Maybe this should go in the Hardware forum..However i am focusing on using this for XP10 maybe MSFlight later.. But XP10 is looking very inviting, especially if people provide scenery adjustments ect.My existing system is 4+ years old, Windows XP, Intel Core 2 E6600, 2GB Ram, EVGA Geforce 8800 640mb video card.. Also using Triplehead2go with 3 - 19" LCD's..It runs XP10 pretty smooth, aside from a stutter about every 10 to 15 seconds, but it doesnt interfere with flying a whole lot.. I am also running at very low settings.. I kinda have an idea of what i need/want.. SSD Hard drive for primary, Ram is so cheap now, i am looking at 16gb, debating on what the best bang for the buck is for CPU (4 core, 6 core ect).. Have yet to decide on MOBO, and Video.. I will be running 3 - 24" LED screens, so it will must have Eyefinity (AMD) or NVidia Surround..Any ideas??

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500KGPU: AMD Radeon 6890RAM: 8GB is fine. (I have similar specs to what I am listing and I very rarely reach 6GB)SSD: 128GB (why not a HDD, apart from they are slightly slower?)Aaron G.

My system is great, I will be upgrading the Video Card shortly, or might wait till early 2012 for next gen!

I'm in a similar situation and I intend to build a new PC soon as well. I am trying to decide between a NVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti (2GB) and an ATI Radeon HD 6950 (2GB) for Windows 7. Is there a rule of thumb if ATI or NVidial should be preferred for X-Plane? Waiting for the next generation sounds tempting too but I guess it will take at least another 4 to 6 month until the new stuff will be available at a reasonable price. I'm not sure if I have that much patience .

SSD: 128GB (why not a HDD, apart from they are slightly slower?)Aaron G.

Debating on the OS only being on the SSD and then a second drive for the other programs to be installed on.. And using an actual HDD there..

You should stick with FSX until there are a lot of add-ons available.Aaron G.

Debating on the OS only being on the SSD and then a second drive for the other programs to be installed on.. And using an actual HDD there..

I get your point now.Aaron G.

Upgrading your system right now is quite stupid, I think. Of course there´s nothing wrong about a SSD, but XP10 will have a lot of performance (GPU/RAM/CPU/HDD usage) patches during the next weeks because it´s still buggy and not optimzed!You should definately wait for some serious CPU and GPU-benchmarking that will take place soon. This may safe you a lot of money, trouble and disappointment. Try to be patient and save your money until let´s say january.If you have money to burn....go for an i7 2700k, a HD6970 or GTX 580 and 8GB. XP will take it all.

Upgrading your system right now is quite stupid, I think. Of course there´s nothing wrong about a SSD, but XP10 will have a lot of performance (GPU/RAM/CPU/HDD usage) patches during the next weeks because it´s still buggy and not optimzed!You should definately wait for some serious CPU and GPU-benchmarking that will take place soon. This may safe you a lot of money, trouble and disappointment. Try to be patient and save your money until let´s say january.If you have money to burn....go for an i7 2700k, a HD6970 or GTX 580 and 8GB. XP will take it all.

+1, wait till newer parts coming out in early 2012.Aaron G.

If you're looking for something now, read on. If you're looking for something to last, the new stuff will be out early 2012 (jan-mar usually). Reviews and specs will be close behind meaning good data and performance expectations would allow a good buy around april-may. Then 6 months later, you're back in the same position again. Always a cycle. Everything you buy is out of date soon after you purchase if not as soon as you purchase it. Just keep that in mind.I have an i5 2500k on a mobo that supports dual 16x (16x16) PCIe slots...most only support dual 8x (8x8) or single 16x due to using the intel onboard video controller which doesn't have the bandwidth support for multiple full-bandwidth cards. If you're planning on one big card, that's not a big deal, but for running multiple lesser cards, you'll want to get your best out of it. For an Intel processor, make sure you get the K version of the 1355 socket second generation i3/i5/i7s as the overclocking options are AWESOME. In 5 mins, with 3 settings to change, I went from the 3.3gHz to a 4.8gHz processor with no stability issues. Overclocking beyond 4.8 on my i5 requires some voltage tweaking and haven't messed with it yet as all games run great with 4.8gHz speed. When that isn't fast enough, I'll up it some more.The ATI side of things is still a little behind. They run great, but performance wise, the Intel side performs better at this time.RAM being relatively cheap compared to prior years, 12GB or 16GB would be my choice at current since the price is maybe $50 for the extra 8GB. You may not need it now, but who knows what the future holds?Also check out this site for a statistical comparison of some cards. Pick one on the left another on the right. For a while, I have been a faithful nVidia fan, but the prices and performance of the AMD/ATI cards has made them a player. Two nVidia 560TIs in SLI would cost around $700 versus two Radeon 6950s at the same price, you'll see that the ATI has 50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate and comparable pixel fill rate for roughly the same price and thats on a stock reference card. When purchasing a card, you can get a higher-overclocked version.http://www.gpureview...=639&card2=641#If you click on the multi-gpu link, a button will appear below the card image. If you click on it, it will double the appropriate numbers for SLI/Crossfire support. If you know the clock speeds of a specific set of cards you're comparing (lists of them can be found below the numbers fields), enter them and compare the results. VERY useful for shopping around video cards as I have been for about 2 months. Getting a check just before xmas I'm using to upgrade from dual 9800GTXs.One thing that seems apparent. If you have the option for 1GB or 2GB versions, XPlane seems to fill up the primary card only according to nvidia inspector and that memory is all that is available for XPlane's pixel/texture usable space. So go with the 2GB version to give XPlane plenty of space for those addons, textures, mesh and autogen.

+1 for all that great info FVA! That is a good comparison site.

Appreciate it FVA.. I would like to get the new system now.. HOWEVER.. Waiting till April might be good because more patches/updates for XP10 and also component prices.. Can always pick up XP-10 thought and run it with MUCH lower settings till its time i'm sure though..

I wish Intel would release an 8core chip !Is anybody running XPX on the new AMD FX-8150 8 core chip ? I'm wondering if the extra cores would benefit XPX more then clock speed...I know it did not do very well in the reviews but they were comparing it to an Intel chip that was overclocked alot higher.

50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate

If you're looking for something now, read on. If you're looking for something to last, the new stuff will be out early 2012 (jan-mar usually). Reviews and specs will be close behind meaning good data and performance expectations would allow a good buy around april-may. Then 6 months later, you're back in the same position again. Always a cycle. Everything you buy is out of date soon after you purchase if not as soon as you purchase it. Just keep that in mind.I have an i5 2500k on a mobo that supports dual 16x (16x16) PCIe slots...most only support dual 8x (8x8) or single 16x due to using the intel onboard video controller which doesn't have the bandwidth support for multiple full-bandwidth cards. If you're planning on one big card, that's not a big deal, but for running multiple lesser cards, you'll want to get your best out of it. For an Intel processor, make sure you get the K version of the 1355 socket second generation i3/i5/i7s as the overclocking options are AWESOME. In 5 mins, with 3 settings to change, I went from the 3.3gHz to a 4.8gHz processor with no stability issues. Overclocking beyond 4.8 on my i5 requires some voltage tweaking and haven't messed with it yet as all games run great with 4.8gHz speed. When that isn't fast enough, I'll up it some more.The ATI side of things is still a little behind. They run great, but performance wise, the Intel side performs better at this time.RAM being relatively cheap compared to prior years, 12GB or 16GB would be my choice at current since the price is maybe $50 for the extra 8GB. You may not need it now, but who knows what the future holds?Also check out this site for a statistical comparison of some cards. Pick one on the left another on the right. For a while, I have been a faithful nVidia fan, but the prices and performance of the AMD/ATI cards has made them a player. Two nVidia 560TIs in SLI would cost around $700 versus two Radeon 6950s at the same price, you'll see that the ATI has 50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate and comparable pixel fill rate for roughly the same price and thats on a stock reference card. When purchasing a card, you can get a higher-overclocked version.http://www.gpureview...=639&card2=641#If you click on the multi-gpu link, a button will appear below the card image. If you click on it, it will double the appropriate numbers for SLI/Crossfire support. If you know the clock speeds of a specific set of cards you're comparing (lists of them can be found below the numbers fields), enter them and compare the results. VERY useful for shopping around video cards as I have been for about 2 months. Getting a check just before xmas I'm using to upgrade from dual 9800GTXs.One thing that seems apparent. If you have the option for 1GB or 2GB versions, XPlane seems to fill up the primary card only according to nvidia inspector and that memory is all that is available for XPlane's pixel/texture usable space. So go with the 2GB version to give XPlane plenty of space for those addons, textures, mesh and autogen.

"50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate" So what does that equate to ? Would we get Higher FPS ?? Would it run smother or would it allow the sliders to be maxed out more ?

If I was building for X-plane 101. as many cores you can afford - even a server mobo with two CPUs would be great. If not, look for maximum parallel computing using cores.2. Fast GPU with 1.5gb of VRAM (maximum that x-plane 10 will use)3. 64 bit OS - I know x-plane is 32-bit, but with 64 bit the OS can address more than 4gb allowing x-plane to use the full 4gb it can address - plus switching is faster.

50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate"50% higher bandwidth, 100% higher GFLOPS (the actual calculations the card can do), 35% higher texture fill rate" So what does that equate to ? Would we get Higher FPS ?? Would it run smother or would it allow the sliders to be maxed out more ?

Pixel fill rate is the speed at which the card can draw and anti-alias the pixels on the screen as well as rendering objects from the vertex buffer. The more objects drawn from the vertex buffer, the better this should be. AFAIK XPlane is all vertex buffer for the mesh and autogen.The bandwidth is needed to allow the CPU to take items from RAM and push it to the vertex buffer on the card for rendering, such as new mesh as you fly, new autogen and textures for each.The GFLOPS is a generic calculation that tells you how fast this card can compute numbers, but not just any numbers, the most complex types that take a while for them to do. Simple integer operations would be a severely higher number as that is like asking you to divide 9 by 3. Now, lets try dividing 1934.346569382 by .34903947502044 and see how long it takes you. The more of these the card can do, the more things like Anti-Aliasing (figuring out adjacent pixels and blending) or Ansio filtering it can do along with the CUDA and GPU direct rendering it can do without using the CPU to crank its numbers for it. A few years ago, the video cards just held the graphics properties and drew the items to the screen, but any calcuating was done via CPU. Now with the CUDA core tech and other things like it, the cards are doing everything themselves, leaving the CPU open for stuff like AI pathfinding, loading to RAM from HDD, calculating physics (which nVidia has it's own PhysX engine built into the cards) and such. This makes the newer cards that much more valuable to FPS.Improvement like anything is all based on how the software uses these parts, but the best parts with an optimized program will definitely yield results. I'm not saying that XPlane will get more than 30FPS on ANY rig at this point with even the 6970s in Crossfire or the 6990 by itself or SLI GTX 580s. But, if the day comes that it can, I don't want to be hardware limited at that time. Theoretically, better numbers will yield better FPS. A higher memory clock means calculating and loading faster into and out of memory, meaning you get faster framerates. A higher bandwidth means getting data into the card faster for the card to use faster, equating the loading and rendering times being faster.If upgrading a card, why get a card with lower numbers for more or equal money? Only 3 reasons I can think of and most of these trial and error:1: Warranty via company - if it goes poof, how well do they get it fixed and how screwed are you - unless you've had to deal with a company, it may look great on paper but when you have to actually deal with them, it may not be good2: Actual game benchmarks - it would seem these cards can do one thing in any benchmarking program like 3dmark to get good scores and not put out performance-wise in an actual game environment - ATI has done this with their FX CPU. Great benchmarks, not so great performance compared to the i7 it was competing with. This is something that you'll either have to see for yourself or wait for the major review companies to get the hard data out to us for, which means waiting on your purchase, putting you closer to next years models coming out.3: Others reporting results of your game as acceptable with settings you are seeking - nothing better than someone with similar hardware trying out a new card on the same game as you and telling you how good or bad performance is. There are many things to keep in mind, though, like any hardware differences such as motherboard/cpu or RAM may make these differences less or more noticeable on your system. The motherboard and CPU dictate the speed at which information can hit the video card and how much bandwidth to divide between the PCIx16/PC1x1/PCIx4/PCI slots on the board. If you're running a different motherboard, the specs usually will be different on bandwidth priority and availability. If you're going from a 9800GTX/SLI system and so is someone else, they upgrade to dual 560TIs and go from 15FPS to 60FPS, you can expect a similar upgrade for your system. If they only go up to 30FPS, that will tell you that the upgrade isn't much and may not be worth the expense. But if they only have 2GB RAM and a 2.6gHz CPU and you have 8GB with a 4.5gHz overclocked CPU, you're results may be vastly better as now their graphics cards are not the bottleneck but now the RAM/CPU is.When I look to buy a card or set of cards, I look at things for 2-3 months. I get reviews of the performance on the cards. I compare the hardware clocks and GRAM and weight each as I need it. A 3GB card versus 2 2GB cards? Which is better? Sometimes, multiple cards can cause micro-stuttering as the cards are slightly different at rendering video. If the dual cards have similar numbers to the 3GB single card, I'd go with the single card and forego the 1GB GRAM. I'm also looking for multiple video outputs for my simulator (home flight deck). I'm hooking 3 projectors to my rig. nVidia requires 2 cards for triple-head surround output whereas with ATI, a single card can put out triple outputs for a game. That may weigh in heavily for some. I'm still going with multiple cards as I like the Crossfire/SLI performance gains for OTHER games I play, even if there's little gain in XPlane.Usually, performance tests should be performed on the same motherboard/CPU/RAM/PSU test bed with only swapping the card/cards out, then running the same program with the same series of frames/events for an even test of both setups. I look for these types of comparisons as one setup if GPU limited for FPS and the next setup is slightly better by only 2 or 3 FPS, but is CPU limited. With a better CPU/RAM combination, the test might have yielded 20FPS better. You'd think the GPU nearly equal the first when it actually is far superior. As it is a GPU test, you don't know the other hardware used for the test and couldn't know. Any sites that don't do the testing on the same machine are not fully trustworthy for the results being 100% unbiased.