Get a 580 and save yourself some(a lot) money. There will be some difference in performance, but your CPU will always be the bottleneck within FSX. The differences really won't be that big. If you're going to play on 3 monitors, I'd get a standard 680, since they're going to be a lot cheaper than two 580s in SLI.Also, in other games the performance difference will be quite significant.

I have a 9800GTX 512 card for FSX. My Asus 6950 DCII 2gig card is in RMA right now as I type this. Guess which card works better for FSX. :( Jamie Moses

Get a 580 and save yourself some(a lot) money. There will be some difference in performance, but your CPU will always be the bottleneck within FSX. The differences really won't be that big. If you're going to play on 3 monitors, I'd get a standard 680, since they're going to be a lot cheaper than two 580s in SLI.Also, in other games the performance difference will be quite significant.

That's not entirely true. FSX is 75% CPU dependant, but the fact that a good GPU wouldn't increase performance in FSX is complete nonsense. When I upgraded from a GT 320 to a GTX 580 the performance difference was truly massive! FSX doesn't really take advantage of the type of the chip, but it DOES take advantage of the speed of the chip. When I overclock my GTX 580 from 797 MHz to 900 MHz, I get around 5 FPS more, that's around 10% FPS increase for me. Zotac is now working on a GTX 680 at 2000 MHz, and no this is not the shader clock but the GPU clock, so YES, it will run at twice the default speed! Also EVGA is working on one that will run at 1800 MHz. Knowing that FSX does actually take advantage of the chip, will mean that those extreme overclocked GTX 680's will probably give a massive FPS improvement. Combined with a i7 3770K @ 5.5 GHz, yes it will easily do this staying below 1.40 - 1.45V ( I heard ), and a Z77 PCI 3.0 motherboard, and perhaps we will be able to run FSX at a mininum of 50 FPS in all cases. Maybe you're still sceptical, but I mean, a 2000 (!!!) MHz card + PCI 3.0 + 5.5 GHz = massive performance gain compared to where we are now.

In the config you're talking about, the graphics card really wouldn't be the limiting factor. At least not when deciding between a 580 and a 680. Granted, the 680 has some awesome features, but not a lot of those benefit FSX. Going from a 470 to 580s in SLI didn't really make that much of a difference here, not even when I inserted only one card. what made a huge difference in my rig, was overclocking my CPU to 4.8GHz

That's because the 580 didnt run at a much higher clockspeed than the 470 - 480. But the 680 though, will have a massive difference in clockspeed. And knowing that FSX does take much advantage of the clockspeed of a GPU (not as much as from the clockspeed of the CPU though) this will probably give us quite a performance boost. And we actually can't make statements about whether it will be a great card for FSX or not, until someone has tested the high MHz cards themselves.

Just wait for the custom 680's :) (ccustom coolar + 4 gb vram)

4GB of vram *MIGHT* lead to OOM issues.

4GB of vram *MIGHT* lead to OOM issues.

Hey but wasn't there a tweak, something like VIDEO_MEMORY_OVERRIDE=n that could permanently fix this no matter how much VRAM you have?

Hey but wasn't there a tweak, something like VIDEO_MEMORY_OVERRIDE=n that could permanently fix this no matter how much VRAM you have?

OOMs are a limitation of 32bit software. That CFG tweak can help but it doesn't solve the core issue.

To be honest Ken, I am half in the mindset of waiting for the Ivys to come out anyway... I mean it would be a bit silly to run out of patience now and go with the SB with just a few months to go.I dont know if my patience will hold out though as I have been without FS for about 2 years now since the old rig went pop (P4 3.2 gig) and the site I use does build I7 2700ks overclocked to 4.8 Gigs (overclockers.co.uk) not sure how much longer I can hold out as at the moment I really miss flying my desk! :-)

I have an E6850 about 5-yrs old with an 8800 GTS, and I am going to hold out for Ivy. Supposedly only a 10-15% or so max gain in performance over SB as I recall, but they might OC a little higher. They are so close now that it is worth the wait. Plus by the time they are released there will be more of a consensus on the GTX680, and as a bonus, SSDs might be slightly cheaper...

That's not entirely true. FSX is 75% CPU dependant, but the fact that a good GPU wouldn't increase performance in FSX is complete nonsense. When I upgraded from a GT 320 to a GTX 580 the performance difference was truly massive! FSX doesn't really take advantage of the type of the chip, but it DOES take advantage of the speed of the chip. When I overclock my GTX 580 from 797 MHz to 900 MHz, I get around 5 FPS more, that's around 10% FPS increase for me. Zotac is now working on a GTX 680 at 2000 MHz, and no this is not the shader clock but the GPU clock, so YES, it will run at twice the default speed! Also EVGA is working on one that will run at 1800 MHz. Knowing that FSX does actually take advantage of the chip, will mean that those extreme overclocked GTX 680's will probably give a massive FPS improvement. Combined with a i7 3770K @ 5.5 GHz, yes it will easily do this staying below 1.40 - 1.45V ( I heard ), and a Z77 PCI 3.0 motherboard, and perhaps we will be able to run FSX at a mininum of 50 FPS in all cases. Maybe you're still sceptical, but I mean, a 2000 (!!!) MHz card + PCI 3.0 + 5.5 GHz = massive performance gain compared to where we are now.

I updated from 9800gtx to gtx460 - performance boost - none. And I really mean none. Not even 1fps, I think I actually reduced my fps with new graphic card.

If you are planning to pay a f load to upgrade a 580 to 680 [no idea why] can I have your 580?

I went from an 8800GT 512MB to a 560TI 1GB and that made a significant difference for me when trying to fly the NGX with a bunch of add-ons. In my opinion a 680 card would be overkill unless you're going to be at very high resolutions and or use multiple displays.

Try flying with 4 monitors.680 adds value for multimonitor setups.

All this conjecture is fun but still no real anserws to the OP's question!