Ok guys, Christmas time is coming soon and I'm planning to give myself the gift of a new laptop to finally fly FSX! I know, PCs are better but due to other reasons, I need to get a laptop (Mac or Windows I don't care). Ideally, I would want to spend around $1000 for it.From what I've read, I'm better off with a higher clock speed CPU than trying to get more cores correct? Any help would be much appreciated.Thanks!

That's also my understanding that you are better off with a higher clock speed. I would recommend looking at Lenovo ThinkPads, the W series in this case. They make some quality laptops.

+1 on Lenovo.

One thing I have noticed on my laptop, which has a dual 3.0 Ghz CPU, is that the CPU speed gets reduced when the laptop heats up. If you defeat that throttling, the CPU might overheat with the standard internal fan. If you don't stop it from reducing speed, then FSX will slow its frame rate - maybe even stutter a lot - hard to say. Also, you need to get as much 3D graphics capability as you can - either Nvidia or ATI - certainly not an Intel motherboard chipset. Also, I like the HDMI output capability so I can drive a nice monitor or HDTV as well as use the laptop screen. If you can, you might be able to actually benchmark the laptop with FSX installed on a USB3.0 external drive.

So I'm better off with a 3.0GHz dual core processor than say a 2.8GHz 4 core processor? Or are the differences negligible enough that I'm better off with the 4 cores? And how about RAM, I'm assuming the more the merrier? Video card wise, 1GB NVIDIA is plenty or should I look for more? I was looking at the ASUS G74SX, is that just a waste of money since it's geared toward GPU intensive games? Keep the recommendations coming in please! I haven't been able to experience the wonders of FSX and with the PMDG 737NGX, I want to run FSX with this beautiful plane and amazing addon scenery and weather to go with it.

Within a $1000 budget you are looking at the Core i7-2630QM/2670QM CPU (the latter is 0.2 GHz faster) with Nvidia GT540M - GT555M/Radeon HD 6770M Graphics. However i do not know if such specs will run FSX on high details with all the addons. It will definately do well on low-to-medium.

$1,000 is awfully low for an FSX laptop.

Ok guys, Christmas time is coming soon and I'm planning to give myself the gift of a new laptop to finally fly FSX! I know, PCs are better but due to other reasons, I need to get a laptop (Mac or Windows I don't care). Ideally, I would want to spend around $1000 for it.From what I've read, I'm better off with a higher clock speed CPU than trying to get more cores correct? Any help would be much appreciated.Thanks!

Ask yourself, do you absolutely need a laptop? My computer is about a year and a half old, and the specs of laptops in this price range have not particularly improved, especially with regards to FSX performance. They are still only around 2 ghz and with low to mid range GPUs. Quite simply, they cannot run FSX that well, and with addons such as the NGX, it is a disaster. At mid-level settings and very low weather, I get low 20s and high teens fps. Go to a nice airport, or throw in weather, or throw in night lighting, and it is unusable. I would suggest looking at an i5 with a higher clock speed and a better GPU, if one exists like that.

FSX on a laptop, I wouldn't bother.

I'm very satisfied with my Asus G73JW, I bought it in mind for the PMDG NGX realise:) I fly alot on Vatsim, and I'm an IRL pilot so....my nr 1 priority is that I use FSX as a training & learning tool. I always fly VC, I have some heavy scenery addons (EGLC, LOWI, TNCM...etc). Afcourse when flying an heavy addon like NGX I have to have the sliders more to the left & I can easyly run NGX, but with less demanding addons I can have them all to the right. The best part is that I can take my lappy wherever I want:))))