Hi all.. I hope that you can help me to figure out what might be the best course for me at this time. I have a 5 year old custom built (but locally built) gaming PC running XP. I have both FS9 and FSX on it, with PMDG and Level D equipment installed. I often fly with Active Sky loaded, an ACARS for my Flight Sim virtual, and several other support things running in background... Yesterday, while flying PMDG's 744 in FSX, the frustrations got to me in terms of restaring the system, just to get it going. And I am wondering ... is now the time?I am considering spending about $1500 or so on one of the gaming PC's available from several sites, and would appreciate some thoughts on the timing of doing so. I have added about as much RAM as possible, and think my video card can also use an upgrade.. and who knows what else. But reading the comments about Windows 7 and some of the difficulties that people are having, is making me wonder should I rough it out longer, or spend the money and jump in now. And, there are so many choices and things that I don't understand about the choices, that I am very confused at this point. Any advise is very much appreciated.Thanks in advance.Bob L

I have used Win7 Ult 64b on my new machine that I got in December, it runs great, runs FSX great and I am so glad that I went with Win7 rather than staying with XP. A lot of people have switched to Win7 and most have no problems.Frankly $1,500.00 for a custom built machine does not sound like you are going to get much. In order for me to comment on how I though it would run FSX I would need to see the parts list.I bought my machine from MaxForce PC and I can highly recommend Max. If you are going to buy a custom rig send Max a list of parts and ask him for a quote.www.maxforcepc.comRod

Simple question: why don't you buy the parts and build it yourself? A little work to be done, but in the end, it's really that simple. And things you don't know, can be asked. A matter of saving a lot of money and learning some stuff on your own, too.In that case, 1500 sounds very very good.

Simple question: why don't you buy the parts and build it yourself? A little work to be done, but in the end, it's really that simple. And things you don't know, can be asked. A matter of saving a lot of money and learning some stuff on your own, too.In that case, 1500 sounds very very good.

I second that advice from Word Not Allowed. Use the ASUS P6X58D (see link in my sig) and is middle ground price wise. This mobo gives you a very good upgrade path allowing you to upgrade to sata6, i980, 2000 memory etc. in the future when the price curves dip. the gx275 is the best bang for the FSX buck as it has the same gpu as the 285 but $150 less. More vid card does not help that much with FSX.

the gx275 is the best bang for the FSX buck as it has the same gpu as the 285 but $150 less. More vid card does not help that much with FSX.

Or wait couple of days more for first posts on Fermi performance in FSX. There are some that ordered the 480, and soon we will know how much better... Patience.

Hi all.. I hope that you can help me to figure out what might be the best course for me at this time. I have a 5 year old custom built (but locally built) gaming PC running XP. I have both FS9 and FSX on it, with PMDG and Level D equipment installed. I often fly with Active Sky loaded, an ACARS for my Flight Sim virtual, and several other support things running in background... Yesterday, while flying PMDG's 744 in FSX, the frustrations got to me in terms of restaring the system, just to get it going. And I am wondering ... is now the time?I am considering spending about $1500 or so on one of the gaming PC's available from several sites, and would appreciate some thoughts on the timing of doing so. I have added about as much RAM as possible, and think my video card can also use an upgrade.. and who knows what else. But reading the comments about Windows 7 and some of the difficulties that people are having, is making me wonder should I rough it out longer, or spend the money and jump in now. And, there are so many choices and things that I don't understand about the choices, that I am very confused at this point. Any advise is very much appreciated.Thanks in advance.Bob L

If you're going to spend $1500 "or so" I see no issues. If you were spending $4000-$5000 I'd hold off a bit to check the performance of the extreme gaming systems with the new 980X and/or the Nvidia 480X. They look pretty good right now but may not warrant buying the top-of-the-line until a new version of flight simulator is released. FSX will run great on almost anything with the right amount of tweaking but throw on a bunch of commercial addons and it's a whole new ballgame. And, it is a great educational experience (and usually cheaper) to build your own system so definitely agree with the other posters.Best regards,Jim