You are almost there ... in your case I would ... OC the i7, move to W7/64, get a 5xx not 4xx vid card, and add a dedicated for FSX fast HD with large cache. Read "480 GTX vs. 580 GTX A Preliminary Overview for FSX" on the "Monitors, Video Cards and Drivers" AvSim forum. It seems there is a huge gain in FSX with the 580 if (i.e. IF) it can be fed. Currently to feed it optimally, an OC'd i7-9xx (triple channel low latency etc. memory (min 4G) is the ticket.

Ryan Maziarz above has exactly what you say "an OC'd i7-9xx (triple channel low latency etc. memory (min 4G) is the ticket." with a 570 and has not experienced a massive difference.Only reason I say that is I am considering getting a 570 over my 285 but from what I gather I will not notice a great improvement.

Ryan Maziarz above has exactly what you say "an OC'd i7-9xx (triple channel low latency etc. memory (min 4G) is the ticket." with a 570 and has not experienced a massive difference.Only reason I say that is I am considering getting a 570 over my 285 but from what I gather I will not notice a great improvement.

To be clear - the difference is absolutely huge in anything aside from FSX. It's 3 times faster than the 260 in stuff like the Heaven Benchmark.I did get a sizable jump in FSX when I increased my overclock today from 3.8 to 4.0GHz - the scaling does not seem to be linear - you get a lot more performance out of these Fermi cards for very small changes in the clock speed at the top end of the CPU's range. I'm happy enough with it now that I'm gonna keep the card - I wish it was a bigger improvement in FSX than it is, but I didn't buy it just for that, I play a lot of other games too. If you're just doing FSX, then yeah go for a 460 1GB or something like that.

To all people with an i7 processor... does fsx run smoothly? Windows rates my system experience on all catagories with a 7,8 (out of 8,0), except my processor (amd phenom x3 8750 black edition), that has been rated 6,4. I thought this was pretty good, but fsx can run with very low fps. Will it help to buy a i7?

Ryan Maziarz above has exactly what you say "an OC'd i7-9xx (triple channel low latency etc. memory (min 4G) is the ticket." with a 570 and has not experienced a massive difference.Only reason I say that is I am considering getting a 570 over my 285 but from what I gather I will not notice a great improvement.

All key system components need to conspire to yield a fast FSX system. To state the obvious, adding a fast 5xx video card to a slow cpu/memory combination will not yield significant results. Ryan’s experience seems to indicate that his i7-8xx (eight) cpu, 2 channel memory system set at lower OC speeds was the weaker link and did not have the capability to feed the 570. This resulted in a less then desirable increase in FSX fps. Similarly, if Ryan was to try a 580, there would not be a significant rise in fps either because of the limiting cpu bottleneck. Ryan was able to coax more fps by raising his OC level showing once again what most know as the cpu bound nature of FSX . But …. Having said that (the cpu bound nature of FSX) …If you can “feed” the 580 with an OC’d i7-9xx (niner) high end configuration, there is a large 20-30% fps increase as reported by “SpiritFlyer”. (See http://forum.avsim.n...ost__p__1890055 ) in the AvSim Monitors, Video Cards and Drivers forum.Caveat… what I am not sure of is how these results posted by SpiritFlyer scale when using complex aircraft. Complex aircraft necessarily utilize the cpu more thus reducing the “bandwidth” to the gpu. Never the less, is seems FSX is GREATLY enhanced (fps and image quality) by the higher end video 5xx cards IF (i.e. IF) the 5xx cards are balanced with other key system components.I thought I was "done" with my fsx rig but a better cpu cooler, a slight nudge up in my OC and a 580 are on the horizon... But... FedEx is scheduled to deliver my NGX manuals today so these improvemtns will have to wait. :(

Personally, I'm waiting for Intel to come out with their Sandy Bridge CPU. It launches on the 5th of January and should easily beat the i7 in speed while being cheap as well.

And how do you explain this Scott?http://forum.avsim.net/topic/317966-gtx-580-thread-opinions-reports/page__view__findpost__p__1878016I mean, that's an OCed 980x @ 4.2GHz, and it still bottenecks FSX. There's something strange going on with Ryan setup if the 570 performs worse than the 260, but in normal conditions they would perform exactly the same in FSX.It's not a matter of feeding the card or hardware conspiracy when FSX so CPU bound.

All key system components need to conspire to yield a fast FSX system. To state the obvious, adding a fast 5xx video card to a slow cpu/memory combination will not yield significant results. Ryan’s experience seems to indicate that his i7-8xx (eight) cpu, 2 channel memory system set at lower OC speeds was the weaker link and did not have the capability to feed the 570. This resulted in a less then desirable increase in FSX fps. Similarly, if Ryan was to try a 580, there would not be a significant rise in fps either because of the limiting cpu bottleneck. Ryan was able to coax more fps by raising his OC level showing once again what most know as the cpu bound nature of FSX . But …. Having said that (the cpu bound nature of FSX) …If you can “feed” the 580 with an OC’d i7-9xx (niner) high end configuration, there is a large 20-30% fps increase as reported by “SpiritFlyer”. (See http://forum.avsim.n...ost__p__1890055 ) in the AvSim Monitors, Video Cards and Drivers forum.Caveat… what I am not sure of is how these results posted by SpiritFlyer scale when using complex aircraft. Complex aircraft necessarily utilize the cpu more thus reducing the “bandwidth” to the gpu. Never the less, is seems FSX is GREATLY enhanced (fps and image quality) by the higher end video 5xx cards IF (i.e. IF) the 5xx cards are balanced with other key system components.I thought I was "done" with my fsx rig but a better cpu cooler, a slight nudge up in my OC and a 580 are on the horizon... But... FedEx is scheduled to deliver my NGX manuals today so these improvemtns will have to wait. :(