Just as it says. Those that have the Z68 MB, have you tested your 2500K or 2600K with just the internal video? What were the results, stock and overclocked. Looking to see if a low power option (without external video card) is a viable option. An approach to Seattle from the north where you have Seattle, Boeing Field and Seatac in the VC screen would be very enlightening. Right now my Core 2 Duo at 3.0 GHZ, a 9800GTX, and medium settings yields me 10 FPS or less (unplayable for me). Am looking to upgrade. Thanks in advance.

I don't believe Intel's integrated graphics, even the newer PG (processor graphics) are yet up to the point where they can deliver acceptable performance in many titles. More to the point, Intel's problem isn't so much as hardware problem (or a lack of it) but a driver issue - they just haven't gotten their drivers up to the level that AMD and Nvidia have. If it were an AMD Fusion chip on the other hand, the graphics prowess available there is almost certainly enough for FSX, but once again we run into a driver issue where FSX simply doesn't run as well on AMD graphics hardware as it does on Nvidia hardware, because AMD long ago deprecated support for FSX (read: no new bug fixes or performance enhancements for FSX). Also, AMD CPUs just aren't as fast as Intel's. Long story short: if you want to run FSX well you want an Intel CPU and an Nvidia graphics card. If you are worried about thermals (heat/power/noise) then you can look at some of the performance segment cards (GTX 560) with aftermarket coolers designed to reduce all 3 of those issues. Something like the MSI Hawk GTX 560 Ti would be a good example of a card that, as long as your case supports it, would likely meet your needs.

That's my suspicion also techguy but would like to hear what the results were from someone who actullay has the hardware and has tried it. FSX IS CPU bound. A couple of years back I went from a 7900GS to my current 9800GTX with zero effect in FSX (the 7900 started to have problems). Looking to see if the integrated GPU downgrade has a similar (non)effect. Anybody? Thanks again in advance.

There's no way FSX or any other game will run decently on the Sandy Bridge IGP.

That's my suspicion also techguy but would like to hear what the results were from someone who actullay has the hardware and has tried it. FSX IS CPU bound. A couple of years back I went from a 7900GS to my current 9800GTX with zero effect in FSX (the 7900 started to have problems). Looking to see if the integrated GPU downgrade has a similar (non)effect. Anybody? Thanks again in advance.

That's not really a big step. Go from the 9800GTX to a GTX570 and you'll notice a difference. Also, what resolution were you running at? Older resolutions like 1280x1024 won't see big changes from such a small step up like you did.

There's no way FSX or any other game will run decently on the Sandy Bridge IGP.

Has anyone bothered to try it though?

Just as it says. Those that have the Z68 MB, have you tested your 2500K or 2600K with just the internal video? What were the results, stock and overclocked. Looking to see if a low power option (without external video card) is a viable option. An approach to Seattle from the north where you have Seattle, Boeing Field and Seatac in the VC screen would be very enlightening. Right now my Core 2 Duo at 3.0 GHZ, a 9800GTX, and medium settings yields me 10 FPS or less (unplayable for me). Am looking to upgrade. Thanks in advance.

Going from a 8800GTX to a GTX285 gave me a 25% performance increase measured by average fps in FSX. The smoothness during flight got soo much better. That was with my i7 940 at 3.9GHz at the time. I have some posts on this laying around on the net, but I'm to lazy to search out any links now