But, be that as it may, it's good to see things from a different point of view. Thanks for being willing to go against the flow by expressing your disagreement with the majority. Kind regards,

I wish I could come across as eloquently yet kind as post like this. I have difficulty expressing myself properly on forums without body language!

Thank you SpritFlyer. I've just returned from a trip in my time machine. My Computer Pilot came in the mail today. I could have saved a lot of bandwidth with an article by Doug Horton on benchmarking FSX with FSXMark07 that appears in this month's issue. He goes into monumental detail on what does and what does not make a difference, and what may make some difference to FSX performance. I wasn't so off base as many here have concluded in several key areas and there were others where I completely missed the boat. BUT I LEARNED from those that contributed to this thread and this magazine article so it was a good day. I don't mind being wrong, but if I am I want to learn WHY I'm wrong and what is really the truth. I take no joy in being wrong but I'll own up to it if we all keep it civil. I wanted to know why many of everyone's answers here contradicted my research, which was part of my reason for this thread. The other reason was what could I do or what should be my next purchase to improve a purely FSX targeted machine. It seems not a whole lot. Out of the whole article I want to quote one paragraph to maybe entice the folks here to read the article.

"FSX was released and updated in 2006-2007 and is based on hardware available during this period. Investment in more recent top of the line hardware did not provide much difference in FSX performance, except for processors with higher default clock rates or by overclocking, which is made easier with factory-unlocked or Black Edition processors" - Doug Horton, Computer Pilot March/April 2011

I urge all with an inquisitive nature to read this article based on one hell of a lot of testing and note the, at least to me, surprising results.As an aside, and I'll read the article several more times, I may go with the AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE overclock it and give two cores to all my add-ons. No Intel because I can't afford the processors and motherboards so went to AMD 15 months ago...am an ancient user of the 'ol Athlon XP 3200+ and on the other side the Q6600 well OC'd. Am going to have to think real hard about the video card and that is covered at some length in the article, you may be surprised as I was.

crash_gen,I agree that the CPU is the most important aspect of an FSX machine. If you end up building an AMD system, I and everybody will be extremely anxious to see your FSXMark11 results. Like I said above, I really have no experience or knowledge with AMD - so those results should be quite interesting. I'm not quite clear on what your final stance is regarding graphics cards, but the upgrade from my old 7600GS to the GTS250 certainly fixed alot of autogen spikes and other effects I was experiencing prior to the upgrade. Granted, it didn't really seem to have a noticeable effect on fram rates (though I never systematically tested frame rates either). Comparing the very limited number of FSXMark11 results of my current rig to similar systems with better graphics cards, it seems that a 5xx series nVidia GPU doesn't provide a massive benefit over my GTS 250. I will definitely be waiting for Kepler to be released at the end of the year.

Theres your problem there.... "FSX is based on hardware available during this period".... not quite true... you don't actually write software for the hardware these days, you write for the API in this case DirectX 9. So any improvements to either the hardware will always pay off, be it GPU or CPU.

did you even read my posts? I don't want to start an argument, just trying to help you avoid making a big mistakeAnd is that article available online?

Thank you SpritFlyer. I've just returned from a trip in my time machine. My Computer Pilot came in the mail today. I could have saved a lot of bandwidth with an article by Doug Horton on benchmarking FSX with FSXMark07 that appears in this month's issue. He goes into monumental detail on what does and what does not make a difference, and what may make some difference to FSX performance. I wasn't so off base as many here have concluded in several key areas and there were others where I completely missed the boat. BUT I LEARNED from those that contributed to this thread and this magazine article so it was a good day. I don't mind being wrong, but if I am I want to learn WHY I'm wrong and what is really the truth. I take no joy in being wrong but I'll own up to it if we all keep it civil. I wanted to know why many of everyone's answers here contradicted my research, which was part of my reason for this thread. The other reason was what could I do or what should be my next purchase to improve a purely FSX targeted machine. It seems not a whole lot. Out of the whole article I want to quote one paragraph to maybe entice the folks here to read the article.I urge all with an inquisitive nature to read this article based on one hell of a lot of testing and note the, at least to me, surprising results.As an aside, and I'll read the article several more times, I may go with the AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE overclock it and give two cores to all my add-ons. No Intel because I can't afford the processors and motherboards so went to AMD 15 months ago...am an ancient user of the 'ol Athlon XP 3200+ and on the other side the Q6600 well OC'd. Am going to have to think real hard about the video card and that is covered at some length in the article, you may be surprised as I was.

you write for the API in this case DirectX 9. So any improvements to either the hardware will always pay off, be it GPU or CPU.

The fact that an app is written for an API doesn't mean that the coding is independant of the hardware. FSX is good proof. There're many titles written for DX9 that take advantage of SLI for example, but FSX doesn't.

Dazz, What big mistake am I gearing up to make? I appreciate the warning. No idea if the magazine is online. I get it in the mail, if it is distributed online, It's goes into the bit-bucket.cmeeks: You make a good point about quality versus frame rates. The one example I used was just that, one example. That was I was getting great looking FSX clouds, overcast of cumulus with imbedded cumulonimbus drawn with a cloud radius of 90 miles. What I had read was don't do it, always leave at 60 miles. But to have a realistic weather such that clouds don't always end half-way to the horizon or popups, need the 90. I've tried a couple of the home remedies for pop-ups and stopping taxiing planes from disappearing and no success. Part of it no doubt for me is the type of flying I do. Long range with head in the cockpit dueling with the FMC or watching clouds and cities pass by at FL390 or autopilot and watch something on TV until 90 min before TOD. All I fly is Boeing iron 737,747,757,767,777 and if Level-D ever makes the 757 and PMDG finishes up the new 737s can look forward to a 777. The autogen stuff kind of drifts by and I don't pay much attention to it. I pay a lot of attention to the airports themselves. The default ones are embarrassing. Don't have anything like REX or Ultimate Terrain. This is another reason to be careful. I want to use REX or something like it and ASE and not have the system go to hell.

What I was talking about is that 6 cores vs 4 won't help you with performance. You probably know the 1090T is the same thing as your 955 except for he two extra cores and the 200 - 400MHz of extra overclock headroom. The 1090T costs more or less the same as the I5 2500K and is much, much slower in FSX. Believe me, been there. Of course you would need to change your motherboard too, but IMHO it's better to spend 350$ for a 70% FPS boost than 200 for a 10% in overclock. If you manage to sell your mobo, the price gap between both solutions is even smallerAbout the performance impact you can expect from those addons:REX2: 0, nada, maybe you will even get better performanceASE: no performance hit eitherUTX: it hits frames, not too much but it does. You can configure it to be less taxiing disabling the most demanding features, but it will typically cut down your frames by a 10 - 20%

What I was talking about is that 6 cores vs 4 won't help you with performance. You probably know the 1090T is the same thing as your 955 except for he two extra cores and the 200 - 400MHz of extra overclock headroom. The 1090T costs more or less the same as the I5 2500K and is much, much slower in FSX. Believe me, been there. Of course you would need to change your motherboard too, but IMHO it's better to spend 350$ for a 70% FPS boost than 200 for a 10% in overclock. If you manage to sell your mobo, the price gap between both solutions is even smallerAbout the performance impact you can expect from those addons:REX2: 0, nada, maybe you will even get better performanceASE: no performance hit eitherUTX: it hits frames, not too much but it does. You can configure it to be less taxiing disabling the most demanding features, but it will typically cut down your frames by a 10 - 20%

dazz, guess I'm somewhat surprised by your assertions regarding Intel vs AMD. I have a 955 BE OC'd to 3.8, and am really surprised that you think FSX runs slowly on such a system. It does EXTREMELY well. It did better when I went from 3.2 to 3.8GHz which I expected. I would think a multi-core Intel with the virtual threads that FSX is using (read today that even using the virtual threads FSX itself would not use more than four. would be faster still but can't think of any other reason, am sure you have some. Intel has a more sophisticated Turbo mode. AMD also has Turbo, just not as sophisticated. So OC the 1090T to at least 4.0GHz, if I set the affinity for FSX to use 4 cores and assign all the other products, RC, REX, ASE etc to the remaining 2 cores, it should not be any worse off than my current setting and maybe better especially if I can hit 4GHz.A retired person living on government disability doesn't even come close to having enough money to convert back to Intel (for the second time, the first before I was disabled). And Intel prices are stupid expensive. My motherboard was $130, now $100 and the AM3 board supports nearly all AMD processors, SATA3 and USB3. Intel has two or three motherboards now and the MB prices are approaching $300. I can get a 1090T for $152. My motherboard works with the X6 so I won't have to buy anything new. My power supply is excellent, might get the tighter timed, lower power consumption memory from G.Skill. and the Corsair H70 water cooler. The only other variable besides the processor is the video card and after tuning, my last two flights were outstanding. Am sure there is something in your FSX experience that you look for and that I look for something else. I don't feel compelled to buy anything actually. The couple hundred dollars that I came into could just as well go for airports, textures and better weather...and any new aircraft...and/or a comfortable computer chair.So will be interested what you and others think about the magazine article if you have a chance to read it.

dazz, guess I'm somewhat surprised by your assertions regarding Intel vs AMD. I have a 955 BE OC'd to 3.8, and am really surprised that you think FSX runs slowly on such a system. It does EXTREMELY well. It did better when I went from 3.2 to 3.8GHz which I expected

I didn't say it's slow, actually in my first post I said it's a good CPU, but an OCed 2500K is much faster than an Oced Phenom II. The fact that the 3.2 to 3.8 overclock helped denotes you are CPU limited, and a Sandy Bridge chip is about a 35 - 40% faster clock for clock than a Phenom II. Now considering that a SB overclocks easily to 4.5 - 4.8 GHz, the performance difference is a 50 - 60% (admittedly not 70% probably)

I would think a multi-core Intel with the virtual threads that FSX is using (read today that even using the virtual threads FSX itself would not use more than four. would be faster still but can't think of any other reason, am sure you have some. Intel has a more sophisticated Turbo mode. AMD also has Turbo, just not as sophisticated. So OC the 1090T to at least 4.0GHz, if I set the affinity for FSX to use 4 cores and assign all the other products, RC, REX, ASE etc to the remaining 2 cores, it should not be any worse off than my current setting and maybe better especially if I can hit 4GHz.

The reason why Intel CPUs are faster is IPC (instructions per clock) SB's IPC is much higher so a 4GHz SB will outperform a 4GHz Phenom II by a fair margin. You don't need dedicated cores for those addons: RC and ASE's CPU usage is minimal, and REX simply substitutes the texture files and animations for water, runways, clouds, etc... so it's not even running while FSX is running. There's no REX thread there to share resources. If you check your CPU usage while running FSX you will see that CPU usage is nowhere near 100%. There's plenty CPU horsepower to spare for just about anything else. That might sound contradictory with the fact that FSX is CPU limited, but the reason is because FSX is still mono threaded for the most part: the main scheduler is a single thread an determines performance for the most part. The fibers (I guess that's the same thing as the virtual threads you talk about) load textures an can slow down the system to a certain extent, or induce blurries, but with 4 cores that's no problem. Please, test it yourself with fraps or something. Theres 0 performance hit from disabling 1 core in a quad, and a 10-15% disabling 2 at most

A retired person living on government disability doesn't even come close to having enough money to convert back to Intel (for the second time, the first before I was disabled). And Intel prices are stupid expensive. My motherboard was $130, now $100 and the AM3 board supports nearly all AMD processors, SATA3 and USB3. Intel has two or three motherboards now and the MB prices are approaching $300. I can get a 1090T for $152. My motherboard works with the X6 so I won't have to buy anything new. My power supply is excellent,

You can get a Sandy Bridge MSI P67 C45 motherboard for 150-160$ with USB3 and SATA3 and a I5 2500K for 220$. That's a good price for a 1090T, no objection there, but the thing is that you will see no performance increase whatsoever in FSX, so it's money out of the windowYour mobo migh work with many AMD CPU's now, but Bulldozer is round the corner and that's the end of AM3. I mean if you keep your mobo hoping for future upgrades, Phenom II x6 is where it stops

So will be interested what you and others think about the magazine article if you have a chance to read it.

Looks like we need to subscribe for 7$ or something?

I don't feel compelled to buy anything actually. The couple hundred dollars that I came into could just as well go for airports, textures and better weather...and any new aircraft...and/or a comfortable computer chair.

And that's probably the best you could do. I mean you are happy with your system performance so why even bother?

Thank you SpritFlyer. I've just returned from a trip in my time machine. My Computer Pilot came in the mail today. I could have saved a lot of bandwidth with an article by Doug Horton on benchmarking FSX with FSXMark07 that appears in this month's issue. He goes into monumental detail on what does and what does not make a difference, and what may make some difference to FSX performance. I wasn't so off base as many here have concluded in several key areas and there were others where I completely missed the boat. BUT I LEARNED from those that contributed to this thread and this magazine article so it was a good day. I don't mind being wrong, but if I am I want to learn WHY I'm wrong and what is really the truth. I take no joy in being wrong but I'll own up to it if we all keep it civil. I wanted to know why many of everyone's answers here contradicted my research, which was part of my reason for this thread. The other reason was what could I do or what should be my next purchase to improve a purely FSX targeted machine. It seems not a whole lot. Out of the whole article I want to quote one paragraph to maybe entice the folks here to read the article.I urge all with an inquisitive nature to read this article based on one hell of a lot of testing and note the, at least to me, surprising results.As an aside, and I'll read the article several more times, I may go with the AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE overclock it and give two cores to all my add-ons. No Intel because I can't afford the processors and motherboards so went to AMD 15 months ago...am an ancient user of the 'ol Athlon XP 3200+ and on the other side the Q6600 well OC'd. Am going to have to think real hard about the video card and that is covered at some length in the article, you may be surprised as I was.

I have not read the article in Pilot Magazine because I do not subscribe. I was considering ordering it last week for they beg us to do so in numerous email assaults, but when they publish such nonsense like Doug Horton's mistaken article, I am glad I didn't. Who then do I quote instead in order to say anything like that? Me, and many other FSX adherants world-wide, who have invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours each in methodical testing and research undertaken and participated in, thereby breaking the artificial barriers that you refer to. With great respect sir, if Doug Horton wrote what he is reported to have written, he is quite wrong and giving poor advice. However, if you follow along with most of us here you will do well in FSX by applying what you can. We are politely trying to help you, but if you are happy where you are, then stay put and don't worry about it and just have fun. I don't want to be unkind, but if you want to learn something fresh in FSX you do need to listen to what you are being advised by these same fellows you are contending with. In this case at least, most participants here really do know what they are talking about. Besides, MS Flight is coming soon and we will all be off to another venue anyway. That will be one way of catching up, by going backwards I suppose. Good talking to you. Kind regards,

dazz, guess I'm somewhat surprised by your assertions regarding Intel vs AMD. I have a 955 BE OC'd to 3.8, and am really surprised that you think FSX runs slowly on such a system. It does EXTREMELY well. It did better when I went from 3.2 to 3.8GHz which I expected. I would think a multi-core Intel with the virtual threads that FSX is using (read today that even using the virtual threads FSX itself would not use more than four. would be faster still but can't think of any other reason, am sure you have some. Intel has a more sophisticated Turbo mode. AMD also has Turbo, just not as sophisticated. So OC the 1090T to at least 4.0GHz, if I set the affinity for FSX to use 4 cores and assign all the other products, RC, REX, ASE etc to the remaining 2 cores, it should not be any worse off than my current setting and maybe better especially if I can hit 4GHz.A retired person living on government disability doesn't even come close to having enough money to convert back to Intel (for the second time, the first before I was disabled). And Intel prices are stupid expensive. My motherboard was $130, now $100 and the AM3 board supports nearly all AMD processors, SATA3 and USB3. Intel has two or three motherboards now and the MB prices are approaching $300. I can get a 1090T for $152. My motherboard works with the X6 so I won't have to buy anything new. My power supply is excellent, might get the tighter timed, lower power consumption memory from G.Skill. and the Corsair H70 water cooler. The only other variable besides the processor is the video card and after tuning, my last two flights were outstanding. Am sure there is something in your FSX experience that you look for and that I look for something else. I don't feel compelled to buy anything actually. The couple hundred dollars that I came into could just as well go for airports, textures and better weather...and any new aircraft...and/or a comfortable computer chair.So will be interested what you and others think about the magazine article if you have a chance to read it.

Take a look at Dazz's last post. The price gap between that six core 1090T and the 2500K or even 2600K is negligible. Not to mention, if you go with the 2500K and a new motherboard, you'll come out spending only slightly more than you would have to buy the 1090T as far as performance gain goes. Also, if you're spending $300 for an Intel motherboard, you're buying the wrong one... A good MSI board will run you $170. If the 1090T is the upgrade you can afford, then I guess that's the only route! It will not give you the performance boost you're expecting, though.I also have to "argue" with you Corey, that the performance jump between a 9800GT aka GTX250 to a GTX460 and up is NOTICEABLE. My frame rates went up in all situations and general smoothness gained was very evident (on my E8400). That being said, the smallest performance jump I've ever made has been from the GTX460 to the GTX560 on this system. Keep in mind that I'm at 1080p resolution so these newer cards can chew through pixels.

I have not read the article in Pilot Magazine because I do not subscribe. I was considering ordering it last week for they beg us to do so in numerous email assaults, but when they publish such nonsense like Doug Horton's mistaken article, I am glad I didn't. Who then do I quote instead in order to say anything like that? Me, and many other FSX adherants world-wide, who have invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours each in methodical testing and research undertaken and participated in, thereby breaking the artificial barriers that you refer to. With great respect sir, if Doug Horton wrote what he is reported to have written, he is quite wrong and giving poor advice. However, if you follow along with most of us here you will do well in FSX by applying what you can. We are politely trying to help you, but if you are happy where you are, then stay put and don't worry about it and just have fun. I don't want to be unkind, but if you want to learn something fresh in FSX you do need to listen to what you are being advised by these same fellows you are contending with. In this case at least, most participants here really do know what they are talking about. Besides, MS Flight is coming soon and we will all be off to another venue anyway. That will be one way of catching up, by going backwards I suppose. Good talking to you. Kind regards,

Well I guess this is where I came in. I don't like to write off anything until I've looked into it further. I guess I can be executed for having an open mind, not exactly a novel approach to silence those with a different or dissenting point of view. I don't know a flea's nit about Doug Horton so you believe he is bad and that I'm some kind of traitor for listening. Point taken. The humane thing to do is have this thread obliterated. How I loath your attitude. My way or the highway. I'll just form my own opinion of Mr. Horton if you please. Am also sorry that I came here to learn since I've flown FS since 1977 but just now, following my retirement, have I had a chance to start looking under the covers. Bad idea. Rest assured I shall no longer sully YOUR board with my presence. Peace.

Well I guess this is where I came in. I don't like to write off anything until I've looked into it further. I guess I can be executed for having an open mind, not exactly a novel approach to silence those with a different or dissenting point of view. I don't know a flea's nit about Doug Horton so you believe he is bad and that I'm some kind of traitor for listening. Point taken. The humane thing to do is have this thread obliterated. How I loath your attitude. My way or the highway. I'll just form my own opinion of Mr. Horton if you please. Am also sorry that I came here to learn since I've flown FS since 1977 but just now, following my retirement, have I had a chance to start looking under the covers. Bad idea. Rest assured I shall no longer sully YOUR board with my presence. Peace.

I am sorry you took offence. I sure did not mean it that way whatsoever. I should have chosen my words a whole lot more carefully because they were never intended to convey what you took from them. No one has any more right or are welcome to be here as you! Please accept my sincere apology. There is no need to go, but lots of reasons to stay (everyone who responded to you)! Kind regards

I am sorry you took offence. I sure did not mean it that way whatsoever. I should have chosen my words a whole lot more carefully because they were never intended to convey what you took from them. No one has any more right or are welcome to be here as you! Please accept my sincere apology. There is no need to go, but lots of reasons to stay (everyone who responded to you)! Kind regards

LOL! Your words were chose more carefully than anyone elses! hahaha!Still not getting point of this thread... :Worried:

LOL! Your words were chose more carefully than anyone elses! hahaha!Still not getting point of this thread... :Worried:

+1. It's getting out there... :Confused: