Hi Guys,I run FS9 at about 20FPS with a bit below half way settings online at KJFK FSDT with ACtiveSky Evolution and FSPAX and payware plane.I am considering upgrading to FSX...I have a :Intel Core Due E8500 @ 3.16Ghz and 3GB of RAMNVIDIA 9800GTX 512MB1TB HDDWith 6 GB of DDR3 ram.What do you guys think? Should it work? Give me smooth textures and all?What should I upgrade if I was to upgrade something. I've been considering, but not sure.Zeke

It will run FSX, but it won't run it at a blistering speed with the sliders on anything other than fairly conservative settings. If you are happy to bang the sliders over to the left a fair bit, then you could get away with it so long as you aren't running lots of other stuff too, but you'd be better off with a bit more CPU power to really see what FSX can do.Al

That's basically my computer with a bit better CPU and comparable video card.I can run rural areas with GA payware 20-30 fps depending on the model.Big city areas... not so much, and forget airliners into JFK, ATL, ORD... fps will be around 10-12.I have my AI cars and planes set to zero as well.

Hi Guys,I run FS9 at about 20FPS with a bit below half way settings online at KJFK FSDT with ACtiveSky Evolution and FSPAX and payware plane.I am considering upgrading to FSX...I have a :Intel Core Due E8500 @ 3.16Ghz and 3GB of RAMNVIDIA 9800GTX 512MB1TB HDDWith 6 GB of DDR3 ram.What do you guys think? Should it work? Give me smooth textures and all?What should I upgrade if I was to upgrade something. I've been considering, but not sure.Zeke

Look at my specs they're pretty much the exact same as yours. At stock speeds my frames were low to mid twenties but the E8X00 can overclock like nobody's business if you have even a semi-decent cooler 4.0ghz is in question. 3.6 can be achieved without even raising voltages on most. Once I hit 4.0ghz that's when it really felt smooth and in rural areas it hits the frame limiter at 30fps and rarely drops below. I generally stay out of cities but as a quick test I got about 15fps at Portland Intl. in the Trike. So my advice would be go for it if you like VFR GA type stuff and also upgrade your graphics card I'm getting a 460GTX for Christmas and it should be a nice match.

Hi Guys,I run FS9 at about 20FPS with a bit below half way settings online at KJFK FSDT with ACtiveSky Evolution and FSPAX and payware plane.I am considering upgrading to FSX...I have a :Intel Core Due E8500 @ 3.16Ghz and 3GB of RAMNVIDIA 9800GTX 512MB1TB HDDWith 6 GB of DDR3 ram.What do you guys think? Should it work? Give me smooth textures and all?What should I upgrade if I was to upgrade something. I've been considering, but not sure.Zeke

Zeke,Check my sig for the equipment that I have which is similar to yours, except that I have 2 GB's of RAM and and E8400 overclocked to 3.85 ghz, not to mention the addons I run and the payware planes that I fly most, like the PMDG 747, JS4100, and LDS 767.I have absolutley no problem flying into FSDT's KJFK, KORD, KDFW, or most other big hubs and maintaining FPS usually between 20 and 30 FPS, even in the most dense areas. I think that as long as your set up is done correctly by either using a setup guide like NickN's, *******'s, or a payware service like FS-GS that I did that specializes in flight sim setups and optimizations then you should have no problem. It also probably helps that my sim computer is dedicated only to the flight sim and nothing else and I have very little running in the back ground. As well, I have spent countless hours mip mapping sceneries, AI, user aircraft, running REX DTX clouds, etc. All of the little things like that can add up to great performance granted you are willing to spend the time to do it. If you just install FSX haphazardly without taking care to do all the little optimizations along the way, even the newest rigs will probably have some issues. You also need to pick and choose your addons carefully knowing that some developers both for scenery and aircraft use different syles and materials to make their products which result in some of them being FPS heavy while other developers make stuff that has been optimized to perform the best that it possibly can. An example would be an Imaginesim airport vs an FSDreamteam or FlyTampa. While the Imaginesim airports usually are ok, FSDT and FlyTampa are usually regarded as some of the best at making large hubs that still perform well.If your interested I can send you some screen shots of what an approaching into JKF or ORK looks like on my "older" rig and I think you will both be amazed at how well it looks as well as how many FPS I am able to pull with an older CPU. I will say this as well, using the E8400 which starts stock at 3.0 ghz ran FSX pretty well, but since I overclocked it to 3.85 it made about the biggest difference in terms of gaining more FPS. I could probably get it to 4.0ghz but I am so happy with the performance now that I dont want to screw with it until I do my next upgrade when or after Flight arrives. That being said, an i7 or new components would be even better, but with what you have provided you take care in setup and tweaks you should be able to achieve the performance I get if not even better. You may want to get a better video card however. I used to run an 8800 GTS 512 and have since moven to a 1GB card that has made a little difference especially where clouds are concerned.Regards

I generally stay out of cities but as a quick test I got about 15fps at Portland Intl. in the Trike. So my advice would be go for it if you like VFR GA type stuff and also upgrade your graphics card I'm getting a 460GTX for Christmas and it should be a nice match.

A good exmple of how similar computers can perform differently with similar components. As as test I fired up FSX and loaded KPDX with the trike/unltralight and my FPS were so high (60 to 115 FPS) that I had to lock the FPS at 30 to keep it from bouncing around up into the 60's. Which just goes to show that for some FSX has to be used just for GA in cities, while others like me still fly big iron in big cities and have no problem.Here's a quick shot of KPDX with everything (autogen and scenery complexity) set to the highest and 100% AI. You cant see the AI though because its LOD so that it doesnt come into view as until I get a little closer, of which UT2 traffic still only makes a 3 to 5 FPS hit when run at high setting. In the shot I am capped at 30 FPS as an example to the other fellow who was getting 15 FPS. Without capping the FPS I was between 60 and 115 FPS but it was too choppy.

A good exmple of how similar computers can perform differently with similar components. As as test I fired up FSX and loaded KPDX with the trike/unltralight and my FPS were so high (60 to 115 FPS) that I had to lock the FPS at 30 to keep it from bouncing around up into the 60's. Which just goes to show that for some FSX has to be used just for GA in cities, while others like me still fly big iron in big cities and have no problem.Here's a quick shot of KPDX with everything (autogen and scenery complexity) set to the highest and 100% AI. You cant see the AI though because its LOD so that it doesnt come into view as until I get a little closer, of which UT2 traffic still only makes a 3 to 5 FPS hit when run at high setting. In the shot I am capped at 30 FPS as an example to the other fellow who was getting 15 FPS. Without capping the FPS I was between 60 and 115 FPS but it was too choppy.

Just curious what other addons are running there? My KPDX has only PNW on it which I figure is most of the hit but I'll have to test this out again and see since the last I remember going to a big city was sitting on the apron at PDX and seeing 15fps and vowing never to return. That may have been on my previous system that was not overclocked so when I get back home on Sunday I may have to check this all out. I'd like to see side by side specs of our systems especially to see the impact of your mipmapping. Then again I use FSX for totally different purposes since I never fly heavy iron in it and 95% of the time FSX is loaded it's to test out scenery.

Just curious what other addons are running there? My KPDX has only PNW on it which I figure is most of the hit but I'll have to test this out again and see since the last I remember going to a big city was sitting on the apron at PDX and seeing 15fps and vowing never to return. That may have been on my previous system that was not overclocked so when I get back home on Sunday I may have to check this all out. I'd like to see side by side specs of our systems especially to see the impact of your mipmapping. Then again I use FSX for totally different purposes since I never fly heavy iron in it and 95% of the time FSX is loaded it's to test out scenery.

That's just stock with GEX and UTX and UT2 traffic, but the autogen and scenery complexity slider were all the way the way up. I dont own PNW, but I cant imagine it being that much worse on FPS than what the stock area is with everything cranked up since autogen is still autogen whether it be stock or PNW. I will say this however, if just the PNW package takes that much of an FPS hit to cut your system down to 15 FPS I will never buy it, expecially with the stock KPDX in the area. Even flying the trike as a test around KJFK I still have to cap the FPS at 30 otherwise its shooting up and down between 60 and 90 FPS. Of course I never fly the trike, but it is interesting to see how high the FPS can go even in dense areas. None the less, the PMDG 747 into ORD or JFK will still give me around 23 to 30 FPS, but when flying complex planes I leave the FPS set to unlimited and I dont use any external FPS limiter.As far as the mip mapping, its hard to say how much of a difference it can make FPS wise vs. visually. I do know from what I read that having mipped textures takes some stress of the GPU since its not trying to render only one map of a product from a farther distance. Although mipping when combined with converting textures from 32bit to DXT5, DXT3, or DXT1 can make a substancial difference from what I have seen when I have converted payware scenery. A good example for me was Aerosoft's Nice X. When I first got that airport, which is a pretty small not very dense airport, I struggled to get even 20 FPS with the LDS 767. I opened the textures and saw some 32 bit mixed with some DXT5 and DXT3 textures mostly with no mip maps. Then I converted them to all DXT3 and added mips and saw a small improvement, but the airport was still not performing well. I then converted most of the textures to DXT1 with Alpha channels and now I am getting 30+ FPS even with the PMDG 747 or LDS 767. So in the case of that scenery it made a huge difference. I also run all aircraft both user a/c and AI a/c textures with DXT3 mip mapped textures. The mip maps probably dont help the performance of the user a/c, but it improves the look. It also improves the look and performance of AI, especially when using AI that have a lot of LODs built into the models.For me I have to do as much of those type of things as possible since I always seem to be flying complex a/c into dense sceneries that require as much overhead as possible. Overall I am super happy with the performance I get with my antique, hence the reason I haven't jumped onto the i series CPU's just yet. I think I will be waiting until Flight comes out to see how it runs and what type of rig will run it best. Until then, I know that my current setup runs FSX so well that its not worth messing with at all as far as an upgrade goes. I am hoping that Flight really takes advantage of the multicore processors and the newer technology so that we dont have to try and play catch up as much as we have in the past.