I have been a Microsoft Flight Simmer and fan since the beginning of time.Ii tried FSX on my old Athlon 64-3500+ CPU/AGP ATI HD 3850 GPU/WIN XP/2 GB Ram system and it ran at 6-12 FPS(UG). Just had a new gaming PC bulit by my local shop and I am in FSX heavan:AMD Phenom II-965 Black Edition(Overclocked to 3.9 Ghz with AMD Overdrive-Stable and Cool)XFX Radeon HD 5770 1 GB GPU4 GB PC8500 RAM500 GB Western Digital 32 HD(5 Year warranty)Samsung 22 " Gaming LCD MonitorThermaltake V3 Case + CPU Cooling and Case Cooling Extra 120 MM-Balll bearing Fan PackLG 22 X R'WR DVD DriveWindows 7 64 BIT Premium OSI was simply astounded by the FSX performance from both a display and FPs perspective. I fly all aircraft at all locations with no les than 28-35 FPS and up to 50-60 FPS in smaller aircraft away from large cities.All sliders maxed to the right(except light bloom) and I use anisotropic filering and DX 10 preview checked. With all the cars on the roads and AI aircraftand even programming bad weather(thunderstorms), I still only drop to 22 or 25 FPS at the low end(still very flyable). Now this is realistic flight simming at it's best. I seriously considered the Intel i7-920 CPU( a great CPU) and 6 GB of RAM, but after reading a zilion posts in tons of forums, I felt secure this system would do the job and it has. I have always liked AMD, so I went with their top of the line CPU(for now at least).I do not seem to have ANY bottlenecks anywhere. I can upgrade my video card sometime in the future, but I don't know why unles I need more GPU horsepower for add-ons. At 70 years of age(senior citizen gamer and ex-U.S. Army choppe aviator) I have maybe 10 more years of gaming left-if my eyes hold up (HAH).

Good luck then, and show us some screenshots of your flights!

I have been a Microsoft Flight Simmer and fan since the beginning of time.Ii tried FSX on my old Athlon 64-3500+ CPU/AGP ATI HD 3850 GPU/WIN XP/2 GB Ram system and it ran at 6-12 FPS(UG). Just had a new gaming PC built by my local shop and I am in FSX heaven.

That is great to hear!Let me make a prediction:Just like the rest of us, you are going to buy some fantastic add-on plane and some fantastic add-on sceneryand discover that everything looks even better at high levels of anti-aliasing on your video card.... and then...... you'll fly into Seattle SeaTac airport and wonder what happened to your frame rates :( And we'll meet again on this forum, discussing how to configure FSX for acceptable performance..In the meantime, enjoy your flying... and I hope I am wrong in my prediction :(

That is great to hear!Let me make a prediction:Just like the rest of us, you are going to buy some fantastic add-on plane and some fantastic add-on sceneryand discover that everything looks even better at high levels of anti-aliasing on your video card.... and then...... you'll fly into Seattle SeaTac airport and wonder what happened to your frame rates :( And we'll meet again on this forum, discussing how to configure FSX for acceptable performance..In the meantime, enjoy your flying... and I hope I am wrong in my prediction :(

And I was reading this with great interest with the expectation of upgrading next year from FS9. When the day comes the most demanding add-ons can run under FSX with the level of detail I'm seeing in screenshots lately that's when I'll switch. Next year could be the year!!!I for one hope 'millhouse' will buy all those add-ons and still report back here that he's not seeing frames fall below 25FPS. I'm ready to make the 'One Time' investment in a rig for FSX that'll run it like a bat out of hell with any add-on I throw at it.