>A PCI-E 4X buss>provides plenty of capacity to allow its card to operate at>100%. Might we conclude that a PCI-E 4X buss provides adequate>capacity for Any modern Vcard? How could it be otherwise? Sam, to make it perfectly clear, how much capacity does PCI-E 4X allow, and what sort of capacity does the top vCard require? This is where the rubber meets the road and knowing the numbers will definitely help me make a decision on whether the $100 is worth it, down the road a ways. The question comes from wanting to be able to use pretty much any vCard between now and let's say, 4 years from now, and now have the buss capacity come into play. Do you know the numbers Sam?

"Mr. Phelps, should you decide to accept this assignment . . . and If any members of your team were caught, we will disavow any knowledge of . . ." What are the numbers? Exactly? This has been my question too and it has proven to be Mission Impossible. The Vcard folks talk in Giga transfers GTs and the buss folks talk in Giga bites Gb. I can't crack the code. That wiki page shows the buss capacities, but I haven't been able to translate Gbs into GTs. So, Mr. Phelps . . .Anecdotal evidence is the best I've been able to derive. IF cards are fully functional on a PCI-E 4X buss (1GB/s, aka AGP 4X), THEN we have another 4x to go until we run out of bandwidth at PCI-E 16X (4GB/s, aka AGP 8X). Note these are upper case "B"s. As a indicator of rate of change, note the 'aka' references. This is simply more anecdotal evidence, but it's all I've got. It appears we still only need an AGP 4X buss capability. That means Vcard capability must quadruple to use the capacity I currently have with PCI-E 16X. I will be able to upgrade my Vcard to 4 times its current capability. But let's say it even goes beyond that and we get massive increases in Vcard capability. If this Does occur, the Vcard that finally needs 4X+ this buss capacity will be well beyond anything my obsolete QX9999 CPU can utilize. Actually, we ran out of CPU 2X ago! Remember this is a team sport and I will Not be able to upgrade my CPU. Intel's Very next gen CPU will use Quickpath instead of a FSB an engage an entirely different philosophy . . . and mobo. By any reasonable assessment (imHo), there is No upgrade path for a current build beyond PCI-E 16X, anecdotally speaking.

Well, but you know by now you are not dealing with a reasonable person, no?! I'm leaning towards a P5E Sam. I know I know, I'm definitely falling for the hype. But, again, is there no need for the voltage-amping-under-load capability of Maximus that I should fork over another $30 for one of them? You mentioned that before.On the clearer side, I liked the OCZ memory from newegg. It was a little more pricey than the Patriot Missle Ram, but hey it got 5 star ratings from neweggers! Amazing cheap price! This is no BS, my first PC had 8mb of memory, and thsse modules cost: $400.

I don

>I don

>

The Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 was one that I have heard good things about and has most likely gotten better with BIOS revisions. Gigabyte does make a very high quality motherboard and almost became partners with Asus in 2006. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3077

FSX is 20 to 30% GPU Dependent especially if youve got a large monitor like mine.

Sam n Greg n yes, Jourdog, I'm all done but the vCard. Thank you kindly for your help and insight, and especially the prose Sam!The men in white suits are assembling my straight jacket as we speak!Ordered yesterday n today:4 x 2GB Muskin PC-6400 DDR800 with CAS5 timings. It was . . . $79 for each 2 pack kit. That is hard to beat, and what the hey, 4 matched modules. All the memory looked fine, the corsair XMS2 and this mushkin were favored in terms of very few problems from users at newegg, in the end the Mush was cheaper, but not by much!The OCZ Power n PC cooling 750W. A little headroom for sure, but after running the power supply needs utility, it's reasonable. It's all my 15K scsi drives and now this huge quantity of memory.XP Pro SP2: I'm still on Win2K! I will do V64 in a few months, in a dual boot config. V64 is a nice thing to look towards in the future. Yep, the insane QX9650 Retail. I figure i'm in for another 5 years so that's doable. I tried a Best Offer on eBay for a new Retail, but was shuttering the think about following up any issues with a seller from who knows where. It was rejected, but I got the thing at the bes price I could find, which as you know, wasn't pretty. I'm cool with it--I spend a fair amount of time and fun with this sucker, and it is a first for me to start with higher end parts in 17 years of computing. Further, it is a total steal, today's deals on parts, versus that first PC I had assembled for me. I went with a P5E after all. A little less than the Max Form, but not too bad at newegg at $229. I remain intrigued by Crossfire. The 1GB mushkin modules with the same timings were verified as certified, tho this and the value of dual 16x PCIe slots may be in question as you say Sam. I will have a pretty non-stressed FSB, so I'm guessing crossfire will work.What remains is the video card. I'd REALLY like to wait for 9800 or whatever you said was coming along from nV. I will probably think a while before picking up a video card. The 8800GT is def the one to nail over the short term, so that is my first pick so far.Thanks again for the assistance. Helped me settle my mind on these choices. Hope to come back n report how it all went sometime when the vC is resolved, and when I have the time to do a whole upgrade. Old parts going to my wife, including a new case from zoomzip, for a lousy $29--it was a nice blue Coolermaster Centurian. Good nuff!Cheers,Noel

I was holding off in this 'til we saw something on order. Although the price to value ratio might be too bad. Apple has theirs out for about $3Khttp://wing-fell-off.blogspot.com/FSX loves Skulltrail and just gobbled up those extra cores. If you feed it, it will eat. Octicores are here, now. Later, when Nehalem's 32nm gen 2 arrives in 18 months with an Octi on a single chip, we'll be immediately at 16 cores. We'll be at 36 cores with Nehalem's 24nm follow-on by what, 2010-11? That's how far we are from a 10Xin' Any quad at Any clockspeed. Since I'm already committed, one might sense a lack of excitement about 30%, even 50% increases from a quad at 3.6Ghz. These increases seem so totally irrelevant to what's just around the corner. I was sight seeing over Manhatten at with everything at maximum res. Hi water, Boom, Autogen, the works, but AI off. Managed 15 FPS in the Trike. With Ultimate Terrain, textures and AG kept up just fine at 50knot. But I did see my ram load to 3.6 gig. I really wish I had more ram headroom. Looked like it wanted more. I'm bettin' that 8 gig is going to be put to work once you get 64bits loaded up. The 1st pricing rumors on the 9800GX2 popped up today. 1st hint is > than the Ultra at > $600 bucks. Ugh. The 1st performance rumors are 30% better than a $250 8800GT. Double Ugh. That's simply Too painful. The GT may just end up being the one for the forseeable future. Darn!

Woah! Very impressive use of multicore. That at least bodes well for my quad core. Memory and mainboards will cost I'm sure, so I'm ok with P5E that will be here in a day or two. But this is very hopefull.Is the implication that something in the chipset actually imparts better multicore processing independent of the application? If so, that is beyond huge. I can't believe that's true--it's too simple!I have another idea I'm toying with. I really would like to wait till the next gen nV 9800GTX comes along. It sounds impressive, and right now a 8800GT would still struggle with, for example, Crysis. So, I'm inclined to pick up a cheap temporary solution to tie me over.What do you think about this: neweggs got a PowerColor X1950 PRO 512MB for $159 right now. I'm not going to use FSX for a while anyway, so could work. I'm bidding on one in eBay right now for . . . $31. On the other hand: I better post this question at the top of the hardware forum as it is one that is critical to the decision to go 8800GT or not . . . so off to pose this question . . .

If only it were so, but there's nothing magic about that hardware. Enabling multicore functionality is entirely in software's court. I'm working through Crysis right now. High settings are completely playable . . . in typical Fry Cry glory. It's magic what these guys can do. My 4 cores are hoppin' with equal gusto all the way through. Managed to get out of that darn mountain last night . . . at 0300! The 8800GT is working fine. The screen always comes right up at 1920x1080 in DX10 . . . and it just works. What a nice change from battling FSX. I'm still convinced this is the gaming software group that is leading the way. The 9800GTX will be a double. Nvidia's release will be driven by an ATI double and ATI's got nothin'. If you are seriously wanting to wait, don't expect the 9800GTX until next Christmas. The GT's price point has always been $200. It's only the shortage that has the price at $300. I had to bribe-a-geek to get mine last month, but I made my first sighting of an 8800GT 'in the wild' on a Best Buy shelf just today. Right out in the open. There were 3 of them. It's a sign. A year is too long to wait. bite the bullet. The MSI version can be had for $225 here and there. I was always going to run 3-4 monitors on my system and needed 2 Vcards (that's really why I went with the P5K). The 8800GT had not come out yet so I bought my second(ary) Vcard first. I ran my 8400GS as a primary card for a month. FS ran, but at very low visual settings. It was such a pleasure to get that GT on board. It was the first time I had ever experienced the impression of weight with the PMDG 744. It was all I could do to handle the 'feel' or a real airplane. The GT will provide maximum eye-candy. Just get a good terrain addon and leave AI/Autogen low-to-lower. It'll run silky smooth. You are so close. Don't give it all up for an extra hundred bucks. Without a compatible Vcard, the Q is, ahhh, . . . significantly underutilized.

BTW, just updated to the 169.28 Nvidia Beta driver. The 8800GT's 3DMark06 SM2 performance now beats ATI's new 3870X2 dual GPU offering at 4844 (ATI @ 4494) and made up ground on SM3 at 4145 (ATI @ 4476). The 8800GTS/512 is about 15% stronger than the GT. I expect it would fully outrun the 3870X2 at every turn. Also, Crossfire (and SLI) will only drive one monitor unless you run it with a $300 THtoG video splitter box. Something else to consider if you have aspirations of a more traditional, variously sized, multi-monitor setup.