What Hardware Upgrades Would You Recommend For FSX

[Guest FunkyFlyer2020]

Hello! Below are the specs for my Desktop PC - I run them using an HP w2007v screen with 1680 x 1050 resolution. All my hardware drivers and Vista service packs and updates are installed - but I dont get great smooth graphics. What hardware updates would you recommend I make to get great graphics? Thanks for your recommendations! See below for specs:HP Pavilion Elite m9050.pt Processor: Core 2 Quad Q6600 (K) 2.4 GHz (95W) - 1066 MHz front side bus - Socket 775 Chipset: Intel G33 Express Motherboard: Asus IPIBL-LA Berkeley-GL8E Memory: 3GB - 240 pin, DDR2 SDRAM Hard Drive: 320 GB SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec) - 7200 rpm CD/DVD Drive: 16X DVD - 12X RAM SATA driveGraphics Card: GeForce 8500GT - 512 MB GDDR2 memory - I/O Ports: HDMI, dual-link DVI , S-video

[fsx_missionguy 0]

All my hardware drivers and Vista service packs and updates are installed - but I dont get great smooth graphics.

You probably have the best system you're ever going to have for FSX. More cores probably wouldn't improve things. I don't see anywhere where you could upgrade except maybe a solid state drive (should increase drive IO performance) and perhaps upgrading your operating system to Windows XP.The GeForce 8500 is not low end, but certainly not high end. You might try one of the 9x series but frankly, FSX is CPU dependent and hard-drive bus speed dependent.Additional CPU speeds, front side bus speeds and faster disk IO will help in the future.

[flilotUK 0]

Run through Nick's Windows Tuning Thread to make sure you've got your Windows system optimised fully for FSX.Then see the FSX Tuning Thread to optimise your FSX install.They should light a bit of fire under your system.If you're still unhappy, then you're going to enter the realm of Quad Core/maybe Overclocking probably. Your 8500 isn't the best card, and an 8800GT/9800GT would be better (theyre both the same card in reality with just different model numbers, depends which one you could get cheaper if you wanted to buy).

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

Hello! Below are the specs for my Desktop PC - I run them using an HP w2007v screen with 1680 x 1050 resolution. All my hardware drivers and Vista service packs and updates are installed - but I dont get great smooth graphics. What hardware updates would you recommend I make to get great graphics? Thanks for your recommendations! See below for specs:

I would get a faster video card. Memory bandwidth on the 8500 is 12 GB/sec... an 8800GT or even a 9600GT has 58 GB/sec memory bandwidth.If you can overclock your Q6600 to 3 GHz, it would also help.

[Guest sillyeagle]

FSX is known as a CPU bound game, meaning performance is limited by the CPU provided you do not have a video card bottleneck, which you probably do depending on the resolution you use. The 8500GT is a pathetic graphics card, and the very first thing you want to repalce. Your memory and CPU are sufficient. This benchmarks will show you how poorly the 8500GT performs. You will notice even at a modest 1600x1200 with in game AA the 8500GT only pulls of 9.5fps. That's no good. You can see thefast cards get 22fps, no matter which one is used, which tells you 22fps is where the CPU bottleneck is, otherwise performance would continue to increase with faster cards. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-...ator-X,565.htmlEven at a lowly 1024x768, the 8500GT is only getting 18fps, so no matter how you look at it, the 8500GT is in no way fast enough to run FSX acceptably. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-...ator-X,563.htmlSo the facts are clear, buy a new video card, and as indicated above, a Gefore 8800 or better is what you will want.

[FTD1949 0]

Bump. Never mind Craig

[Guest wintercon]

FSX is a very CPU bound game,I can see the difference very clearly between the 3 laptops from my old toshiba to my new one and my friends one.I am not sure yet what the different between an Intel Core 2 Duo T,P or Q is but I am guessing Q stands for Quad.I had a T5600 on my old laptop and got a T9300 with the penryn core in my new laptop.My friend has like a T7600 and the graphics card does not differ so much from each other,still mine is the more powerful one which is the ATI HD 3750 with 512 MB Ram.My friends is a Nvidia 8600 Mobile with 256Mb Ram.Now when I played on my old which now my dad has,fsx was playable but with very little details. The grahpic card there was an Nvidia Geforce Mobile 7600 GT with 256mb ram.Now my new machine which is the toshiba P300 is quite a nice piece of looking hardware.It handles even the newest games such as FarCry 2 and Crysis very well,only FSX is causing hickups here and there,but very playable except las vegas airport is a pain.Comparing both laptops next to each other from me and my friends, his stutters with same settings a bit more and has less visual details then me. But he is using a secondary monitor with an 1690x1280 resolution as he has only a 15 inch HP laptop and I got an 17inch with an 1440x1024 or something.Here is the comparison:My friends MineHP Pavilion 15" Toshiba P300 N1 17"Core 2 Duo T7600 Core 2 Duo T9300(2.5GHZ,Penryn)250GB HDD 640G HDDNvidia 8600 M 256MB Ram ATI Radeon HD 3750 512MB Ram Vista32Bit Home Vista 32Bit Home2GB Ram 4GB Ram Using 2nd Monitor Using laptop monitorLatest Drivers Latest Drivers.Now since I have more RAW performance my machine does perform a lot better and I have also for some reason a lot better visuals then my friend even with the same settings.So it looks a lot like that it is very CPU bound and I will overclook my CPU from 2.5GHZ to 3GHZ today to see any performance changes.

[flilotUK 0]

I will overclook my CPU from 2.5GHZ to 3GHZ today to see any performance changes.

Good look with that on a laptop, not many have the BIOS options, and using software over clocking is one way to fry your CPU quickly, especially as you can't (usually) upgrade the CPU coolers in laptops either.

[Guest wintercon]

Good look with that on a laptop, not many have the BIOS options, and using software over clocking is one way to fry your CPU quickly, especially as you can't (usually) upgrade the CPU coolers in laptops either.

There is a special piece of small software which is dedicated for penryn cores on laptops to overclook them. Good thing is that it wont get to much hotter.So not much to worry about it.