New config with i7 and ATI graphic card, FS X playable?

[canadiantree 233]

Hi all,Future Shop in Canada has a sale right now for this righttp://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetai...61CF1946F8F6837I just want to know if it'll run FS X smoothly all maxed out. It has ALOT of RAM and I heard the i7 does wonders.Any thoughts appreciated :-) For the price, not sure one can beat that lol

[Guest D17S]

First, nothing will run FSX flat out. That said, that i7/920 will run FSX on par with ~ any core2Quad at 3.0Ghz. For instance, a $1000 (US Dollar) Core2Quad/DDR2 - System - overclocked to 3.6 will run circles around a stock i7/920/DDR3/Quickpath platform. The i7's platform configuration did not provide -- Any -- performance gain beyond the core2's DDR2/FSB arrangement. The purpose of the i7 was to get the on-chip memory controller and quickpath architecture stabilized. This is Big step toward Intel's long term goal of a (much less expensive to produce) "system on a chip," but it did Not provide huge performance gains. In the Flight sim app, its CPU core is getting about a 15% clock for clock performance increase over the core2 design. There's no CPU magic here. On this gateway box, it looks like 9Gs of ram? Woah! That's not needed for FS. 4Gs is the maximum the sim can use under any circumstances. And 2 ATI Vcards? Crossfire won't help FS.A mid-range Penryn or hi-end Core2 quad with 4G-ram would be a better buy for FS. Anything faster that 3.0Ghz will beat that i7/920. To match that penryn/core2 performance with the i7, you will need to overclock or spend $1000 for - Just - the i7/965CPU. Ouch. The i7/DDR3/Quickpath/et al platform is simply an engineering evolution that doesn't provide much performance gain (or bang for the buck!). Don't expect much in FS beyond a similar core2Quad.

[Guest UlfB]

Hi all,Future Shop in Canada has a sale right now for this righttp://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetai...61CF1946F8F6837I just want to know if it'll run FS X smoothly all maxed out. It has ALOT of RAM and I heard the i7 does wonders.Any thoughts appreciated :-) For the price, not sure one can beat that lol

Hi,My new system, see my sig, is just wonderful. I'm not that far from being able to run FSX with all settings maxed out :( My previous system was based on a C2D X6800 at 3.4GHz, DDR2 memory and a 8800GTX card.For your information I've overclocked my CPU to 3.8GHz. The new Core i7 architecture together with a good mobo do really increase your FSX performance. But you need to build yourself a balanced system with a fast graphics card, plenty of fast memory and a 64 bit OS. But all these things do come at a cost. I'm very happy that I didn't follow the advice that Sam is flooding this site with.

[McCrash 3]

I don't think that computer is worth getting.

[Guest RobFisher]

I just want to know if it'll run FS X smoothly all maxed out. It has ALOT of RAM and I heard the i7 does wonders.

Not sure about "all maxed out" but I was pretty pleased with my move from Q6600 to i7/920. Anandtech reckoned clock for clock you get a ~30% boost from i7, although they didn't benchmark with FSX. Not finished tweaking settings yet but I went from 15fps to 20fps quite easily with only a modest overclock when running with PMDG airliners and MyTraffic X. (That's what I set my frame rate limit to -- I can get a lot more fps on unlimited but it varies depending on scenery).I think having lots of memory helps, too. I have 12GB which is ridiculous, and I don't know if it's an improvement over 6GB but it's a vast improvement over 2GB. Vista will use the extra memory as a disk cache (although I turned off SuperFetch because it tried to fill the 12GB at boot time) and I can do things like ALT-Tab between FSX and the PMDG load manager without any disk churning at all.I still only have an 8800GTX. Not sure at my resolution (1280x1024) whether a faster card will do much.Rob.

[Jack C 8]

NEVER buy a system from futureshop. WHy wouldn't you just build you own? Get exactly what you want without paying for something you dont want. Companies like futureshop will advertise blazing fast DDR3 ram but what brand are you really getting? Probably the cheapest bottom of the line possible.