Hi well as everyone knows core I7's are becoming the popular choice for the basis of building a FSX machine but they also may know that without overclocking the processor to over 3.4ghz and up FPS in addons and addon planes drop like a cement block in the water, so my question is and is for pmdg, What kind of Rig/computer setup do you guys on the development and beta teams have? Although you guys may not want to give out this information because i have seen no post on it, it may be benificial so people can start to migrate to FSX and behond with out the worry of spending money and not getting worthy results.Thanks,Shaun.

There's been several posts in the past month or three on what the devs have. The beta team runs the gamut, I started testing the MD11 with a P4 single core.

Hi well as everyone knows core I7's are becoming the popular choice for the basis of building a FSX machine but they also may know that without overclocking the processor to over 3.4ghz and up FPS in addons and addon planes drop like a cement block in the water, so my question is and is for pmdg, What kind of Rig/computer setup do you guys on the development and beta teams have? Although you guys may not want to give out this information because i have seen no post on it, it may be benificial so people can start to migrate to FSX and behond with out the worry of spending money and not getting worthy results.

You do not need to overclock an i7 to get good frame rates in FSX. The thing about FSX is that even though frame rates can appear to be relatively low if you are staring at the frame rate counter, panning and flying are both very smooth.I run an i7 920 with a GTX285 at 1900x1440 on Vista Ultimate (64 bit) and I have done some comparisons with stock cpu speeds and overclocked speeds. My test was a simple one: I run at near max settings, including 100% airline and GA traffic using MyTrafficX, REX2, and scenery resolution at 7cm. I loaded up the PMDG JS4100 at spot #2 on the ramp at FTX's Tamworth, looked forward (which happens to be the heaviest frame rate hit in the area giving me worst case scenario for frame rates) and run a 1 minute fraps benchmark.

Stock 2.66 GhzFrames			Time (ms )	Min			Max		   Avg	1393				60000	   19			  25		   23.22	OCed 3.4 GhzFrames			Time (ms )	Min			Max		   Avg	1671				60000	   23			  29		   27.85

So I think "drop like a cement block in the water" is a bit of an overstatement. Getting an i7 is probably the best "tweak" you can do for FSX. I don't bother with tweak guides (actually never have.. but there really is no need for it now). Overclocking brings better performance obviously, but I wouldn't call it essential. Remember, these results are with 4 high end addons running simultaneously.

I have to agree with Vin - it isn't the fps that matter in fsx really it's the smoothness of it. Yeah, we'd all like 100 fps but that isn't going to happen so I'll settle for a smooth 20 fps.Only a couple of tweaks improve fsx anyway, the rest have a limited effect on a few systems. As for overclocking, even with the 0.8 Ghz above the gain is only about 4 frames so is it worth it with all the 'life shortening' of components?....Fsx has come a long way from the slideshow that it was on my 750Mhz pc, even fs9 struggled on that lol. I'm running a core2 3Ghz (32bit Vista) at the moment and must say that works quite well. Built my i7 but awaiting W7 for that so I'll be going to 64bit as I'm running out of 32bit options.No doubt that will bring other problems but such is life lol.John Ellison

Vin is correct on all counts, its not the frame rate counter that makes the difference between FS9 and FSX, it is the smooth, nearly stutter free result that matters. I have been running a Core 2 Duo E6600 overclocked to 3.4GHz for the past 2 years and have both FS9 (gasp) and FSX running on a dedicated. The reason for a dedicated HD is obvious, it keeps the O/S separate because the O/S constantly accesses the HD. If you had FS on the same HD, you WILL see stutters. So by keeping FS on a dedicated drive, you greatly minimize the stuttering.FS9 has not been tweaked at all and everything is stock with a bunch of scenery add-ons. FSX on the other hand, has been tweaked a little bit and while I have an above average framerate of 30fps with the J41, the framerate counter is actually deceiving, the refresh rate is actually a lot smoother. Scenery and autogen density are set to dense with the above mentioned smoothness, I do have a dozen scenery add-ons.On a system like what I have, tweaking certain parameters in FSX will give you great results. My system specs:E6600 @ 3.4GHz air cooled768mb eVGA 8800GTX with the latest drivers and after market heat sink with an 80mm fan.4GB Corsair Dominator 8500C5D paired RAM2x250GB HD, one for the OS, the other for FS and other gameseVGA 680i A1 MainboardWindows XP Pro 32bitThis system is over 2 years old right now and I'm still happy with it, I do plan to upgrade to an i7 at some point after Windows 7 is out. If any of you have a similar setup like mine, you should be able to run FSX quite well. My computer has been a good trusty work horse, apart from having FS on it, I use it for 3D development work, web and flash development.Cheers,

I'm buying a new system soon - I think it's gonna be the following specs:CPU - Intel Core i7 860RAM - 8GB Corsair DDR3Motherboard - eVGA P55-SLIVideo - Radeon 5850 1GBStorage - 160GB Intel X25-M G2 SSD (for OS and FS/games), 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (for mass storage)Will run Windows 7 Ultimate x64.My case, monitor and keyboard/mouse are still fine and I'll use those in the new machine as well.

how 'bout 12DDR3 and you can split 6 for gaming and 6 for work

The P55 Chipset is dual channel, not triple like the X58, so it's gotta be 8GB, not 12. I'm only getting the 8 because I do music recording/production and I'll be able to use it, it's not for FS.