I'm thinking of building a PC from scratch mostly for FSX, and was needing advice on processors and motherboards, my computer knowledge is quite dated. (Circa 2005)

If you haven't updated your PC since 2005 perhaps it might be worth your while to wait for Sandy Bridge, Intel's new microarchitecture available starting january with corresponding motherboards available from your regular brands, at these prices and schedule. Note historically new microarchitectures tend to provide about a 10%-15% improved performance at the same clock speed and price point.As for disk drives, for raw speed get a pair of SSDs (Solid-State Drives) from OCZ (make sure they support the "trim" command and firmware upgrading).As far as video adapters, the nVidia GTX 580 seems to be all the rage (with a dual GPU GTX 590 apparently vailable 1Q2011 for those willing to run FSX with the sliders at 11).If you're in the AMD (ex-ATI) camp of video adapters, wait for the HD 6970 single-GPU video board available 4Q2010, as the HD 6870 does not offer much performance above the previous generation's HD 5870 (in fact 69xx and 68xx are the new performance and mainstream models, respectively, as compared to 58xx and 57xx previously).Cheers,- jahman.

I'm in the same boat.... hoping to upgrade Q1 2011.... My AMD6000 isn't cutting it anymore hehe...I was thinking of going i7 930 or 950 and clocking to 4+ GHz. But now with the K cpu's on the horizon I may just wait.

Im actually just going to build an all new PC rather than upgrade.

haha that's what I meant by upgrade. Everything is too old in my PC.

As far as video adapters, the nVidia GTX 580 seems to be all the rage (with a dual GPU GTX 590 apparently vailable 1Q2011 for those willing to run FSX with the sliders at 11).

Don't buy a multi GPU card. FSX makes no use of the second GPU and Jetline Systems (a company that makes PC's specifically for FSX) doesn't offer them because they have potential to hurt performanceJetline Systems Performance Guide

Don't buy a multi GPU card. FSX makes no use of the second GPU and Jetline Systems (a company that makes PC's specifically for FSX) doesn't offer them because they have potential to hurt performanceJetline Systems Performance Guide

In the last week a couple simmers reported reduced blurries with nVidia cards in SLI IIRC, so it no longer seems true that in dual GPU setups (single card or dual card) the second GPU goes completely unused by FSX. But dual GPUs also add frame rate jitter, so YMMV according to your tastes (smooth-as-butter frame rates flying at FL350 vs. the need to fly at 700 KIAS at 200 ft AGL over high-res sub-meter satellite photo-scenery). Simmers with significant tech knowledge beyond my limited skills feel free to chime-in on the state of dual GPUs for FSX.BTW my initial comment in general was to postpone purchasing hardware until Sandy Bridge was released, which gets us a few months even closer to the eventual release of MS Flight, quite certainly to be most adept at handling multi-GPU setups, I would presume. (Finishing DX10, fixing bugs, better multi-CPU and multi-GPU use and of course LiveID being the MS-Flight design goals many of us expect).Cheers,- jahman.

In the last week a couple simmers reported reduced blurries with nVidia cards in SLI IIRC, so it no longer seems true that in dual GPU setups (single card or dual card) the second GPU goes completely unused by FSX. But dual GPUs also add frame rate jitter, so YMMV according to your tastes (smooth-as-butter frame rates flying at FL350 vs. the need to fly at 700 KIAS at 200 ft AGL over high-res sub-meter satellite photo-scenery). Simmers with significant tech knowledge beyond my limited skills feel free to chime-in on the state of dual GPUs for FSX.BTW my initial comment in general was to postpone purchasing hardware until Sandy Bridge was released, which gets us a few months even closer to the eventual release of MS Flight, quite certainly to be most adept at handling multi-GPU setups, I would presume. (Finishing DX10, fixing bugs, better multi-CPU and multi-GPU use and of course LiveID being the MS-Flight design goals many of us expect).Cheers,- jahman.

Amen to that brother!