitely time for me to upgrade my hardware... I just need help with some of the trickier details. - Lee

Hi Lee,I was interested to read your views on flightsim.com etc. Re: Video CardsAt present FSX only uses DirectX 9 of course, and the 640MB 8800GTS can cope with the 1600 x 1200 native resolution of my screen. Perhaps that's why it came out better than the 8800GTX - the extra memory and power of the GTX can't be used effectively? Thinking ahead though to when the DirectX 10 patch is released, that will add further detail to the image requiring more video memory so perhaps the 8800GTX will then come into its own?Re CPUs:I'm still torn between the quad Q6600 and faster dual E6850 (when it's available). If FSX SP1 uses all 4 cores, then the Q6600 should be better (I think) at downloading scenery while also managing the flying. Anyone able to make an honest comparison yet?Re RAM:A 32 bit Vista system tops out at around 3 1/2 MB of RAM. But most reports say that much RAM isn't that significant in maximising PC performance so is it worthwhile going from 2MB to 4MB. It all comes down to compromises between price and performance so I think I'll stop at 2MB. (As previously discussed I don't fancy buying a 64 bit Vista system only to find problems in getting drivers for my existing printers etc.)Regards,Chris