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Guest smileypaul

Overwhelmed by hardware decision

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Guest smileypaul

Hi Guys, this is my first post on this forum. A little about myself, I've been contracted to build several PC's for a company. The last PC that needs to be built is for the owners personal use. He owns a Flight Maintenance training company, and is looking for a PC that he can run FSX on. I personally have no experience with FSX (or any FS_ for that matter), and have decided to ask for advice from the pro's when it comes to hardware. I've been researching the hardware requirements, and FSX as a simulator for about 3 months when i started refreshing the first of his companies PC's. Knowing that eventually, i'd have to make a serious decision for him, i prepared myself by doing months of research.So.. the time has come, and after learning that this game seems to trump almost all acceptably priced hardware out there, I'm a bit overwhelmed and stumped.He has high expectations of this game, and explaining to him that the game is very CPU limited will just make him stare at me awkwardly. His goals are to run 3 monitors. More specifically, 3 projectors at some point.. I assume the projectors he has do not support serious resolutions, i assume 1024x768 .. this is just an eventual goal, I assume that even running 2 monitors in FSX is near impossible with all of the rendering that is required.My current thoughts for hardware are ;Intel E8400 - simply because overclocking the Q6600 to this speed will be a bit of effort.nVidia GX260 - this was just released, i was hoping that someone could share a 'success story' with this card. Clearly if he wants to run 3 monitors, 2 of these would be required. Lets just focus on one large monitor for now. I'm hoping driver issues are the reason for its performance right now.The rest is trivial, 3gigs of nicely timed RAM, a fast hard drive, A nice large case for expansion later, a decent motherboard which would allow 2 x PCIe 16x , and of course a decent CPU cooler for a mild over clock.From your experience? What are acceptable frame rates in FSX, and what hardware was used to achieve it? I understand that every situation is different, but it's nice to have a starting point.Thanks in advance.Paul

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I would personally go for E8500, but I think there is no much difference between those two.Don't got with newest cards, it doesn't mean they are faster. And also, FSX is much more CPU dependant then GPU. There are many posts around this forum, we are discussing in other thread why is FSX slow on a quad core with triple 9800...FPS are not going to be all that great, is what I read from forums. I tried installing FSX MANY times, always came down to going back to FS9. Simply flight enjoyment is much nicer with FS9 than FSX - I like the fluidity of gauges and sim itself, and its more important to me than beautiful scenery. In the end, it comes down to flying, rather than eye-candy I think.Acceptable? I like 30-40fps. FSX or FS9, all the same.Hardware, FS9? Anything current...E8500 will do nicely. FSX? None :D (WITH addons like Wilco Airbus, PMDG Boeing...). I am not even talking default aircraft, ugh...Welcome to the forums btw. :)

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Welcome to the forum - be prepared for a lot of differing opinions.Yes, hardware is critical BUT even with good hardware, the OS really needs to be set up correctly. Forget Vista. A clean install of XP is your starter. http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/Ya...197380641/15#22This is a good starter. There are several posts by NickN on the proper way to setup a system for FSX and if followed will give super results.There is no comparison between FSX and FS9, even with FS9's add-ons BUT the FSX system must be set properly.I was amazed that after following Nick's advice I was able to increase my settings and also increase my framerates w/o stutters, etc.My system below typically gets 22 - 35FPS in most areas with weather enabled. High density areas like LAX & JFK drop the frames to 10 - 15 occasionally but still flyable. I run two monitors, a 28" and a 22" at 1920x1200 & 1680x1050 respectively.If you just buy the hardware and put it together, your customer will NOT be satisfied but if you take the time to set it up properly......The same tweak will work diffferently on each system which is why you really need to *tune* the hardware after you get it all set up. Should take the major part of a day to do it right.Good luck,VicQ6600 G0 CPU 2.4 o/c 3.65Evga 680i A1 with P31 BIOS 2G XP2-8500 DDR2 1066FSB Mushkin 996535 RAM 5-5-4-12-2T320G 7200 HD partitioned for XP/Programs 2 - 74G Raptors in RAID0 500G 7200 HD for backup SATA DVD burner Evga 8800GTS 640 PCIx XG 174.74 702/1620/792Kandalf LCS case w/ built in liquid cooling 850W Thermaltake power supplyhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-supporter-sigbanner.jpg


 

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"nVidia GX260 - this was just released, i was hoping that someone could share a 'success story' with this card. Clearly if he wants to run 3 monitors, 2 of these would be required. Lets just focus on one large monitor for now. I'm hoping driver issues are the reason for its performance right now."The GX260 may be too new to get any meaningful input for flight simulator use. There is a discussion thread on the hardware forum which seems to indicate a wait-and-see attitude by most simmers.For 3 monitors, a Matrox TripleHead2Go unit might be considered in lieu of two video cards, but I can't vouch for either method.ArtBiostar TF560-A2+, Athlon 64X2-6000+, 4GB RAM, Geforce 8800GTS-320MB, 500W PSU, 250GB HD, FSX (SP1-SP2), Vista Home Premium 32 bit, CH Yoke & Pedals, 22" WS LCD monitor


Art

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Guest djt01

>I personally have no experience with FSX (or any FS_ for that>matter), and have decided to ask for advice from the pro's>when it comes to hardware. >Your best bet is to start doing some research in good hardware forums. Flight Sim forums might be a good place to get info on add-ons but when it comes to hardware it

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