I've been following the 737 NGX for a while now but I always keep wondering what kind of frames I will be able to get with my computer. Obviously, because the NGX isn't out yet, if I were to buy other PMDG planes what framerates could I expect?My specs are:Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bitIntel i7 920 @ 2.676 Gb RAMATI Radeon HD 5800 SeriesSince I bought this computer before I became a flight simmer, I really didn't know the advantages of building your own computer and I ended up buying a Dell XPS 9000. Because of this, as far as I am aware of you can't overclock these easily (if at all). I also don't know the exact version of the GPU and I've searched all over the place but all I can find is "5800 Series".Usually in FSX I can get 15-20 FPS on the ground with most of the sliders as high as they go, and I have gotten 60+ FPS up near FL400 with almost no clouds. I don't have anyone other payware addons (yet) and I am hoping with PMDG aircraft I can get atleast 10 FPS with graphics settings near as high as they go. I have tried some the the most popular tweaks to FSX, such as BP=0, but I didn't see much, if any, of a difference.So I would like to know what you think and whether or not I'll need to start building a new computer if I want to try flying some payware aircraft! Thanks! -Greg Hetherington

Hi Greg, Your question is a tough one to guarantee a correct answer since as you know, FPS depends on so much more than just raw specs. First off, let me say your system specs (other than not being overclocked) are great and you should see a lot more than most with some of the hardware you've got in their. The bad news is what you've heard is kind of true. With most systems store or online bought such as Dell, they put the components in that people are most likely to buy such as the top headline items like the 920, ATI5800 (or you chose them), but they always seem to skimp on the most important part of the whole build which is the Motherboard. I would be surprised if it was anything decent to be honest and they noramlly buy them per model so they are fairly proprietary and useless (overclocking wise). The Motherboard and CPU and Ram are the components that will decide the stability for you overclock. Having the same CPU I can tell you that it is a quantum leap difference between what the default 2.67 will do ~vs~ the overclock that I currently have on my own.The Power Supply is also most likely something from the lowest bidder with companies like dell unless you were able to select your own. Your specs sound really good, but did you choose the motherboard or know what it is? Also what is you PSU (power supply)? You may need to upgrade a couple things if you really want to take advantage of what you have there, but as is I can't think of any PMDG aircraft you couldn't happily own.*With any pre-built system it normally has loads of junk running that you may need to either uninstall, disable or change the setting, etc. I have installed literally thousands of Dells and most work related but some friends. With my friends systems I always formatted and installed a fresh copy of windows without all the extra baggage.Hope this helps,

Thanks Dan,To answer your questions about the motherboard and the powersupply, I don't have any idea as to what motherboard I have, but I do know that I have a 475W power supply. I am aware that 475W isn't really that much, but I don't think that it will cause problems unless I overclock (Right?)Its nice to know that I should be able to run PMDG aircraft on my computer without having to worry about framerates, and hopefully I'll be flying the 737NGX soon(ish) :( -Greg Hetherington

Well Greg, that's another question I can't guarantee a 100% answer to but 475w is pretty weak, not suitable at all if you wanted to overclock. If you don't change a thing on system I would be surprised if that PSU lasts a year. They are often no name PSU's and if you don't plan on spending anymore coin on your rig then I would just be ready for it to be the 1st thing that goes.My last computer related job I was acting system administrator for 320+ companies. They all had Dell and mostly OptiPlex 260 & 280's. The number one things we replaced were the hard drives (cheapest seagates that exist) and the PSU's.You have a really nice rig there, it would be ashame to not unleash it's power with a new MB and PSU :(

I'll look into getting a new PSU and MB. So if I replace both that would mean I could overclock then, right? Also, did you overclock your i7 with just stock cooling, if not, what are you using to cool it?Thanks again, Greg Hetherington

The i7 has a pretty good stock cooler and I did run my first OC on it for over a year. I ended up later getting a new cooler since it started making some dieing sounds (whining) and ended up getting this one. It was cheap but I never go above 50c unless running hardcore benchmarks. My case also has great airflow with a ceiling vent/fan so this is another part of the whole puzzle.My first overclock of 3.8 was very stable and my newer overclock is still 3.8 but the difference is this time I have hyperthreading enabled and it runs perrrfect and noticably faster.I can post or send you either set of parameters but need to find my old notes and write down my current settings. If I was buying a new MB right now I would probably get the Rampage III. If choosing between mine and the Ramp II I would probably still get the P6T6 but the III looks pretty perrrty :(*Do you know what type of ram you have? The memory speeds also tie into what you'll be able to achieve for an OC.

I am interested in hearing that you turned on hyperthreading and found a performance increase. I read al about *******' tweaks and how he went about his affinity mask and how FSX is run across the mutliple cores, and I agreed with his assesment that Hyperthreading has the affect of opening a margin of error and collision amogst fibers that had a negative impact on performance. I have HT turned off with affinity mask at 14 (******* suggested 13, but with 14 you can really open up the FiberFrameTime or what ever that setting is, greatly increasing it from .33, at the moment I have it off.) I forget those names of the tweaks as I havent touched my CFG in probably a month and a half, and am very proud at that! I was pretty close to falling into tweaking hell, always messing around after every flight.Now after that ramble, I will resist further hijacking of this thread, and return it to its proper owner, thank you.

All I can clearly remember about the ram when I bought it was that it was 6GB DDR3 Triple Channel. I just looked at the Dell website again to see what the same computer came with now and it says that its 1333 MHz, but they've changed the rig a little since I bought it so it could be different, but I doubt it.The cooler looks nice. How large a power supply do you think I should get, around 850W? Or would that be overkill?Anyway, its sounds like I'll have a nice project to keep me busy before that NGX comes out! -Greg Hetherington

For the price I don't think it's overkill. 850 gives you room for upgrades, overclocks, SLI (two video cards in tandum) etc... The lowest I would go personally would be a 750 but again, it's a $20 difference and for me a no brainer to get the 850 :wink:The memory should be 1600mhz or say that it will be able to be overclocked to 1600. All memory that says 1600 really doesn't come that way and normal clock is lower, like 1333.@ Scott, Haha, it's not hijacking and may be relevant. I honestly never read that before. Do you have a link where he talks about that? I can't disagree with him but have a very stable OC with HT enabled and wouldn't change it for anything. I think I remember certain boards, or chips having issues with the HT on, but not my setup. I honestly don't remember the exacts, but think it was Ryan that mentioned at one point he couldn't implement HT on with his OC because something he has or had in his setup.

Is there any way that I could find out whether or not my ram can be overclocked to 1600? If it doesn't does that mean I need to buy new ram, or can I still overclock my CPU? Overclocking is one the things that I haven't done much research about yet, because I've never had to do it before. I'll go look for some information about that.I looked at the MBs you mentioned. Is there any big advantage of one over the other? Its about time for me to go now, I'll probably be back sometime tomorrow. Thanks for all of your help! -Greg Hetherington

@ Scott,Haha, it's not hijacking and may be relevant. I honestly never read that before. Do you have a link where he talks about that? I can't disagree with him but have a very stable OC with HT enabled and wouldn't change it for anything. I think I remember certain boards, or chips having issues with the HT on, but not my setup. I honestly don't remember the exacts, but think it was Ryan that mentioned at one point he couldn't implement HT on with his OC because something he has or had in his setup.

Its on this page, talks about too many threads, and the preference to have a few cores running at their highest speeds, where too many cores(threads) can cause them all to run slower, as well as the conflicts that can occur with too many threads.He also mentions something about overall speed being higher due to the lower power requirements when HT is off.This is why ******* has suggested affinity mask=12 as oppossed to affinity mask =14 which utilizes all the i7 has to offer with HT off.I will however look into turning HT back on (as it will help me greatly when working on my video projects, my pesky job that keeps me from flying airplanes for real), and do the math to figure out what the affinity mask =14 equivalent is with HT on and 8 threads/cores

Is there any way that I could find out whether or not my ram can be overclocked to 1600? If it doesn't does that mean I need to buy new ram, or can I still overclock my CPU? Overclocking is one the things that I haven't done much research about yet, because I've never had to do it before. I'll go look for some information about that.I looked at the MBs you mentioned. Is there any big advantage of one over the other? Its about time for me to go now, I'll probably be back sometime tomorrow. Thanks for all of your help! -Greg Hetherington

Your memory sticks should have labels on them with a number, I would just google it and it should tell you the type. You could still OC it, but I honestly have no idea what you would reach if the memory isn't rated for clocking above 1333. I recommend a 6gb set if you need to buy any. This is what I bought, here.My top choice of MB's currently is the Rampage III, there are too many advantages to list.

Its on this page, talks about too many threads, and the preference to have a few cores running at their highest speeds, where too many cores(threads) can cause them all to run slower, as well as the conflicts that can occur with too many threads.He also mentions something about overall speed being higher due to the lower power requirements when HT is off.This is why ******* has suggested affinity mask=12 as oppossed to affinity mask =14 which utilizes all the i7 has to offer with HT off.I will however look into turning HT back on (as it will help me greatly when working on my video projects, my pesky job that keeps me from flying airplanes for real), and do the math to figure out what the affinity mask =14 equivalent is with HT on and 8 threads/cores

Hi Scott, did you forget to link a page there? I have no idea the title of the post, but I had one where I ran very thorough tests and FSX benchmarks with the two overclocks and with HT on there was a huge difference. (If you're reading this post, do not turn on HT just because of this, it requires other things and I only research my own hardware, oh, and I am running a hacked bios 0001). Again, I don't disagree with ******* since he is much more knowledgable than myself in this area, but would like to give it a good read. I can only go by what I have and would need to know why he mentioned this. Was in in regard to the highmem topic? I'm running it and never been more stable. Thanks to him and Ryan my FSX experience has been reborn.

Silly me, feel like a fool posting that and forgetting to ctrl+p the link before I clicked "Add reply". Premature repliation.[/url]http://forum.avsim.net/topic/283061-bojotes-fsxcfg-file/page__st__125starts up at post 139 where it is brought up about how to affinity mask a HT'd i7, since ******* from the beginning always said to turn HT off and used affinity masks of 12 or 14.

I'll look into getting a new PSU and MB. So if I replace both that would mean I could overclock then, right? Also, did you overclock your i7 with just stock cooling, if not, what are you using to cool it? Thanks again, Greg Hetherington

You have a Dell?? Your gonna have a hard time replacing the MB and then reinstalling Win 7. The Dell supplied Win7 is problay tied to the MB they installed. If your gonna OC an Intel CPU your definately going to need an aftermarket cooler. Also you don't need a crazy expensibe MB to OC. There are plenty of boards (ASUS, Gigabyte) in the low $100 price range that will do the job nicely. I have my i5-750 2.66Ghz OC to 3.6Ghz using an ASUS Sabertooth 55i MB. I also use the Coolermaster Hyper212 CPU cooler....about $30. Another thing to consider is the Dell case. When you OC your going to generate a lot of heat...your gonna want your case well ventilated with at least 1 intake and 1 exhaust fan. I'm not sure if the Dell case will allow you to add fans..or how well cooled it already is. <BR><BR>The bottom line is do a lot of research before you start swapping out parts....

Thanks for your reply. I've looked further into the topic since I first posted it last week and I decided that I'll see how well the NGX runs on my computer before I do anything. I've also looked a lot into the problem considering Windows7 and not having it work with a new MB. Anyways, I'll figure out what I want to do when the NGX comes out and won't worry about it for now.-Greg Hetherington