I always wondered:To you guys who always upgrade your components to the latest and greatest, do you ever get to fly FSX? It seems people just upgrade and spend the majority of their time tinkering and tweaking until they find the need to upgrade again, and so the cycle continues. It appears expensive and time-consuming lol.My system is showing its age and I do tinker on occasion but the majority of my fs time is spent flying the aircraft. What do you really do? :(

I always wondered:To you guys who always upgrade your components to the latest and greatest, do you ever get to fly FSX? It seems people just upgrade and spend the majority of their time tinkering and tweaking until they find the need to upgrade again, and so the cycle continues. It appears expensive and time-consuming lol.My system is showing its age and I do tinker on occasion but the majority of my fs time is spent flying the aircraft. What do you really do? :(

Very True, recently i have noticed i enjoy twicking more than flying, cause flying just takes too long.But i have decided to fly more now.As for addons, i always say, the fewer addons i need to enjoy FSX the better, cause if you ever have to reinstall, it could take a month, if you got most of the addons you hear about on avsim.my advice keep addons as few as possible, and fly 5 times for every tweak you make.Lets face it tweaking FSX, can be more fun than flying, especially for those with lower end systems.Tweaking is not bad idea, you just need to fly a lot more often than you tweak, .........think i will try that myself.

Hi,Believe it or not, I have not tweaked much in quite a long time. I'm someone who upgrades regularly just for Flight Simulation. The last three systems I built, were built as flight Sim only computers.I have been able to use FS9 for some time with everything maxed out with no problems. As a matter of fact, I've been running maxed out since the X6800 extreme processor was fist released. No need for me to tweak FS9 anymore.I did not make any attempt to install/tweak FSX until I built my I7-975 cpu computer. Using Nick's guide, I set my system up in a short period of time. For the most part I am done tweaking my new system and I enjoy FSX just about every day. However, I will say this. I am guilty of constantly tweaking FS9 back in the day prior to the release of the X6800 extreme cpu. :( I think the days of spending more time tweaking than flying are far behind most individuals who constantly update their equipment for the latest and greatest for two reasons.1. The hardware is catching up to FSX.2. There is no new FS version in the works just yet and it may be some time (if ever) before a new release.

Not me.. I build a system and once its loaded and optimized it takes me about an hour tops to fully tune it in.,. done, finished

It's a hobby so for me upgrading, tinkering, tweaking etc. is just as enjoyable as flying. I probably just don't announce it as much as others.

I am guilty, I have to admit that. I am constantly upgrading and tweaking and my FSX installationis so packed up with add-ons that I will need a month to bring it back to its current state. But thereis a reason for that. I am suffering from psychological condition called obsesive-compulsive disorder with major depression as its main feature. I just can't enjoy life. I need everything to be perfect. I am like a robot. Its horrible but its the way my brain functions. I can't enjoy simple things although ocassionaly I go to the country and observe the plants and insects and nature. The worst problem with that condition is my sexual/realtionship life but I will not go into that detail :( . I take medication but it doesn't help a lot. It just keeps me "functional" so I can go to work and my nerves dont "explode". Its main disadvantage is that I always feel sedated and tired and basically castrated - Like a walking vegetable. FSX, Computer hardware and tweaking it is a major part of my life. It helps me forget my misery. My FSX installation is >100GB for example. My FS9 (now deleted) never exceeded 15GB.Bye for now.

Getting FSX with lots of eye candy and addons to run smoothly at HD resolutions is no trivial task that is for sure. That pesky slider which is STILL not all the way to the right or that check box still not ticked or that approach into a mega airport in the most complex desktop airliner sim ever built still a bit choppy... these are all unacceptable situations and therefore a challenge to be overcome. Simple as that. One can liken it to anything humans have ever done - having to scout the landscape for fire 20,000 years ago due to an inability to light it yourself was just as unacceptable a situation. Bet you there were some "obsessive compulsives" back then too! We got that right so chances are we will be able to get 500Gb odd FSX installations to run at full settings as well, sooner rather than later.

It's more cyclic with me, depending on the status of next-gen core components such as MB, CPU & RAM. Once I'm up and running with a new install, I only upgrade the occasional component, most noteably GPUs. Other than that, I'm flying, updating custom AI, or installing new add-ons.I try to keep a balanced approach so I don't get too bored with any one objective. I think it is that aspect which has helped keep the MSFS Franchise alive for more than 25 years.

Hi,Believe it or not, I have not tweaked much in quite a long time. I'm someone who upgrades regularly just for Flight Simulation. The last three systems I built, were built as flight Sim only computers.I have been able to use FS9 for some time with everything maxed out with no problems. As a matter of fact, I've been running maxed out since the X6800 extreme processor was fist released. No need for me to tweak FS9 anymore.I did not make any attempt to install/tweak FSX until I built my I7-975 cpu computer. Using Nick's guide, I set my system up in a short period of time. For the most part I am done tweaking my new system and I enjoy FSX just about every day. However, I will say this. I am guilty of constantly tweaking FS9 back in the day prior to the release of the X6800 extreme cpu. :( I think the days of spending more time tweaking than flying are far behind most individuals who constantly update their equipment for the latest and greatest for two reasons.1. The hardware is catching up to FSX.2. There is no new FS version in the works just yet and it may be some time (if ever) before a new release.

My point exactly , most tweakers are folks with lower end systems.

Nick,You're good at what you do. It takes me a few days to get everything the way I want it.I finally got it all figured out, including what UTX does to FSX's performance.It took some time to figure everything out. Now I can simply enjoy the fruits of the labor.

I used to play the upgrade game but stopped about 2 years ago. When I did upgrade constantly I mostly did it just to try new hardware, run benchmarks etc. The hardware itself became a bigger hobby than FS or any other game/sim.My current system was pretty midrange when I built it last autumn - the CPU was only something like $120 and it was the first time since about 1999 that I spent less than $300 on a video card :( Still, I don't plan on upgrading at all this year. Maybe in 2010...

Getting FSX with lots of eye candy and addons to run smoothly at HD resolutions is no trivial task that is for sure. That pesky slider which is STILL not all the way to the right or that check box still not ticked or that approach into a mega airport in the most complex desktop airliner sim ever built still a bit choppy... these are all unacceptable situations and therefore a challenge to be overcome. Simple as that. One can liken it to anything humans have ever done - having to scout the landscape for fire 20,000 years ago due to an inability to light it yourself was just as unacceptable a situation. Bet you there were some "obsessive compulsives" back then too! We got that right so chances are we will be able to get 500Gb odd FSX installations to run at full settings as well, sooner rather than later.

I have to disagree with you my friend because 20000 yrs ago life was much more of a survive-or-die situation. Someone trying to find fire to get warm was not obsessive compulsive because he/she was scouting the landscape from stem to stem. It was a matter of survival or death. I am not going to die if I stop searching for the latest, most detailed mesh add-on for fsx or if I stop fiddling with the vcore or the CAS-to-RAS precharge and Northbridge frequency etc,etc. Nowadays life is much much more complicated. Relationships are much much more complicated and if someone has some communication difficulties and he/she is very introvert, then he may develop obsessions about various things in life. Now if I had survival problems e.g. my wallet was empty, I was homeless, Jobless I would probably develop different kind of psychological problems for example stress, anxiety, panic attacks, fear (which by the way can co-exist with an obsessive-compulsive disorder) but I wouldn't care if I could not tweak my PC in order to get optimum frame rate and visuals. I wouldn't have a PC in the 1st place :(

Flying?? What's that??No, actually I spend much, much less time tweaking than I used to.

Getting FSX with lots of eye candy and addons to run smoothly at HD resolutions is no trivial task that is for sure. That pesky slider which is STILL not all the way to the right or that check box still not ticked or that approach into a mega airport in the most complex desktop airliner sim ever built still a bit choppy... these are all unacceptable situations and therefore a challenge to be overcome.

aha - I see the truth has been revealed by some replies.... However I also admit I can relate to this above text, and my system is getting into the medium-low range for today.Hopefully next time I upgrade I won't need to OC in order to enjoy FSX, we'll see....

I have to disagree with you my friend because 20000 yrs ago life was much more of a survive-or-die situation. Someone trying to find fire to get warm was not obsessive compulsive because he/she was scouting the landscape from stem to stem. It was a matter of survival or death.

The obssesive compulsive (and I mean this in no negative way at all) caveperson I had in mind was the one who finally figured out how to reliably light a fire on demand because he or she was fed up with chasing lightning across the plains. It was the modern day equivalent of NASA landing a couple of blokes on the moon. From my experience of life most people are obsessive compulsive to one degree or other and in fact a lot of highly technical jobs practically demand it (are there are any non-obssesive compulsives at NASA?). Sure, like with anything in life, it can be taken too far to a point where it becomes a "disorder" but in the vast majority of the time this human tendancy is one of the fundamental gears of evolution. Long may it continue! Or at least as long as it takes to get my 300Gb odd FSX installation to run like FS9 does today.