Why is it that none of the dedicated review sites include flight simulator tests in their reviews of new GPUs and CPUs??Some of the review articles (such as here and here) test using a half-dozen or more games -- why couldn't they also include, say, FSX?In the past, I had thought that two reasons that FS software isn't included were that the number of simmers was too small compared to the number of players of other games, and that it had been decided that MS FS is CPU-limited and doesn't really use multicore technology, so improvements in GPU speed or muti-core CPUs weren't felt to be worth evaluating using MS FS.But from the number of discussions that continue to pop up on the flight sim boards about whether or not an upgrade is worth it with the release of each new piece of hardware, it would seem that there are still a lot of consumers in the sim community who are interested in this information.Just consider the aggregate amount of money flight simmers spend individually buying new equipment hoping that they will see significant performance improvements.Here's the proposal:Has there been any concerted effort to persuade the folks who write the reviews to include a flight sim when they are evaluating a new product?If not, why not mount one?

Because as you said FSX hardly uses the power of today's GPUs (except for image improvement, i.e. anti-aliasing), so including FSX will skew benchmark results. Since FSX is "OLD" most vendors would not want to see their new, powerful GPUs underperform with FSX because non-FSX gamers might interpret the GPU is inefficient in handling FSX when the opposite is true.I'm sure all of this will change when Flight is released, so I'm putting off any hardware and OS (Win 8) purchases until then, and especially until I can build a rig with PCIe v. 3.0 (2x the BW of PCIe 2.x).Cheers,- jahman.

Hi,As Jahman said, FSX is old and perhaps the market has shrunk a lot over the years. When MS Flight comes out it will be a different story I expect. Meantime the FSX community does the best it can to provide the best in-house FSX benchmarks we can.Kind regards,

Meantime the FSX community does the best it can to provide the best in-house FSX benchmarks we can.

That work is very, very much appreciated!But still, in the case of GPUs it isn't the same as using the exact same test system with the only variable changing being the GPU (and drivers) in question.Most FSX simmers who are reporting their experiences generally don't have the time or money to systematically and thoroughly test out new equipment the way that reviewers who are doing the work with the intent of publishing their results on a review site do.

Because as you said FSX hardly uses the power of today's GPUs (except for image improvement, i.e. anti-aliasing), so including FSX will skew benchmark results.

Here's the kind of tests I'm talking about:http://www.tomshardw...de,1928-10.htmlhttp://www.tomshardw...grade,1928.html (first page from the same article)It was shown that GPU performance did indeed significantly affect FSX fps -- it wasn't just CPU speeds that made a difference.(And note that both before and after these tests were done, it was routinely being said on the boards that FSX was so CPU limited that GPU performance wouldn't matter much.)

...Meantime the FSX community does the best it can to provide the best in-house FSX benchmarks we can.

And you, sir, are the master of the understatement, as you (and a couple others) are at the core of the benchmarking effort. Me, I keep reading your posts while I save my pennies! :-)

Here's the kind of tests I'm talking about:http://www.tomshardw...de,1928-10.htmlhttp://www.tomshardw...grade,1928.html (first page from the same article)It was shown that GPU performance did indeed significantly affect FSX fps -- it wasn't just CPU speeds that made a difference.(And note that both before and after these tests were done, it was routinely being said on the boards that FSX was so CPU limited that GPU performance wouldn't matter much.)

Yes, but those tests are from 1H2008: GPU power has quadrupled since! But you can still bring one of today's GPU's down to it's knees if you add enough high-res monitors and select the most complex AA. Now with Flight, MS said "weeee'll be baaack!"Cheers,- jahman.

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