Due to outside pressures I was side-tracked from my beloved hobby for around 12 months. I'm back with renewed enthusiasm and vigour and expected to experience a positive shift toward FSX with the advent of Vista. NOT SO! (I hear you cry).So, where are we at? I'm seeing posts mooting FS11 and my understanding is that FSX is a far superior product to FS9 but short of a 'mainframe' that would dim the lights of a small city to run it adequately, many have resorted to the tried and true FS9. I gotta tell you people, I'm confused. Moores Law seems to have taken quite a 'hit' lately as well, with the 2 big guys producing dual and quadruple cored CPU's in an attempt to satiate the hunger for speed and bandwidth. I point out at this juncture, other than the afforementioned 'mainframe', the PC system has not been invented yet that can run Vista with all the sliders to the right, matching the speed of higher-end systems running XP.... DDR3, SLI, 2gb RAM (base) are also with us. M$ has decided to support XP until the return of Christ (not out of benevolence I suspect but more because of the disappointing uptake of Vista not to mention the reluctance of big business/Governments etc. to institute 'change' for the sake of 'change')All of these aspects have confused the bejeezus out of the marketplace (me too) and I have no idea which way to jump with my next computer build. Rockefeller is not my surname, though, I'm willing to unload some reasonably serious money. Obviously, I want to get as much bang for my buck as I am able. So, here's the dilemma:Would it be advisable to stick with my trusty 2.8ghz single core system running FS9 for another 12 months until hardware catches-up with software (big maybe) or 'take a punt' and build now?I recall expressing the same confusion 12 months ago and little appears to have changed.Jon Shearer

John,The question is do you want to run FSX now or do you want to wait. FSX was not designed any differently than FS9 when it was released. It was not designed to max out all of the sliders upon release. It was designed to be future proof just as FS9 was. When FS11 is released the same again will be true...it will be future proof and at the time of release is going to tax the best PC available. As for hardware, well you can pretty much guarantee that what ever you purchase will not be the latest and greatest in 6 to 12 months. As with anything of an electronic nature these days..."the minute you buy it, it's obsolete."..there will always be something a little bit better.As for Vista vs. XP. I've been running Vista since it's release and its great although the internet is great place for misinformation regarding the OS(especially those self proclaimed experts that have never used it). DX10 is another story and its across the board (all games not just FSX) at this point in time it flat out stinks.You are the only one who can make the decision to run FSX. If you decide you want to, you can build a solid system to run FSX for a very fair price at this time. You may want to think of purchasing a good overclockable motherboard and CPU. FSX is clock hungry and will take anything you can throw at it.FSX is simply awesome.....you should think of building a new rig and give it try (you'll still be able to use FS9 should you want to).

Nehalem will be the next architecture update in late 08. It won't be much. Just more quad core tweaking. The largest performance boost in hardware capability will still be plain ol' core speed and Nehalem will cap in the low 3ghz range. Ho Humm. Next up will be Sandybridge. That will be 2010-ish. It's still too early to tell what that new architecture will be, however it's primary claim to fame will be 8-16 cores. Don't expect anything above 4.0Ghz for the forseeable future. The next decade of advancements will be about adding cores. Sandybridge's shrink to 27nm is rumbling about 32cores (some of those will be video). Your best bet is to get a quad core now that will run as fast as you can afford, then wait 2-3 years for Sandybrige. I suggest this because for the next 2-3 years, the biggest - Potential - performance increases will NoT be hardware related . . . it will be software's ability to use multiple cores. If you get a strong quad now, you will have good single core capability (yes, FSX) and be future proofed for the next 2-3 years as the software folks finally start taking Serious advantage of what you already have sitting in your socket. Which quad NoW? With a $60 aircooler, a Q6600 will get 3.6ghz for $275. A Q9650 will goto 4.0ghz (+400Mhz) for $1100 with that same cooler, or go to 5ghz+ with a multi-thousand $$$ cooling setup. The cost / performance ratio gets outrageous in a big hurry. Speed costs. How fast do you want to go.