This is silly guys. I have everything to 100% and have excellent performance and have ever since I got my i7 930 to 4.3GHz.

I've a i7950 @4ghz with no sliders to 100% and in EDDF with UT2 100%, pmdg 747, lod radius 5.5, rex2, fs passengers i stay on 5-8fps!!!!!It doesn't seems to me a good performance!!!!

This is silly guys. I have everything to 100% and have excellent performance and have ever since I got my i7 930 to 4.3GHz.

Hi Stephen, you say excellent performance but how do you define excellent performance?Have you for instance tried flying the PMDG 747 into say YBBN,YMML,KSEA,KPDX using Orbx scenery at extremely dense autogen?I am willing to bet that if you tried that you would not describe FSX's performance as excellent.Bryan.

As far as the definition of excellent/good performance for any flight simulator, the FAA would say that for excellent performance, the update frame rate must be 60 frames per second (without ANY "long" frames for stutter free performance) for each 45 degree Field of View or so channel of graphics and the latency from yoke movement to visual change should be less than 100 milliseconds. Frequently that is accomplished with a separate computer assigned to solving the flight dynamics, autopilot, fly-by-wire computer systems, weather, AI, ATC, etc., along with multiple(3,5, or more) $250,000 graphics channel computers. However, many academic piloted studies have been performed with flight sim systems providing 30 fps as long as complex maneuvers such as roll/pitch/yaw sudden changes in ground effect and other demanding environments are not under test. So I would say that, in general terms, good performance could first be defined in terms of frame rates nearing 30 fps with small amounts of stuttering (not sure about latency - maybe 125msec tops). Now the big question is, what is the scenery being used - how optimized is it and is it highly focused on "eye candy" - lots of detail that is not necessary for takeoff and landing on a runway. On top of that, how much AI traffic, weather, and special effects are being used. FSX is really just a core architecture of flight sim capability - aircraft sim, out-the-window graphics, panel graphics, weather, AI, ATC, multichannel, and more that was designed in approximately 2005. I think we should all be thankful that so much really works pretty well and that the best minds of scenery design today (ORBX, Aerosoft, fsdreamteam, FlyTampa and several others) and aircraft design (PMDG, Carenado, and several others) can use that core architecture to supply a flight sim experience that in it's visual beauty and general accuracy (the actual aircraft systems model is empirically fairly correct but without detailed support from Boeing, Airbus, Grumman, et al - not really that accurate) is sometimes superior to that which you would see on an FAA approved airliner simulator. When someone sites the FSX performance using the PMDG 747 which has been cited in some forums to be so complex that it really needs a computer all of its own (and doesn't perform quite as well as some of the other PMDG models such as the MD-11) and then some of the most complex but beautiful scenery as ORBX YMML - and blames the performance on FSX - I just don't get it. Should FSX be able to handle a much more demanding load than was even speculated about in 2005? I always hear that FSX is a POS unless you can run ANY scenery, ANY aircraft model, complex clouds with 4096 pixel textures, ALL sliders at max, etc. Be reasonable - the FAA $20 million airliner simulators can't do that either! If you want "good performance" as suggested above, it will always be a compromise and scenery, aircraft, weather, and other designers might want to provide an "optimized for performance" mode that reduces some of the eye candy or special effects in the interest of higher framerates. I for one am very pleased that FSX has become a better product over the last two years due to great increases in CPU and GPU performance as well as greatly extended by super smart designers of addons. Also, some of the tweak designers/evaluators really do help get us closer to the fluid, stutter free environment that is needed. As for performance measurements to at least provide a standard, I like the Computer Pilot author, Doug Horton, approach. Set a standard way of measuring the frametimes over a short flight such as FSmark07 (flight over Seattle with default aircraft and scenery) and post it for comparison with as much detail on the CPU/GPU and FSX configuration as possible. A recent article (Oct/Nov 2010) indicated framerates over 40 for several "budget" PCs but that certainly isn't going to be enough complexity for the PMDG/ORBX drivers - maybe they should propose a similar benchmark but, of course, only those who want to spend $100 or so for those addons would be able to contribute results. One of their members (maybe the staff of one of the addon designers) should be acquiring one set of the latest hardware (like the Sandy Bridge 2600K @ 5.0 GHZ with the best Nvidia or AMD/ATI GPUs) and make some performance reports. If you see someone reporting on their experience as good or excellent, they might be using less demanding (or better performance optimized) scenery, aircraft, weather, AI traffic, etc than you - obviously - please don't disrespect them because they are satisfied and think they have good performance - especially if they try to report carefully their experience (which Stephen, for example, has done very well on the fullterrain.com website.

I don't think he's disrespecting anyone. I see it as a valid point. Different weather scenerios, fsx settings, card setting, and payware aircrafts will impact performance in different ways.I know many simmers who do fly complex airplanes, into very dense areas, with poor weather conditions. I know from personal experience that the performance will drop to the teens, even if smooth, is still a significant drop.BUT, I also know that performance can be managed by lowering the setting, using a stock FSX, or doing what my friend Stephen does, upgrade to the latest hardware.BTW, the 980x is still the best and fastest CPU that money can buy.

Thanks for your comment about my poor choice of the phrase "disrespecting". What I meant is that we all need to relax and stay technical in our discussions. What you say about choosing complex aircraft, scenery, and weather is very true - lower (<30) frame rates will result. My only real point is that it would be great if the authors of the complex addons would offer a "frame-rate friendly" option to their products that could be selected for doing approaches so that the manual flying experience could be improved in that situation. Landing is the "fun" part of the flight for many but it can be spoiled by not having higher framerates so that the yoke control can be realistic at that point. Again, it is all a compromise but FSX, by itself, is not to be blamed. All the addon elements contribute to the total framerate and performance optimization is important.

""The" Question:Is it better with this new 25-2600 K something?Is it worth changing from a perfectly fine performing i7-930 / Nvidia 580 set-up?This is the question, ladies and a few gentlemen!

""The" Question:Is it better with this new 25-2600 K something?Is it worth changing from a perfectly fine performing i7-930 / Nvidia 580 set-up?This is the question, ladies and a few gentlemen!

It depends on your expectations and type of use. I ran FSX with big pay ware and some scenery just fine on my QX6700. I didn’t expect to see my house (especially not at FL300). I didn’t expect to feel the wind in my hair or the force of gravity. I cared less about the paint of the fuselage or if a door opened.I wasn’t critiquing the tiles on roof tops and I expected an occasional stutter and pop; even an occasional CTD (after all it is a computer). I especially was not interested in winning any benchmark scores or competitions. I simply wanted the most realistic flight dynamics possible. I wanted a realistic panel and general realistic system operations. I wanted to fly under the most realistic ATC and under the most realistic flight rules.For that my QX6700 served me fine.Now you can tell that my expectations are somewhat unusual with respect to FSX. I say this given the vast majority of most FS forum content is related to PC hardware while the number of folks flying and controlling on VATSIM is nearly baron by comparison to the participation at the Futuremark site.FSX is an: old, antiquated and flawed application that will never be updated. To chase after it for anything else is analogist to a dog chasing its tail; you will never catch it, nor is it worth catching if you ever do.Therefore from a practical perspective is a change from an i7-9xx worth the upgrade? Not in my opinion.However if computers are your hobby and you want to use FSX as your excuse to participate in that hobby, then by all means upgrade. If FSX is truly your hobby, you like to fly low and slow and you cannot bear to lower your scenery settings or endure some stutters along the way and you can afford it then upgrade.At the end of the upgrade you will open the same FSX application as before, fly the same airplane as before; across the same scenery and terrain as before but do it with a little faster operation, some fewer stutters, some higher scenery settings and possibly some crisper views.For that you will pay some $3,000 complete or a minimum upgrade using your old parts of around $600-$700If it were me, I would wait for the 2011 sockets or even the next socket after but as I say I am a bit of an odd duck. I run all my systems for at least 4-years.

I'm kicking myself for not overclocking my i920 earlier. I had a total of three BSOD while I was still trying to figure out the voltages. Where is the risk in that especially if you go with watercooling. And I would wager a guess oc/ing is losing out to tweaking in popularity.

Thanks Gary Andersen for your wise words!I'll wait for the next big step in hardware, and hopefully MS Flight will be here soon, so we can see if it's still a "Hog".

The problem with benchmarking FSX is that we all run different configs/addons/settings. My FSX is fully loaded with addons now and I know that I can't run it on Max everything. I don't think there is a a homepc that can, short of uninstalling all the extras and using stock planes.

The problem with benchmarking FSX is that we all run different configs/addons/settings. My FSX is fully loaded with addons now and I know that I can't run it on Max everything. I don't think there is a a homepc that can, short of uninstalling all the extras and using stock planes.

Hi Vincent,That certainly was true since FSX was introduced, but not really strictly accurate anymore. The equipment really is available that has closed the gap between power need and supply. Kind regards,