i5-2500 @ 3.3ghz

8 gig ram ddr3 -although in cpuZ is says its running at 665.mhz

Nvidia gt430 - I have a new gt640...

800 psu.

 

 

I get ok performance with fsx and default aircraft. My passion lies with PMDG737. If I turn the scenery way down and do not use REX I cant get ok performance, but its just ugly. Whats would be my cheapest move I could make? I have spent countless hours on the forums, reading and taking what I have read and tweeking FSX settings which has helped. But not enough. I know the gt430 is an issue, but im stuck in lowpro-land for graphics cards. I can make this Galaxy gt640 fit with a small case mod but im not sure is the performance bump is worth the means.

 

 

 

Please, through me some opinions on what I can do here. Thanks in advance

I think Overclocking your CPU from 3.3 to 4.0 would be your best bank for the buck.

 

Obviously the GT640 is not a fast or powerful card, so if at any time you are able to upgrade your card, that would be the thing to look at too.

I just today put in a GTX 680 FTW 4GB card....my my does she cut through FSX like a hot knife through butter....

So basically, I just need to purchase a barebones PC, harvest this one minus the graphics card and start over. FSX has been a real treat. I wish I hated flight sim's, but unfortunately I am totally addicted. There just simply is no way around not dumping hundreds of dollars to get this sim to run well. It's frustrating that Xplane10 runs and looks better on this system... With Xplane, there are just not many addon dev's producing much for it although in the future I hear PMDG has shown interest. The other problem is Xplane is really not user friendly. I love how simplistic and quick I can set the parameters of my flights.

 

My Mobo is from HP which has lock OC'ing the CPU. This is why I must purchase a new mobo.

 

 

Anyways, I will sit tight, save, save and just when I think I have saved enough I will save some more. Sad part is, all my other games run extremely well.. Crysis 1 & 2 on highest settings gives me 30-40 fps. Perhaps this severe hardware hunger even 6 years later stems from poor coding. Thanks alot for the comments... I will set my course accordingly.