Need your advice

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi guys!Recently I have always upgraded my HW hand-in-hand with new FS releases but now after the sad news about ACES Studios and realizing it may take some time before we see the next version of FS if ever I'm thinking of upgrading my computer to be able to run FSX the way it was meant to be run.I'm thinking about buying the following stuff:

• Asus - Socket 1366 - ATX Intel X58 (P6T Deluxe + OC Palm) - 2xPCI-E / Audio / GbLAN - [HV]
• Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz / 4x256KB L2 + 8MB L3 - Socket 1366 (Boxed) - [HV]
• OCZ Platinum EB XTC 4096MB DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (7-6-6-24) (2x2048MB) (OCZ3P1600EB4GK) - [HV]
• XFX GeForce GTX285 1024MB (GX-285N-ZDFF) - PCI-E / 2xDVI-I / HDTV - [HV]

My current config is:

• Asus Maximus Formula
• Intel Core2 QUAD Q6600 @ 3.4 GHz
• 4 GB DDR2 Corsair Dominator
• eVGA GeForce 8800GT 512 MB SSC Edition

What do you think, would it be money well spent and are the products I'm thinking of buying good stuff?Thanks alot in advance for your input!

[Guest D17S]

Optimistically, an i7 would need to O/C to ~ 3.0 to even equal the Q66 at 3.4. However, even this clock for clock advantage is not unanimously observed. Getting the 920 to 3.6 is a pretty good ramp for that little guy . . . and may only provide a subjective improvement over the Q66. 6Gs of ram Cannot be used by FS. 4 is the limit. An 88/98 is all the Vcard FS can use. The bigger card Will provide an advantage in Crysis. From an overclocked Q6600, there's not much improvement available without going for the unlocked 965. Then a user can get to ~ 4.2ish. ~ 20% over the Q66. That's a pretty expensive 20%. (imHo).

[WebMaximus 372]

Optimistically, an i7 would need to O/C to ~ 3.0 to even equal the Q66 at 3.4. However, even this clock for clock advantage is not unanimously observed. Getting the 920 to 3.6 is a pretty good ramp for that little guy . . . and may only provide a subjective improvement over the Q66. 6Gs of ram Cannot be used by FS. 4 is the limit. An 88/98 is all the Vcard FS can use. The bigger card Will provide an advantage in Crysis. From an overclocked Q6600, there's not much improvement available without going for the unlocked 965. Then a user can get to ~ 4.2ish. ~ 20% over the Q66. That's a pretty expensive 20%. (imHo).

Thanks alot for your input Sam, however I'm a bit surprised since I've read in many places that the i7 is really great for FSX compared to the older CPUs like the Q6600 and I've also read about people getting about 20-30 FPS with all the sliders fully right in FSX when flying at low altitude over really dense scenery in FSX and this when using an i7 CPU so that's why I though it would easily outperform what I've got today becasue that is something I can't manage with the HW I've got today...hmm... You talk alot about the pure frequency of the CPU but aren't there other new things in the i7 too that would benefit FSX?Same goes for the gfx card, even though I'm aware of the fact that FSX is mainly CPU-intensive I still thought a GFX285 or maybe even a GFX295 would make a difference even in FSX compared to my present 8800GT card. And except for the pure speed of the GPU and the memory doesn't the bigger amount of memory on the new gfx cards like the 285 and 295 come in handy and beeing used by FSX compared to the 512 MB I have on my 8800GT?Guess I'm currently both happy and disappointed at the same time - happy I will save A LOT of $ not upgrading my current computer but disappointed since I was looking forward to be able to get steady FPS in FSX at the highest settings if upgrading my HW.Would be great to hear from someone who already switched HW in a similar way, either the CPU or GPU or both - did you see a big difference or was the money spent not worth the difference in performance in FSX?All this also makes me wonder when will we see HW that will let us run FSX in it's full glory without having to worry about the FPS...? Must admit it feels a bit strange a "game" that now is a couple of years old still can't be run at max settings without performance problems. Except for the tragic part for all the employees at ACES Studio that lost their jobs maybe after all it was a good thing what happened if that in the end mean we will see a totally re-written FS in the future that will make better use of today's HW...