Help Find My Bottleneck

[Cuartz7o 0]

Hi All,I recently installed FSX (pre SP1 & SP2) and so far have spent about 1 hr tweakign with the settings and I can't seem to get things exactly where I want them.My Specs:Biostar TF720 MontherboardBFG 650W PSUAMD Phenom 8450 x34GB DDR2-PC8500 (1066MHz)BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+WD 80GB SATA19" Acer @ 1440x900x32Single MonitorFSX OnlyMy first question is, is this system up to par with what FSX would need to run the game with High settings?It seems that I can max just about everything out and set the Autogen to None and I get very smooth gameplay. In larger congested cities things start to bog down. I'm not done tweakign yet but I'd like to know if I should upgrade my CPU to a 9x series quad-core or try a different video card (mixed feelings about the GTX+).Any suggestions will be very helpful.Thanks,Kevin

[ryanbatc 12,857]

Your system will struggle in large cities.Expect to turn down traffic sliders and autogen to medium low in class B areas.Should be able to run dense/very dense in rural areas with medium-high traffic levels....check out this thread for optimizations:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041Oh, I'd say the CPU is the bottleneck

[TechguyMaxC 516]

You really should install the service packs as well, especially if you're running Vista since the DX10 codepath enables higher performance than the DX9 codepath.

[Cuartz7o 0]

Thanks for the replies. I plan on downloading SP1 & SP2 tomorrow. What performance increases, if any, would I receive if i upgraded to a Phenom x4 9650? the TF720 can only handle a 95W CPU and I don't really want to buy a new motherboard after less than 5 months with this build.

[ryanbatc 12,857]

Unfortunately not a lot. The AMD CPU's are much slower compared to the Intel chips these days...You'd have to get a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM to set high settings in big cities with FSX...If you're on a budget, the Q9650 or Core i7 920 would do, as long as you spend some time overclocking them.