Now Everyone this is a straight forward perfect FSX Setup. Dont worry about trying to tune up to massive amounts of speed just do this. Buy some decent water cooling and an Asus Maximus Extreme Motherboard (Comes with Sound Card and Cooling so dont install a heatsink).Buy a QX9650 and with your Asus Board with the built in cooler and your water cooling overclock your QX9650 to 4.7GHz.Get 2,3 or 4GB of RAM Do not Buy 2GB ModulesWINDOWS XP.Buy an 8800Ultra for now then upgrade to the 9800GTX (NEXT YEAR)Use at MAX a 22 inch screen. Any bigger your FPS will drop and your 2d panel will be stretched beyond something good.Install SP1. Set FSX Anti-Aliasing, Light Bloom, Anisotropic Filtering and MAX Screen Resolution. Set all custom sliders to max (Except Traffic)and select options that are required for better graphics. Set FPS to Unlimited. Go to your FSX.cfg and add these 2 lines under [TERRAIN]TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=6000TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=6000 and under the [DISPLAY] you should find a line saying TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 erase the 40 and put 400 it gets textures to load faster.They give you more buildings and trees and it looks better.With the Traffic Settings unless you are running a processor that is at 5GHz or more (like i am) dont set traffic above 75%. I recommend 50 to 60 percent. plus real airports never have absolute 100% Traffic it usually is about 50 - 60 percent and at MAX 85%. I just like the traffic so i set 100% lol. If you want to play max settings well as soon as possible buy your self an 8800Ultra. If you want to save money and have 10FPS better than what you would get with an 8800 ultra then wait till January when the 9800GTX and GTS comes out. With all of this you should achieve 30FPS or higher no matter where you fly. Hope this helps.Jourdog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol.

in the fsx.cfg under terrain add the first two and under display do the second one. THANKS,JOURDOG

Sorry to keep posting but with water cooling you may be able to push it higher than 4.7GHz. One guy did a run on 5.4GHz but that was just a quick run. I reckon if you do everything properly you might get to 5GHz

Not sure if your 'lol' at the end of your original post means its a joke or not :)Anyhow, if true you have the fastest FSX setup ever, please post some screen shots with FPS and location so we can compare...Post some pics of your PC / MB/ Cooling too :)Use pBase.com if needed can upload a number of full size images for free...

hi,my lol is because of how many exclamation marks i added. And actually that is not my setup i run my processor at 5.7GHz.Also i cant take any photos cause im going away for my holiday tomorrow. Ill bring my laptop so i can still talk. As soon as I get back ill send some pics

4.7GHz on water cooling is good enough for 50-60 percent traffics everything on max. 4.7Ghz is nothing for some good water cooling. You just do the clock and stay there for the rest of the FSX era.

>Get 2,3 or 4GB of RAM Do not Buy 2GB ModulesWhats wrong with 2 GBy RAM Modules?

Its harder to overclock with 2GB Modules so instead of getting a 4.7GHz overclock you will only reach 4.5.

Im interested in your "setup," but that doesn't add up. What FSB speed are you running and on what multiplier? What's your juice setup like? Ram speeds? Ram:CPU ratio? You're not hitting 5.7 unless you're running a cascade.I've got EVERYTHING in my PC watercooled including dual rads (see sig) and I know my way around wet systems pretty good, having built 4 now. I just don't want to see someone go out and spend all the money on parts you reccomended and not be able to have the performance they've expected. If you post up a CPU-Z shot, I will print this post and eat it for breakfast, but in the mean time I think your claims on 5.7GHz with just a simple CPU water cooler are unfounded.

Besides, why are you reccomending people buy nVidia cards for a Crossfire board? I'd save the $100 anyway and get an nVidia 780i board. 3 way SLi is sweet, something you can't do with the Maximus. That Maximus is already outdated. Besides, the nVidia 780/790 chipset will STOMP that Intel X38.

OK just letting you know that sli isnt good with fsx you get better performance with a single graphics card that is very powerful plus what about the 9800GX2 that 2 9800's not in sli but two of them. Have you thought about that. My multiplier is 15. FSB is 380. And by the way i am using a cascade. A triple-stage cascade at -130 degrees. Asus Maximus Extreme is good because it is the best overclocking platform and it comes with a built in better-than-air cooler. SLI with FSX is a waste. A single graphics card in fsx is better. Im telling everyone this twice because its the truth.My RAM is 4GB. And by the way i never said i was using water cooling to get to 5.7GHz i said with water cooling you can get to 4.7 or a little bit more. i use a cascade. And trust me i tested fsx on 4.7GHz with 50% trafiics and everything on max and 30FPS.

I know a single card is better. I don't run SLi when in FSX, I have each one of my screens hooked up to 1 video card so when I move windows around it doesn't hurt performance. It seems wierd to me you're only getting 30fps, I get that and my system is nowhere near yours. I'm talking about on the ground, KSEA for example. Not up at 41,000 feet. Have you got any pics of your setup? Or a CPU-Z screenshot?The 9800GX2's I'v never heard of. If they dont' want a repeat of the god-awfiul 7950GX2's they'd smarten up and steer away from that. The G92 core is a good one, and has the potential to knock the socks off the old G80's. Even the 8800Ultra is simply to slow and uses too much power pound for pound compared to the G92 core. I suggest you do some research.

Hi john i mean i tried out fsx on 4.7GHz and got 30FPS on my 5.7GHz i got 45FPS, ive done alot of research and the 9800GX2 comes out on Feb 19. The asus does support it. I also researched the processors and the QX9770 is very hot. It emitts 30 watts more than the 9650 just for an increase of 6% clock speed and the heat was exactly the same.

Nvidia is doing weird stuff since its actually releasing the GX2 before the GTX. The 9800GTX is still double as powerful as the ultra though so you should get a pretty big increase in FPS.

Also the Asus isnt a Crossfire Board it just supports crossfire.