Nick, completely agree. Even in FS9, there are tradeoffs. I think Airline FS types like the huge addon sceneries (like Heathrow), complex aircraft, and stacks of AI. That's my starting point in FS9 and then I tune around that. Using that as a starting point in FSX, even with everything else turned right down, it's no good.That's why I'm keen to see the i975 results. I want to shift to FSX, but I'd really want to keep (and hopefuly improve) the enjoyment I get out of the airline simulation in FS9.Cheers,Bryn.

Bryn,I've posted a crappy video with FRAPS to show a (bad) landing in the MD-11 at EGLL with the Aerosoft scenery, UTX night lighting and ASA weather with FEX. Bear in mind that (i) the video compression has taken away a lot of the quality; and that (ii) FRAPS takes about 4 or 5 fps off the results. See what you think:http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1209121/egll%20landing.wmvEDIT: sorry if you get an error when clicking on the link: it hasn't finished uploading as of 23:30 GMT.Tim

Bryn,I've posted a crappy video with FRAPS to show a (bad) landing in the MD-11 at EGLL with the Aerosoft scenery, UTX night lighting and ASA weather with FEX. Bear in mind that (i) the video compression has taken away a lot of the quality; and that (ii) FRAPS takes about 4 or 5 fps off the results. See what you think:http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1209121/egll%20landing.wmvEDIT: sorry if you get an error when clicking on the link: it hasn't finished uploading as of 23:30 GMT.Tim

Nice detail at that airport, personaly i only go for fsx addons that have Global effect, so i dont buy individual airports or sceneery for only parts of the world.The landing was ok, but i think your airleron is either too sensitive, or you need to increase the centering force on your force feedback joystick or yoke. Also I hope you disengage autopilot much further out than that.What i have found about landing in fsx is, it not just skill, but also very much your elevator, aileron, and rudder sensitivity/Null Zone settings.Also TFm i think you might have solved my PMDG issue, cause since turning down my sound to 16bit from 24bit PMDg md11/747 have not caused issues since. By the way Tfm, what does this have to do i7 975, before we go off topic.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I am going to save up for upgradevista64 to no [email protected] to [email protected] no change650Watt PSU 1000Watt or so.6 gigRam no changeDo i have to get LN2 for cooling, or will themalRight do for [email protected] Gigabyte ex58 mother board bios, it was so easy to get my i7920 from 2.6Ghz to 3.8 and i was no OC expert, just changed the BLCk frequency to 188 (* 21 multi) = 3.8Ghz and set everything else in Bios to Auto.So i am pretty sure i7975 will OC to 5.2Ghz on my current Mobo easy, but do i have to get Nitrogen too cool it. First when i heard it mentioned about Nitrogen being used to cool CPU i thought it was a joke, but not sohttp://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/prod...?product_id=832at $144 it does not seem too pricy if your OC works out well, in fact its a bit cheap, if it works for i7 [email protected]

Bryn,I've posted a crappy video with FRAPS to show a (bad) landing in the MD-11 at EGLL with the Aerosoft scenery, UTX night lighting and ASA weather with FEX. Bear in mind that (i) the video compression has taken away a lot of the quality; and that (ii) FRAPS takes about 4 or 5 fps off the results. See what you think:Tim

Tim,Thanks heaps for doing this. It got me back into FSX trying to get it to work on my computer. Alas, the picture below is where I ended. In that picture, everything is turned to the absolute left in the display options, I'm in a PMDG 747, and Ultimate Traffic II is running. I'm looking over Heathrow airport (barely recognisable as a few polygons and a heap of planes). The framerate in the top left is reading 10.9.I also did a comparison in FS9. Same place, same view, with PMDG 744, Ultimate Traffic, WoAI, MAIW, HTAI, FSGenesis terrain, same weather, Aerosoft Heathrow, AES, Ultimate Terrain. Scenery density fully right, autogen fully right, so on and so on. FPS 27.FSX:FS9:My specs are a QX6800 O/ced to 3.2 Ghz with 4GM DDR2 (800Mhz) and a 9800 GX2.As I said earlier, 100% AI, complex aircraft, and great airport scenery are my starting points for tuning. In FS9, an optimum can be found. As the image above shows, in FSX on my computer, it cannot. I hope the new computer that this thread is all about changes that.Bryn.

Tim,Thanks heaps for doing this. It got me back into FSX trying to get it to work on my computer. Alas, the picture below is where I ended. In that picture, everything is turned to the absolute left in the display options, I'm in a PMDG 747, and Ultimate Traffic II is running. I'm looking over Heathrow airport (barely recognisable as a few polygons and a heap of planes). The framerate in the top left is reading 10.9.My specs are a QX6800 O/ced to 3.2 Ghz with 4GM DDR2 (800Mhz) and a 9800 GX2.As I said earlier, 100% AI, complex aircraft, and great airport scenery are my starting points for tuning. In FS9, an optimum can be found. As the image above shows, in FSX on my computer, it cannot. I hope the new computer that this thread is all about changes that.Bryn.

100% default AI in FSX is totally UNREASONABLE!59% would be the max on a highly clocked 1-2nd genearation DDR3 unless you switch over completely to WOAI or UT2 then higher is possibleFS9 is childsplay to modern C2/Quad and i7 will eat it for beakfastFSX renders 75-100x the code of FS9 so there is give and take no matter what you do for another 2 years@ tfm.. I am sure you know to dump the UTX night lighting and you will recover a good chunk of perf..

100% default AI in FSX is totally UNREASONABLE!

Nick, this made me laugh because 100% AI is completely reasonable in FS9 and the AI system is directly comparable to FSX! Anyway, 2 things. Firstly, I am talking about 100% Ultimate Traffic AI, which, as you point out, should be easier on fps than default AI. My FSX screenie above is using UT 2. Secondly, in FS9, I have 100% AI, comprised of ultimate traffic, WoAI, MAIW, HTAI and a few others. As my screenies above show, for an airline geek like me who likes complex planes, 100% AI, and airport scenery, FS9 is the clear winner. In FSX, I can have PMDG744 by itself, or Aerosoft Heathrow by itself. I can't run 100% Ultimate Traffic AI under any circumstances. And this is all after following the FSX setup guide to the letter.Which gets me back to my original point... Does the i975 allow a setup that matches the airline experience of FS9? I'm guessing that it probably doesn't. Cheers,Bryn.

Jaskan: I just wanted to let people (actually, Bryn) see what could be done in FSX EVEN on last year's technology: hopefully this year's technology will be a bit better, but (IMHO) there's really no PERFORMANCE-related need to hold off from moving to FSX if you're willing to get the right kit and you know what to look for. The essential combination is (IMHO) (i) quite serious overclocking: you need to be at or near 4GHz (I'm on 4.3GHz with my E8600); (ii) a fast, wide-bus video card (the GTX285 is FSX king at the moment for its combination of 512 bit bus and fast internal speeds); and (iii) fast, well-tuned RAM. The latter is admittedly a bit of a "deluxe" point but it really does make a (subtle) difference by improving the SLOWEST framerates. Fast hard disks are also nice and they make a bit of a difference but they're not in the big three, IMHO. There's nothing new about this: Nick_N has been saying it for ages.And I didn't post the video to show how to fly a perfect landing in the MD-11: heaven forbid! (you may notice I was landing in a tailwind with a crosswind component - hardly normal procedure but that's partly what makes sims fun). It was just to show what it looks like in a pretty demanding situation.Nick: Actually I like the night lighting a lot. When I'm not running FRAPS, the performance hit is perfectly acceptable to me. And I have a hunch that this is one the features where your insistence on tuning the RAM properly makes a difference.Bryn: I see what you mean with your screenshots. It looks as if you've made the right choice sticking to FS9 at the moment. But I hope you agree that the performance some of us are getting from different kit is actually pretty acceptable. By the way, the AI traffic in that video was MyTrafficX at 50%: there's masses of it at that level.Anyway, back to topic, I hope Mike gets his kit ready soon and gives us his impressions.Tim

Nick, this made me laugh because 100% AI is completely reasonable in FS9 and the AI system is directly comparable to FSX!

Bryn,The way graphics are rendered is not the same in FSX and FS9. When the AI traffic is rendered, FSX uses a totally different graphics engine than FS9. FSX use animated jetways and service vehicles. FS9 don't. When using AI in FSX at a major airport, there are a lot more objects to render in FSX compared to FS9. Regarding performance impact, the FS9 and FSX AI Traffic is not comparable. :(

Hi,Well the system is built, I'm in the process of updating drivers / Firmware and I've run into my first problem.I am unable to install the following drivers: ATK0110 ACPI Utility, keep getting an incompatibility error. Went to ASUS's web site and downloaded all the beta drivers but I am unable to install this driver.Anyone running Windows 7 that has the correct drivers for ATK0110 ACPI?.Thanks

HiTry downloading the new AI Suite V1.05.24 (beta) form ASUS. Extract the downloaded File and at installing/updating the driver, point to that Folder.This should work.Regards

Bryn,The way graphics are rendered is not the same in FSX and FS9. When the AI traffic is rendered, FSX uses a totally different graphics engine than FS9. FSX use animated jetways and service vehicles. FS9 don't. When using AI in FSX at a major airport, there are a lot more objects to render in FSX compared to FS9.

G'day Ulf,Take a careful and close look at my screenshots and you will see why I laughed. In my FSX shots, jetways are turned off. In my FSX shots, service vehicles are turned off. When using AI at a major airport with these settings (ie, EVERYTHING turned off), there are, in FACT, more objects to render in fS9. So, you're right! Its not directly comparable - you need to handicap FS9!!! :( Oh dear oh dear.Look, I want FSX to run well. I want to move to FSX. I'm not wedded to FS9 for the sake of it. So this is why I'm engaging in this post.... does the i975 make FSX playable for airliner freaks like me? Million dollar question.Bryn.

Bryn: I see what you mean with your screenshots. It looks as if you've made the right choice sticking to FS9 at the moment. But I hope you agree that the performance some of us are getting from different kit is actually pretty acceptable. By the way, the AI traffic in that video was MyTrafficX at 50%: there's masses of it at that level.Tim

Tim, thanks - I really appreciated your efforts. It was mouthwatering to see that performance into Heathrow. And I concur... very keen to see Mike's computer goes! Bryn.

Hi,I'm in the process of adding AI, once this is complete I will be installing the weather program. I should be able to start testing Monday morning.I may also setup a couple of videos, anyone have any suggestions as to which recording program to use.BTW: I've resolved my original problem.Hi Bryn,The only two aircraft I fly are the Level-D 767 300ER and the PMDG 737NG series aircraft. 100% of my flight sim time is spent in an airliner, from what I've seen so far, I'm ready to make the move to FSX. I said it before and I'll say it again, this is coming from a "DIE-HARD" FS9er airliner pilot, the performance I am beginning to see with my new setup affords me the opportunity to make the move. Believe me, I never thought I would ever say this and/or make the move to FSX, that's how impressed I am with this new setup.One more day and let the testing begin.

Nick: Actually I like the night lighting a lot. When I'm not running FRAPS, the performance hit is perfectly acceptable to me. And I have a hunch that this is one the features where your insistence on tuning the RAM properly makes a difference.

Ahhhh yes.. the FRAPS load itself .. have not used it in so long I forgot about it.. given that and all the goodies you had running at the same time the perf displayed was actually in line

Hey there all, Not much of a talker, but a HUGE lurker. Wanted to take an opportunity to thank the community and especially Nick for adding to this hobby. Best of luck with the new system Mike, I look forward to seeing the results. I baked my brain for a long time until I finally pulled the trigger on a 920do, intel MB, 260, twin 750s, a 23 inch acer and windows7 64. Going from a p4 3.0 with a 7900gs it is pure bliss! Hell, I was even happy with it for the week that I forgot to install SP1! Yes, as a said in my REX forum post about square clouds, even 10 to 14 FPS in no weather over NYC made my day...The best thing about building a new system however is when you stop the tweeks, the OCing, configuring add-ons, and shut off that damn FPS counter and just have a great time flying. Took me a couple of weeks, hope you get there soon Mike. Glad AVsim is back and again thanks to all who add to it!Kev

Tim,Thanks heaps for doing this. It got me back into FSX trying to get it to work on my computer. Alas, the picture below is where I ended. In that picture, everything is turned to the absolute left in the display options, I'm in a PMDG 747, and Ultimate Traffic II is running. I'm looking over Heathrow airport (barely recognisable as a few polygons and a heap of planes). The framerate in the top left is reading 10.9.I also did a comparison in FS9. Same place, same view, with PMDG 744, Ultimate Traffic, WoAI, MAIW, HTAI, FSGenesis terrain, same weather, Aerosoft Heathrow, AES, Ultimate Terrain. Scenery density fully right, autogen fully right, so on and so on. FPS 27.

If you have all the sliders to the left, that's why there are no buildings in the FSX screenie.Is UT II actually running, or is FSX just using a traffic database built by UT II? And are the AI acft in use all AI-only acft, or are there PMDG, Level-D etc non AI models being thrown into the mix from your SimObjects folder?The FSX screenie has clouds, the FS9 one does not.All that said, I'm not convinced we're seeing an apples-to-apples comparison here.I put the F1 Mustang on the ramp at KJFK in FSX on a partly cloudy day, with traffic generated by MyTraffic X. It was pretty hideous on my fairly well-tuned Core 2 Duo. I went to FS9 and put the PMDG 737 there, and it wasn't all that spiffy either (I have FSDreamteam's KJFK, and Imaginesim's KLGA in both sims, and a lot of "new" (to me) AI (I've been living with AI shut down for the most part for years). So after 2.5 yrs with my current hardware, I finally broke down and went shopping at NewEgg.I have a friend that left the AF some years back and was an engineer at Intel...what he told me about the binning process for the Extreme vs other variants of the CPUs was interesting. I see lots of commentary that the Extreme CPUs are just a marketing scam, you're wasting your money yadda yadda...well, not exactly. It's true that lots of people have pushed 920s to 4 GHz and beyond...in fact some of those 920 CPUs are taken from the same high-qualify wafers as the 965/975 because they don't sell enough of the EE CPUs to use up all the AAA-rated silicon, but not nearly all of the 920s are made from the same high-grade wafer stock--and performance can and does vary widely. The unlocked multipliers in the EE versions allow overclocks to be made with a lot of flexibility--you can push the cores with fairly good thermal feedback without driving the largely unmonitored support circuits into unknown dangerous territory, and you're guaranteed to have (in the case of the 975) a CPU that'll do 3.33 GHz at stock voltages even with a fairly crappy Intel HSF installed...and it's guaranteed to do 3.6GHz in turbo mode with applications that use only one core, like...FS9. With the 920, you're guaranteed 2.66 GHz, and I think it's telling that with the new D0 step that Intel did not produce an i7 930 with a similary bumped-up 2.8 GHz clock as with the 940 -> 950 and 965 -> 975. I think that their sampling says there are chips that wouldn't get over the 2.8 GHz bar in the mix. Anyway, I've used extreme CPUs for my last couple builds, and was not disappointed in either case. Hopefully the new i7 975 I have inbound will keep me a happy camper.As for completely dumping FS9 for FSX as the result of the improved performance of a hopped-up i7 in the box, I still doubt that. It reminds me of an old joke...Mr Ashford, a science teacher in Edinburgh Scotland, asked his students a question: "which human organ expands to more than 20 times it's normal size when stimulated?"He looked at little Mary McGregor and asked..."Do ya know, Mary?"Little Mary McGregor blushed fifteen shades of scarlet, and said, "Oh, sir, I just couldn't say it here in front of all these people."Mr Ashford sighed, looked at her and said, "It's the iris in the human eye. Now Mary McGregor, my fine Scottish lass, I've but three things to say to you: First, you didn't do your assigned reading. Second, you've a very dirty mind. And last, I think you're in for a life of disappointment."Anyone that thinks FSX will rise to the occasion of supplanting FS9 in all its glory with sliders firewalled as a result of the latest hardware, well, I have three things to say to you... :( For me, I see FSX just coming into the scene, nearly three years after release. I have just a handful of planes that make it enjoyable to use...planes like the F1 Mustang, the RealAir Duke, the PMDG MD-11. For the first time since release, the combination of improved hardware and add-ons programmed with FSX's capabilities in mind make it a useful and enjoyable experience...but still quite limited. I think a flight in FS9 on any of the probably hundred great add-on planes at 60 fps into any of probably 75 complex airports like George Grimshaw's KBOS, with good add-on mesh, landclass, scenery textures, and wx/clouds is going to be hard to beat for some time. The two sims are still different enough in their strengths to complement each other. Six months ago I wouldn't have included FSX at all in any serious discussion of simming. But I won't be shelving the still-spectacular FS9 any time soon, either...I'm hoping for near perfection in FS9 from this upgrade.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

If you have all the sliders to the left, that's why there are no buildings in the FSX screenie.Is UT II actually running, or is FSX just using a traffic database built by UT II? And are the AI acft in use all AI-only acft, or are there PMDG, Level-D etc non AI models being thrown into the mix from your SimObjects folder?The FSX screenie has clouds, the FS9 one does not.All that said, I'm not convinced we're seeing an apples-to-apples comparison here.

G'day Bob,My comparison is not an apples and apples comparison. I was trying to make the point that even with everything turned off in FSX (sliders to the left is everything off, not on) and just Ultimate Traffic II with the PMDG 744 running, performance is a lot worse than everything turned on in FS9.Just to be clear - there are no buildings in my FSX shot because I've turned them off. I wanted to show that even when FSX has nothing running except Ultimate traffic II and the PMDG 744, it performs hopelessly on my computer.The AI running in the sim are just the Ultimate Traffic AI at 100% - no defaults. In my settings, all traffic bgls are disabled. Consequently, all the AI are just the UT models.And while clouds are turned on, a test just now without them did not improve performance noticeably (ie, at all).I liked the rest of your analysis. When I started to think about my desire to shift to FSX a bit more, it dawned on me that I'd be giving up the tinmouse, the RFP 742, the King Air, the PSS 777s and 757s, the Overand Japan sceneries, and a heap of other things. Maybe airline geeks like me should just stick to FS9 - at least until the Aerosoft simulator is built.Cheers,Bryn.

G'day Bob,My comparison is not an apples and apples comparison. I was trying to make the point that even with everything turned off in FSX (sliders to the left is everything off, not on) and just Ultimate Traffic II with the PMDG 744 running, performance is a lot worse than everything turned on in FS9.Just to be clear - there are no buildings in my FSX shot because I've turned them off. I wanted to show that even when FSX has nothing running except Ultimate traffic II and the PMDG 744, it performs hopelessly on my computer.The AI running in the sim are just the Ultimate Traffic AI at 100% - no defaults. In my settings, all traffic bgls are disabled. Consequently, all the AI are just the UT models.And while clouds are turned on, a test just now without them did not improve performance noticeably (ie, at all).I liked the rest of your analysis. When I started to think about my desire to shift to FSX a bit more, it dawned on me that I'd be giving up the tinmouse, the RFP 742, the King Air, the PSS 777s and 757s, the Overand Japan sceneries, and a heap of other things. Maybe airline geeks like me should just stick to FS9 - at least until the Aerosoft simulator is built.Cheers,Bryn.

OK, I see where you were going before. But an apples-to-apples comparison would have had FSX at more like 6 fps... :( I think we're still 1-2 years out from having an airline environment comparable to FS9...and that assumes we don't have a lot of add-on developers (scenery devs especially) throwing in the towel. I see that Oliver Pabst just put up a release candidate for an FS9+FSX version of AES. That's a move in the right direction. And Damian and company over at HiFi Sim are slowly exorcizing the bugs out of ASA and putting Hubble-like corrective lenses on the sloppy mess that is the FSX weather system. But my big airport scenery coverage in FSX is limited mostly to those packages that were dual FS9/FSX releases, where my FS9 grid is well-populated.Back to topic, in addition to the i7 975, the new machine I'm building will also include a 160GB Intel X-25M SSD as the FS9/FSX drive. I have a friend that uses one for Call of Duty and Crysis, and having near instantaneous disk access with transfer rates triple those of a Velociraptor makes a pretty big difference there. If it doesn't pan out in FS, all is not lost--I was planning on buying one to replace the overflowing 60GB HDD in my laptop, anyway. The machine will have both a Velociraptor (Vista 64 and a test install of FS) and the SSD with FS, so I hope to do some useful FS-specific benchmarking. The eVGA x58 motherboard I'll be using has three separately configurable SATA controllers, so the Velociraptor will go on one with NCQ/AHCI turned off, and the SSD will be on a separate SATA controller with NCQ enabled. I was gonna spring for a 3Ware PCIe disk controller, but decided that the debit card has probably taken enough of a pummelling for this month. The comparison ought to be an interesting experiment, at any rate. Mike...any more news on your 975 build?CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO