Hi, first time post I've been flying FS9 a bit painfully on an old P4 2.4ghz with a lone 512mb of Ram with a 9600 Pro for eight years...This year at least at the start of next year plan to upgrade my pc. I'm going to pass on the i7's too new and I'd rather not have a $1600 pc with more bugs than a roach motel. If by the start of 09 the price of the mobos and ram drop enough I might consider that 920 just right now. I really would like to see more than 3 gb of ram. I'm looking at a...Q9550 OCed @ 3.1ghzGigabyte P45 UD3RSuper Talent 4gb at 800mhzAsus V-60Seagate Barracuda 750gb HD w 32mb cache. Corsair 750W PSUStill Case shopping. :( Win Vista 64I'm a little stuck on which video card to go with. I'm thinking of a 9800 GTX+ @ 512 or a GTX 260 @ 890 but I wonder if there is a difference between that and a Core 216. I would love a 280 but they're waaaaay too much money wise. Almost insane and even thought of a 4870 but seeing as FS is more geared towards Nvidia I'm opting along the lines of the 260. Any suggestions there?

If you can get the GTX280, but otherwise the 260 is decent, hopefully you can find the 216 one rather than the 192bitIs this for FSX then?

The 280 is more than I can afford. $300-$400. The 216 isn't a problem in getting a hold of. I'm going through maxforcepc.com for this. I'm fine with upgrades but I'd worry about messing around with the other stuff. I'm still poking about a decent case looking at the Raidmax Smilodon without the PSU. Max takes them out because the majority of them are cheap. I'm looking at the NZXT Lexa Blackline or Thermaltake CS M9. I live with a Grey Parrot so the M9's got a nice feature with the foam to keep the dander out. I plan on using FSX and I still will use FS9. It's sorta hard to give up the eye-candy and just toss all the money dumped into it aside.

Hi, first time post I've been flying FS9 a bit painfully on an old P4 2.4ghz with a lone 512mb of Ram with a 9600 Pro for eight years...This year at least at the start of next year plan to upgrade my pc. I'm going to pass on the i7's too new and I'd rather not have a $1600 pc with more bugs than a roach motel. If by the start of 09 the price of the mobos and ram drop enough I might consider that 920 just right now. I really would like to see more than 3 gb of ram. I'm looking at a...Q9550 OCed @ 3.1ghzGigabyte P45 UD3RSuper Talent 4gb at 800mhzAsus V-60Seagate Barracuda 750gb HD w 32mb cache. Corsair 750W PSUStill Case shopping. :( Win Vista 64I'm a little stuck on which video card to go with. I'm thinking of a 9800 GTX+ @ 512 or a GTX 260 @ 890 but I wonder if there is a difference between that and a Core 216. I would love a 280 but they're waaaaay too much money wise. Almost insane and even thought of a 4870 but seeing as FS is more geared towards Nvidia I'm opting along the lines of the 260. Any suggestions there?

List looks fine except the RAM. You can get 4GB of fast DDR2 for very little money nowadays. I picked up a 4GB kit of G.Skill PC2-8000 (rated for "1GHz" operation) for $90 8-9 months ago on Newegg. Here's some OCZ memory that's even faster for slightly more money: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820227298Also, if you're really considering an upgrade to Core i7, you may want to look at a DDR3 platform instead, as DDR2 will not work in any i7 platform (excepting potential future one-off products like those Asrock is known for). If you go the DDR3 route now, you'll be able to re-use your memory from the build you're about to do. The DDR3 route will be more expensive, however.

I did get a quote on an i7 system with just a basic 9800 card and the 3gb ram set for when they came out for $1500. I'm reading on [H] that Intel already found a bug on them. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1370676I'm going to visit a computer show that's coming on the 28th and I'll see what can be done there. I'm getting a feeling I'm better off going to an online boutique with a good reputation. I did ask Max about the higher speed ram and he actually recommended against it as it will cause a bottle neck if I do get the 9550 clocked to 3.1ghz seeing it doesn't need that high of a freq.

I did get a quote on an i7 system with just a basic 9800 card and the 3gb ram set for when they came out for $1500. I'm reading on [H] that Intel already found a bug on them. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1370676

Every processor has bugs. This particular one isn't the show-stoppper that AMD's Phenom suffered, though. Not all bugs are the same.

I'm going to visit a computer show that's coming on the 28th and I'll see what can be done there. I'm getting a feeling I'm better off going to an online boutique with a good reputation.

There are plenty of good boutique system builders out there, just be ready to pay the big bucks :(

I did ask Max about the higher speed ram and he actually recommended against it as it will cause a bottle neck if I do get the 9550 clocked to 3.1ghz seeing it doesn't need that high of a freq.

Pardon? I'm Max ;) I'm not sure quite what you're referring to here. Faster never = bottleneck so perhaps it's just a misuse of nomenclature that is creating the confusion.

I think it's my sense of logic and reason when the Mobo and Ram cost more than the processor do with the i7's. I'm happy to go with the Q9550 it's still nothing to sneeze at these days and won't be in a couple years either. Max is the guy who runs maxforcepc.com but I did look at the PC2-8000 ram. I'm not putting any money down for another month or so. Still for $1300 that build there isn't too bad.

I think it's my sense of logic and reason when the Mobo and Ram cost more than the processor do with the i7's. I'm happy to go with the Q9550 it's still nothing to sneeze at these days and won't be in a couple years either. Max is the guy who runs maxforcepc.com but I did look at the PC2-8000 ram. I'm not putting any money down for another month or so. Still for $1300 that build there isn't too bad.

As someone who is overclocking on an Intel DDR2 platform, I can assure you the extra memory speed is quite useful. At 4GHz CPU clock I run my FSB at a higher speed with a lower CPU clock multiplier and also run the memory in-sync because of that faster RAM. When I built this system I bought slower memory and was not able to overclock nearly as much, even with the lowest memory multiplier available in my motherboard's BIOS. I could only hit about 3.3GHz before the memory would run out of headroom. Since my stock CPU speed is 3GHz and this chip has lots of overclocking headroom, this was unacceptable to me so I bought the faster memory and it paid off. Skip the DDR3 route if you feel the cost is too great, but don't buy run-of-the-mill PC2-6400 if you're going to overclock.

As someone who is overclocking on an Intel DDR2 platform, I can assure you the extra memory speed is quite useful. At 4GHz CPU clock I run my FSB at a higher speed with a lower CPU clock multiplier and also run the memory in-sync because of that faster RAM. When I built this system I bought slower memory and was not able to overclock nearly as much, even with the lowest memory multiplier available in my motherboard's BIOS. I could only hit about 3.3GHz before the memory would run out of headroom. Since my stock CPU speed is 3GHz and this chip has lots of overclocking headroom, this was unacceptable to me so I bought the faster memory and it paid off. Skip the DDR3 route if you feel the cost is too great, but don't buy run-of-the-mill PC2-6400 if you're going to overclock.

I'm still debating on if I want to do that small of an OC and just leave it stock. I'll end up going for the better RAM speed and also considered sticking another 2-4gb of RAM in there. Seeing even if FSX does use maybe 3 I figure by the time ASX, UT, and other pieces of eye candy go in it'll want more. I dropped the 750gb HD to 640 and will migrate the old 250gb FS9 hd in this PC there too.