A GTX285? OVERKILL for FSX, FSX wants more CPU power and you won't see much of a difference between a GTX285 and a Nvidia 9800GT 1gb. I was originally going to upgrade my 8400GS (worst gpu with an i5) to a GTX 275, which is about $370 (in aus) did my research and im saving half the price by gtetting a 9800GT 1gb.

I don't think a GTX is overkill. Atleast not if you want to hit the higher resolutions. I have a GTX295 & GTX 260. I would get at least a 260 since most people game outside of simming. I loves me my FSX but like to play newer titles that use better engines. That being said, even though FSX is indeed more CPU heavy it still benefits having a GPU for running more intense resolutions.I just moved and am not set up the way I normally am, but this is what I am talking about below. Once you play on 3 26" screens (or 3 any sized for that matter), you'll wonder why you never did before, well, ok obviously it does require a couple bucks too.Here are a couple pix of my current setup, but is temporary while I finish the walls in my office (so in other words, don't mind the mess of cords :( )The MD-11 VC is on the screens, running in 5040x1050.Here's the Carenado 182RG on screen without flash from the camera.Here is a nice side shot of the b747-8i at max res as well as another of the MD-11 in VC also at 5040x1050.As I mentioned, I hardly only stick to FSX and like to play all types of things, sims, games, and of course programs that take advantage of higher end video cards and multi monitors like Photoshop, Premiere, etc... So here are just a few screenshots from the various I just took.Prototype, F.E.A.R. 2, and a couple here from DIRT 2 (DIRT 2 is one of the few titles out that was written for DX11, if they had this engine in FS I would be in heaven) Pic 1 and Pic 2.I had to cut the pix down a tad in quality but left them at their 5040x1050 size. Of course they are much better in game. Anywho, it does pay to have a good video card even in FS, but even though it is a more CPU intensive sim, you also want to make sure the GPU is adeqquate enough to pull it's wait and not rely on the CPU if underpar (Such as having on board audio rather than a sound card, or mediocre graphics accelerator).To Klaus: I'm not sure on the wait right now for the next nvidia card release, but it may be worth a little waiting, just because the GTX family (200 fam) will most likely come down in price when the GF100 hits the market. The GTX260 is a power horse as well and even when I have had my GTX295 out of my comp and ran only the 260, could not tell the difference, even with the games above maxxed. I would agree still though that the 285 is better band for the buck, and would steer everyone away from the extra $$$ that the 295 cost.Edit: I just noticed I still haven't reinstalled nhancer, so my FSX screenies look a little jagged. Doh.

Gents,How smooth do you all run FSX with these computers you all have? Do any of you experience CTDs or errors? Blue or black screen of death? Is FSX a stable sim to begin using? Fs2004 is a very stable sim.Regards,James W.

A GTX285? OVERKILL for FSX, FSX wants more CPU power and you won't see much of a difference between a GTX285 and a Nvidia 9800GT 1gb. I was originally going to upgrade my 8400GS (worst gpu with an i5) to a GTX 275, which is about $370 (in aus) did my research and im saving half the price by gtetting a 9800GT 1gb.

Couple things on this:1. The GTX series can do better AA and AF with less of a performance hit than the 9 series can. That stuff is all done on the GPU, no CPU involvement. GTX is also a better card for higher resolution LCDs (1920X1200 and up). I'm also coming from the perspective of someone who is a gamer in the more general sense - the GTX is clearly a better card if you play anything else besides FSX, which I do. I think the GTX 260 or 275 might be the better mid-range option if you don't need the high-end GTX285 versus going down a whole chipset generation to the 9 series.

Ryan, my english in

This in interesting thread.If the system above is fairly ancient, should I give up hope of running FSX at all smoothly/ FS9-like on:Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (3MB L2 cache)2GB RAM (can go to 4 if needed, but will have to change OS)NVidia 8600GT 256MB?Any ideas from you chaps with similar systems?Cheers,Rudy

That system with only 2Gb of RAM is not going to run FSX very smoothly really, not at anything above low settings. Why do you need to change OS to install 4Gb of RAM though?The graphics card memory is a little on the low side too for FSX...I have a C2D as well, though 1GHz faster (on overclock...) check my sig...You will be able to run FSX per se, but not at higher settings smoothly...Andrew

Ryan,are you aware of any setting that might cause very poor fps when switching to specifically your J41? As I wrote in another thread I get great performance in FS9 but when I load the J41 training flight, I only get some 13-15 fps and it feels very unsmooth. If I immediately switch to a default FSX airplane (ie the training flight scenario is still loaded but the airplane has changed), fps jumps to 50-60fps and everything is smooth as butter.Right now I only have Windows 7 64 with all the latest drivers, FSX with SP1 and the PMDG j41 installed. Other simmers get good performance with much less powerful system, so I realize it's something with my setup. I haven't done any tweaking in FSX, but shouldn't I still be able to expect reasonable performance with my system even without tweaks especially considering that the default airplanes works well?

Couple things on this:1. The GTX series can do better AA and AF with less of a performance hit than the 9 series can. That stuff is all done on the GPU, no CPU involvement. GTX is also a better card for higher resolution LCDs (1920X1200 and up). I'm also coming from the perspective of someone who is a gamer in the more general sense - the GTX is clearly a better card if you play anything else besides FSX, which I do. I think the GTX 260 or 275 might be the better mid-range option if you don't need the high-end GTX285 versus going down a whole chipset generation to the 9 series.The GF100 chipset is designed with GPU-limited games in mind. These are games where the engine's rendering pipeline and thus the framerate is largely dependent on the GPU and not the main CPU. FSX is a CPU-limited engine that does not take advantage of the GPU nearly as much as a GPU-limited game does. Most games now are GPU-limited, so this is definitely the right decision for Nvidia to take, but I have a suspicion this card isn't going to be that great in FSX because of it. We obviously don't know for sure until the benchmarks come out - that should be really soon, the cards (which are called the GTX470 and GTX480) are coming out next month. I would wait and see what happens before buying, I could be wrong, but the way I read the previews and tech information on the chipset, I'm doubtful that it's going to help much in FSX.

Thanx Ryan....so i will wait too, and drink tea :) - beside of me my good old 8800

Ryan,are you aware of any setting that might cause very poor fps when switching to specifically your J41? As I wrote in another thread I get great performance in FS9 but when I load the J41 training flight, I only get some 13-15 fps and it feels very unsmooth. If I immediately switch to a default FSX airplane (ie the training flight scenario is still loaded but the airplane has changed), fps jumps to 50-60fps and everything is smooth as butter.Right now I only have Windows 7 64 with all the latest drivers, FSX with SP1 and the PMDG j41 installed. Other simmers get good performance with much less powerful system, so I realize it's something with my setup. I haven't done any tweaking in FSX, but shouldn't I still be able to expect reasonable performance with my system even without tweaks especially considering that the default airplanes works well?

You should definitely be seeing way higher FPS than that with that system. With my specs I see around 30-40 in the J41 VC on the ground with the sim almost totally maxed (minus traffic). The settings I'm running are 8X AA (Box filter) with Adaptive AA on, AF set to Let the Application Decide because AF is broken in FSX in the ATI driver. Set the dropdown to anisotropic in the sim and it should give something pretty close to what forced 16X looks like.I know the 5 series has a lot more options for AA - if you're running one of the super sampling modes that might explain it. You'll have to tell me how you've got it set.

You should definitely be seeing way higher FPS than that with that system. With my specs I see around 30-40 in the J41 VC on the ground with the sim almost totally maxed (minus traffic). The settings I'm running are 8X AA (Box filter) with Adaptive AA on, AF set to Let the Application Decide because AF is broken in FSX in the ATI driver. Set the dropdown to anisotropic in the sim and it should give something pretty close to what forced 16X looks like.I know the 5 series has a lot more options for AA - if you're running one of the super sampling modes that might explain it. You'll have to tell me how you've got it set.

Oki, I have the same AA settings as you but set AF in the driver so I'll give your suggestion a go. I tried AA supersampling earlier and loaded FS9 and while it finally looked at least as good as with my 8800 card using nHancer, the fps hit was terrible when in clouds. The reason I didn't give details about my settings was that I figured if I got good results with default airplanes with the same settings and if fps dropped that drastically just by switching airplane, it should be down to some other culprit than video settings. Perhaps the extremely detailed interior of the J41 makes it more sensitive to the settings?!?Thanks for the advice!

I definitely get higher FPS with the defaults too, but it should not be dropping to low double digits like that when you switch to the J41.