My brother is buying a new computer and he offered me his old gaming one to have.

 

these are the specs;

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

-Intel® Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67 GHz

 

8 gigs of RAM and 500 gig disk space

 

How would this system do with FSX?

8 Gigs o' RAM is a goodie. Basically if he's giving it too ya it's a steal

 

The ATI cards in Crossfire (2x1 Gig or ram each I presume?) may not play nice with FSX's 4 gig memory limitation, so some tinkering with the FSX.cfg will be necessary to limit the video memory usage. This will help avoid Out of Memory errors with addons like the NGX. My FSX computer also has only a 500 gig HD as well, as I limit it mostly to video games and FSX. I keep movies and such saved on a network drive.

 

That motherboard is probably an older chipset; however, and from what I can gather it uses the LGA1366 socket. As the CPU is a big part of good FSX performance, this older socket type severely limits your ability to upgrade to a faster, more capable processor. You could perhaps find some older first-generation i7's, though with higher-clockspeeds. Finding these will be tough though, unless you start browsing some kijiji postings. For example, the top-of-the-line i7-990X that is compatible with your socket type is a whopping $1,135.98 on ncix.ca....whoa!

 

Having said that though, it all depends what you are coming from? Is your previous computer a laptop or older desktop? This computer will run FSX fine though, it'll just need a little bit of balancing to find what's comfortable for you in terms of graphical detail vs. performance.

Check the specs in my profile (right).

 

I run the exact same system minus 2 GBs of DDR3 RAM (6 GBs vs. 8 GBs) and FSX is smooth as silk... But I also have my CPU over clocked to 4.0 GHz., too.

 

The CPU is liquid cooled and stays nice and cool at 61 degrees under full load, and the voltage is only 1.41 Watts (well within the 1.21-1.45 TWPD safety margin). I could probably go

higher, but I think it is my current RAM that is holding me back?

 

The 4870x2 is still a top DX9, DX10 card even today. It may be a little loud, but there is nothing it cannot handle. And I mean, nothing.

 

The industry move toward cross-platform gaming i.e. console ports for PC has pretty much stagnated any demanding video games for the PC platform within the last few years. FSX is a native PC game, but it is badly optimized and based on code from 2000 -- literally -- And more CPU dependent than GPU which is why we need CPUs in the 4 GHz and up range to fly with fidelity with high end addons.

 

Bottom line: Unless it is a badly coded game, or console port e.g. "Grand Theft Auto IV", "Splinter Cell: Conviction", etc... The i7 920 + 4870 2 GB is still high-end even with more recent iterations of the i7, and newer graphics cards.

 

B)

 

P.S. --

 

The top three FSX.cfg tweaks that you can use to improve performance on the hardware in question are...

 

 

[GRAPHICS]

HIGHMEMFIX=1

ForceFullScreenVSync=1

 

 

[bufferPools]

UsePools=0

 

These are the ONLY tweaks I have applied and the sim runs sikly smooth depending on other factors e.g. scenery density, autogen density, complexity of addon aircraft, etc.