Hey guys,Well, after 3 1/2 years, I've finally made the transition to FSX! After seven years of chugging along with FS9 and a P4 at 2.4ghz, 2GB of RAM, and 6600GT, Mrs. NWarty let me pull the trigger on a new desktop system. About three weeks ago, with a budget of roughly $1500, I bought a system from ibuypower. I wasn't going to build it myself, so I let someone do the hard work for me. I had been reading info on i7's and decided to go with that one. This is what I got for my budget. i7 920 oc'd to 3.2ghz (liquid cooled)Nvidia 260 GTX6GB DDR3-16001TB drive22" Asus widescreenThermaltake V9 case with NZXT Sentry LX (free upgrade from Sentry 2)So after reading over NickN's FSX set-up tutorial furiously, I set about installing FSX. Ummm....holy cow this machine is fast! Windows 7 rocks, and I've installed FSX Gold in no time flat. Sheesh and here I thought it would take 30 minutes. Reboot, default flight, reboot, nhancer, reboot, wash, rinse, repeat. Install UTX. Install GEX. Install SceneryTech LC. Install REX....finally firing up FSXHoly Good Lord!!! Flight Sim nirvana! Here I am at KOLM Olympia, WA in the default C172, the majority of sliders full-right, water mid 2, REX water and clouds. Holding rock solid at 28 FPS (locked) as I climb out of Olympia and turn north towards Tacoma. Absolutely beautiful on 22" widescreen at a resolution of 1920 x 1200. A FAR cry from my trusty ole 17" LCD running at 1280x1024. The smoothness, combined with the head latency is fantastic. The DX10 preview has given me 4 FPS more, cool. I haven't played around with the bloom, but will test it out tonight. I have to play around with the settings more to really gauge what set-up is going to work for me. Will probably do a lot of my heavy iron/VATSIM flying on FS9, but will try it with FSX. So, not to be a cheerleader or anything, I'm just excited to finally have a machine that will Ginsu FS9 and make FSX really enjoyable. Looking forward to FTX's PNW and Carenado's C185 next week :( Now, to get my Pond Racer textures working in FSX :( Blake

Welcome to the party!!! :( I was an early adopter on a lower end rig when FSX first came out, but it gave me enough to enjoy it. But after getting my new rig, it was like a whole new experience and things just keep getting better and better!make sure you treat Mrs NWarty for the gift, LOL.

Welcome to the party!!! :( I was an early adopter on a lower end rig when FSX first came out, but it gave me enough to enjoy it. But after getting my new rig, it was like a whole new experience and things just keep getting better and better!make sure you treat Mrs NWarty for the gift, LOL.

Welcome and there is so much more coming to the FSX world in the near future lolHave fun :-)Cheers,

Mike and Andre,Thanks for the replies fellas. :( I fired up FSX last night to see what nighttime and dusk looked like. I was absolutely gobsmacked...GEX and UTX night lighting (street and intersection traffic lights) is unbelievable along with the headlights and taillights of the vehicle traffic. Combined with REX's bluish/orange hued dusk sky and I was hitting the "V" key faster than you can say screenshot.

Mike and Andre,Thanks for the replies fellas. :( I fired up FSX last night to see what nighttime and dusk looked like. I was absolutely gobsmacked...GEX and UTX night lighting (street and intersection traffic lights) is unbelievable along with the headlights and taillights of the vehicle traffic. Combined with REX's bluish/orange hued dusk sky and I was hitting the "V" key faster than you can say screenshot.

NWarty, I have almost the exact same rig as you. Same ram setup, same cpu set to the same overclock (3.2ghz), but on the stock fan. I've ordered an Arctic Freezer Pro HSF which is coming Friday, and then I plan to overclock a bit higher, probably 3.5 or so. My vid card is different, an ATI 5850 and I have a 24" Dell LCD @ 1920x1080. It's been a dream setup for FSX, and flying FTX PNW has been an incredible experience. I'm new to flight simming in general. I've toyed around with FS9 in the past, and remember never doing much past flying the default plane of the old default field, Meigs. These many years later I've finally dove in head first and I'm still swimming.

I fired up FSX last night to see what nighttime and dusk looked like. I was absolutely gobsmacked...GEX and UTX night lighting (street and intersection traffic lights) is unbelievable along with the headlights and taillights of the vehicle traffic.

Great to hear of someone else who has jumped the hurdle, Blake! If you want a quick thrill - take the A2A Spit down along Hwy 5 though the Seattle area - at road level - clipping the tree tops! I have a 3840 x 1024 TripleHead2Go, and doing that at 300 will make my wife want to throw up! Incidentally - you're quoting 3.2 gig.. is this a miss-type, or are you only running at 3.2? That proc is good for more than 4 on liquid, and that will mostly take care of the issues you 'might' have after you've installed PNW. :(

Hi Paul,my i7 920 is overclocked to 3.2 at the moment, but I do plan on going higher. Hope this helps. Ziffel,Welcome aboard the madness train :DAdded a couple of screenshots above. The first is outside Lahaina in Maui, the second is dusk in Olympia, WA

NWarty, welcome to the dark side :)I do a good deal of heavy iron flying in FSX (PMDG 747/MD-11, LDS 767 etc) and whilst over e.g. Aerosoft's mega-airport Heathrow you will see frames drop in these big ones, it's never stopped me enjoying the experience - and of course the eye candy is very nice indeed. And my rig is a good few years older than yours.So - in short, do try some of the heavies in FSX, you may like what you see.

So - in short, do try some of the heavies in FSX, you may like what you see.

Thanks Paul,I did test out my Maddog 08 at ImagineSim's KATL last night with the same slider settings, I'm around 15 fps. I'll pull them back a bit to fly the big guys, but it may just be a matter of configuring the LHS Maddog correctly for a more framerate-friendly model.

You're late. Did you bring a note? :( Al