Ok... so, I have a little budget to play with for my CPU/GPU(s?) choices. I primarily intend on running FSX at 1680x1050 (native res on my 22"). Other games maybe as well, but FS will dominate.Here are the CPUs and GPUs I'm considering, but I'm more than open to other suggestions:CPUs:* E8400 ($200, Hopeful OC to 3.6 GHz)* Q6600 ($220, Hopeful OC to 3.0 GHz)* Q9300 ($280, Hopeful OC to 3.0 GHz)* Q9450 ($300, Hopeful OC to 3.2 GHz)GPU:* eVGA 8800GT AKIMBO ($240, Possible SLI 2x?)* eVGA 8800GTS 512MB ($255)* eVGA 9800GTX 512MB ($300-$350 Depending on Factory OC)Now, I understand the many discussions regarding FSX being CPU intensive. I have other games to play, but really, FSX performance is my greatest concern. I'm sure I will find Crysis gorgeous even if the settings aren't all cranked up to max. And between FSX and Crysis, I don't see how I could tax my system any more from a CPU/GPU perspective.The other caveat... I don't have an unlimited budget. If I did, I'd go for a 9800 GX2 and a QX9650 for like $1600 bucks and be done with it. I'm looking for a sweet spot that will make FSX shine.I've been told that at my "lower" resoluion, SLI wouldn't really assist me, hence the possibility of a beefier card. I don't know how much I should think about SLIing in the future either. I can save at least $70 by going without an SLI MoBo. When thinking about SLI originally, I thought about the eVGA 750i SLI FTW at $200. I can get any number of solid GigaByte MoBos for $130 or less otherwise if I dont SLI. If nothing else, would an SLI capable MoBo be better "future proofing," or is it just pissing $$$ away for better single card solutions?Ok, well... I really hope to make something good happen with FSX. I've been out of simming for so long it's unreal, and I want a sim that is silky and delicious to the eyes. I've always settled for lesser systems in the past, but now I have the patience to make this thing good. Your input is greatly appreciated.~Nate

I'm in the same boat as you, building a computer mainly for fsx. I'm no expert but here's what I've done so far. I bought a Q6600 because of the price and overclocking potential. I've got it up to 3.6 but took it back down to 3.0 and 3.2 because I don't really know what I'm doing and don't want to fry something. For graphics cards I've tried out an ATI HD3870, nVidia 8800GS, 8800GT, and most recently a 9800GTX. For image quality, go for nVidia w/ nHancer.I first bought an Abit P35 motherboard and 8GB 800 RAM. My mother's motherboard went out so I gave her mine and got an ASUS 750i board thinking that PCI-E 2.0 would make a difference after reading an article on Tom's hardware review. I ran a fsx benchmark that I found on avsim with both of the motherboards and used nHancer for the nVidia cards. I started to bench the 8800GT and the 9800GTX but was really disappointed by the results from the 750i so I stopped. The P35 are the graphs and the 750i is the text (sorry I didn't take the time to put them all in nice looking graphs). Here's what I got @3.0 GHz on both boards:All Sliders to the Max:http://www.iwilliams.org/fs/bench/BMax1.jpgAverage 8800GT: 6.2Average 9800GTX: 6.8Global Ultra High:http://www.iwilliams.org/fs/bench/BUltra1.jpgAverage 8800GT: 12.5Average 9800GTX: 18.0Global High:http://www.iwilliams.org/fs/bench/BHigh1.jpgAverage 8800GT: 14.9Average 9800GTX: 29.43DMark06:http://www.iwilliams.org/fs/bench/3DMark06.jpg8800GT: 12,4309800GTX: 13,482After seeing those results I am going to rma the 750i and go back to the P35. What's interesting is that I get a higher 3DMark06 scores with the 750i but about half the frames in fsx. But by seeing the improvement of the 9800gtx above the 8800gt in the 750i I'm excited to see what the 9800GTX will do in the P35 motherboard.On a side note it also seems that fsx doesn't use 4gb of ram so I ordered 4gb ddr2 1000 as I hear that the faster memory is better for fsx, but I didn't want to shell out $250+ for ddr3 ram. I would like to get an x38 motherboard, but I've spent enough money already.

I went with an E8500 for now. Not a quad. I can always drop a quad in, if I need to. The E8500 will overclock like gangbusters too, if you put 2 sticks of memory with it, and a decent motherboard.I also got an 8800GTX, because:a) I decided to use Vista64 with 4gb ram:( it has 768mb of vid memc) it has a 384-bit memory interfaced) it has dropped in price from $600 to $400.e) proven winner in FSX despite the nV driver shortcomingsWill the 9800GTX be a better card? I think probably it will be.Right now, the 9800GTX:a) has 512mb vid mem:( has a 256-bit mem interfacec) is pretty inexpensive relatively speakingd) its driver set is immature right nowI think either card will be fine. The 9800GTX probably has more room for improvement; it's already benching nicely, although raw fps doesn't tell the whole story with drivers.You are in my opinion hamstringing your computer by putting DDR2 memory with a Penryn setup. It's like having a thouroughbred racehorse with a shackle on its back legs.$400 for 4gb may sound excessive but let me tell you, in the old days I spent $500 for 16 *megabytes* of memory.RhettE8500, Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64

Thanks for the replies so far.Ok... first, everything I read is that FSX is heavy on the CPU, with clock speed being king. With them taking advantage of the multi-core processing now though, I figured some extra cash on that end would be worth it.Second, I've read that FSX has some compatability problems with NVIDIA cards. Anyone know how much that affects things? I really haven't even considered offerings from ATI, but I've heard fairly good things about ATI and FSX together.It kind of sucks that there aren't any solid opinions what video cards are best... but I guess that's because there are so many good choices.Third, DDR3, I've seen no benchmarks that indicate that DDR3 is worth a toss compared to DDR2 for the kind of price premium there is right now. I'd rather load up with 8 Gigs of DDR2 RAM at 4-4-4-15 for $200 personally.So, do I just play is "safe" and drop $200 on the E8400 and try to OC her to 3.6 GHz (that's only a modest 20%, and I have a very highly rated 3rd party cooler)? Am I going to get much out of extra cash in to a quad core setup?~Nate

>Thanks for the replies so far.>>Ok... first, everything I read is that FSX is heavy on the>CPU, with clock speed being king. With them taking advantage>of the multi-core processing now though, I figured some extra>cash on that end would be worth it.>Either way you can't really get much in the way of single-core processors these days, so with either 2 or 3 or 4 cores you'll be sitting fine.>Second, I've read that FSX has some compatability problems>with NVIDIA cards. Anyone know how much that affects things? FSX works fine with nVidia cards. Probably some of the negative things you've heard have to do with DX10 mode, which has issues anyway.>I really haven't even considered offerings from ATI, but I've>heard fairly good things about ATI and FSX together.>Have you heard about heavy clouds and ATI cards? They don't play well together at present. This might improve over time with drivers, however. nV is slightly worse in image quality compared to ATI 3870 series, but that is my subjective opin and it's very close. The clouds issue was too much for me though, I fly in clouds sometimes.>>Third, DDR3, I've seen no benchmarks that indicate that DDR3>is worth a toss compared to DDR2 for the kind of price premium>there is right now. I'd rather load up with 8 Gigs of DDR2>RAM at 4-4-4-15 for $200 personally.>Not if you have the X38 or X48 chipset + FSX you wouldn't. :) Ultimately indeed it does come down to how much $ you want to spend, but I know what DDR3 can do with the X38/X48 and FSX. You can still do amazing things with DDR2 and get a DDR2-rig in the same performance ballpark as a DDR3. But benchmarks don't tell the whole story with FSX performance. You need to see Nick Needham's thread about DDR3 + FSX to see the whole picture.Also you don't need 8 gigs unless you're running CAD apps or heavy into vid editing and the like. FSX+addons won't even use 4gb much less 8.Also, you'll have more trouble overclocking to your 3.6 ghz if you have 8gb ram. I am not saying you can't do it, but with all mem slots populated you will have to finesse things more to get that. Probably with a Penryn 3.6 it is more do-able. I've gotten 3.8 out of my Penryn with stock voltages, just playing around, not even doing any serious tweaking. I was pretty impressed.>So, do I just play is "safe" and drop $200 on the E8400 and>try to OC her to 3.6 GHz (that's only a modest 20%, and I have>a very highly rated 3rd party cooler)? Am I going to get much>out of extra cash in to a quad core setup?>>~NateThe way I thought about it was this: cpu's are cheap now; I can get a quad for $200-$300 if I want to, and drop it right in the socket. I'll do that if the E8500 starts blurry-ing.On the other hand, I wanted to go for 4.0 ghz range on an overclock, and that would be a tall order for an air cooled quad core. So I got the dual E8500 for now. And no blurries in FSX.I'm running an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro; fits in my Silverstone tower case no problem; my idle temps are about 31degC and 51degC under load, and when I overclocked it, it got to 55 degC under Prime95 loading. I like Zalman cpu coolers. Look at them. Also look at the Thermalright Ultra series of cpu coolers.RhettE8500, Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64

My system is an E-8400, modestly overclocked to 3.5 gHz (I know it will go higher still). I also have an EVGA 8800 GT, and I've been very pleased with this setup. I don't have all the sliders maxed, but I do have them set reasonably high or quite high in most cases. There are very few places where my FPS dips below 25 FPS - my test area is LAX and I hold pretty steady from 23 to 25 FPS.cheers

Reference DX10 Mode...Is it really problematic? Should I plan on sticking with DX9?I'm thinking E8400 will be the order of the day then. Leaning toward an 8800GTS (G92 Core) and OC that to 8800 GT AKIMBO speeds (720 clock). A damned shame I just got my RAM in the other day too... still though, tough for me to justify that $$$ right now.~Nate

K, don't hate me but just a couple of things that I've noticed. I too grabbed 8GB of ram only to find that fsx doesn't use more than 4 (3 something) and that may be due to the fact that it's written for 32 and not 64 bit systems? So when I threw my other 4 gigs in there was no difference at all, but at least you can have a ton of stuff open though :)With my Q6600 one core is used 100% of the time and the other three vary depending on the location. In the big cities all 4 are at 100% and in the country the other three are like 20 ish, but then again that's where you will get the most fps. So I'm not sure if a supper fast dual will beat a medium quad or not but my guess is that you will get more frames in the country but not the city going that route. Someone who's got one should bench it.My personal opinion is to stick with nVidia cards. My 3870 didn't have the quality that the nVidia cards had when run with nHancer and shimmered just a tad bit more and was horrid in any cloud (including haze). I ran that one on global high where I ran the nVidia cards on Ultra High. Also based on the benchmark from Tom's hardware the 8800GT and the GTS are practically the same. On my benchmark the 8800GS was very close to the 8800GT and I would expect the 8800GTS to be even closer.During lunch today I installed FSX (w/SP2) in Windows XP Pro on the 750i motherboard and benched the 9800GTX on Global Ultra High. The Average was lower than on Vista64 which surprised me. (I can't recall the numbers off the top of my head, I'll have to look it up when I get home.)

Get a 3870x2, why deal with the nvidia issues with fsx. The only card the 3870x2 wont beat in crysis is the 9800gx2, so it will be great for fsx, and ample for other games.

Comdex will be the 1st week of June and Nvidia may intro a new card. Might be worth waiting for.http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=c...=7273&Itemid=34

Had a look at the 750i/PCIe-v2 vs the P35/PCIE-(v1) comparisons. Very interesting. Notice all the Vcards on the P35 show (virtually) identical results, when the 8800GT should be miles ahead of the GS, or even the 3870. This means something other than the Vcards were limiting preformance. Actually, these benchies provide a perfect example of how FSX is CPU limited. ALL the FPS results were strictly depicting the maximum capability of the CPU. They don't compare Vcard performance at all. Notice even the 9800GTX on the 750i/PCIe-v2 board provides a result identical to all 3 cards on the P35/PCIE-(v1) board. Once again, even the 9800GTX cannot help. These runs are ALL CPU limited. We finally see the Vcard's relative performance on 3DMark. As we would expect the GT runs away from the GS and the 3870. The 750i's PCIe-2 capacity gives the GT another ~ 1.5%. That's within what one might call a 'margin of error.' PCIe-v2 makes no difference. This means the PCIe-v1 buss is NoT limiting Vcard performance, so far. PCIe-v2 boards are not needed, yet. I saw Tom's article too, but we are Not seeing those results here. Tom's method of physically taping off Vcard busses sounded a bit 'hacky' to me. Tom was an electrical novice playing a big guessing game. Do they know what additional information might be occurring on those busses? It's a wonder they didn't catch something on fire. In my opinion, your test provides a much more accurate and seriously considered result. What IS interesting is the 8800GT fell off badly on the 750i. 3Dmark describes PCIe-v2 vs v1 does Not matter (+ ~ 1%) . . . at least with the 8800GT. Nvidia's Intel mobo chipsets have a rep for creating hidden performance deficiencies. Their 6X0 sets topped SATAII's 375MB/s capable buss at ~ 110MB/s. No one saw it cuz even now, SATAII drives are just now hitting that buss limit. Shame on them. Did they do it again with their implementation of the PCIe v2 buss? It sure looks like it. My guess it that something's broke with that chip set.Good benchies. Thanks for the effort. Tom's should hire you!