January 23, 201313 yr Hi, I am currently trying to combine quality and performance while reducing the costs where i can, thus removing the chance of affording any of the i7 series of Intel CPU's, anyway i have a few preferences with manufacturers these include Intel, Corsair and Asus, below are my suggested set ups one is heavily budget oriented and one is a little looser on the wallet, plus im in the UK so its £ and expensive parts. Budget PC Intel I3 3220 @ 3.3Ghz Asus P8H77-M (OR) Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H Corsair XMS3 2x2Gb 1600mhz XFX 550w Core Series PSU Seagate Barracuda 500Gb 7200rpm HDD XFX 7850 DD 1GB (OR) EVGA GTX650 SC 2GB Coolermaster K280 Case Lite-on or similar OEM dvd drive Windows 7 Home Premium Rough Cost £ 564.38 Not so much budget PC Intel I5 3330 @ 3.0Ghz Asus P8H77-M (OR) Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H Corsair XMS3 2x2Gb 1600mhz XFX 550w Core Series PSU (OR) Corsair CX600M 600w Seagate Barracuda 500Gb 7200rpm HDD XFX 7850 DD 1GB (OR) EVGA GTX650 SC 2GB Coolermaster K280 Case Lite-on or similar OEM dvd drive Windows 7 Home Premium Rough Cost £612.62 The real question is which one of these builds would offer me the best experience on FSX and will it be worth the extra cash, ideally i would like to purchase and use REX as well as a few payware aircraft bear in mind also that i currently get what i deem to be decent FPS on my laptop which only has a mobile I3 anyway, and also could anybody clear up what the problem with AMD/ATI cards are with FSX because i prefer AMD cards to Nvidia, or more to the point i like the build quality of XFX things. Thanks for any help and im sorry that my first post is a humdinger thanks again, Nathan
January 23, 201313 yr Welcome to AVSIM! Both options seem to be more expensive than I would have imagined. Not to discourage you from building your own computer, but my 2012 Dell XPS 8500 (see specifications in profile) cost $999 without tax, which is only marginally more expensive than your second option, but possesses a significantly better processor and more memory. Have you compared the prices of your self-built options to those of similar stock computers to get a feel of whether they are worth it or not? Most people seem to recommend NVIDIA graphics cards due to their flexibility with various tweaks involving the Inspector tool. I am not sure which option I would recommend. I would personally go for a bigger upgrade, but even the second option may not result in a mind-blowing performance improvement. Such was certainly the case when I upgraded from my 2008 Apple iMac (Core 2 Duo E8235)—I am still highly restricted by the performance demands of FSX. The upcoming fourth-generation Intel processors are another thing to consider.
January 23, 201313 yr Get more CPU and cheaper card with fsx. I wouldnt cheap out on the video card to buy a better cpu. Yes FSX takes more CPU power than GPU, but you still need a balance or you may create a bottleneck. I would recommend at least a GTX660, which would be a better investment. Alex
January 23, 201313 yr Author Thanks for the responses, the cost is higher than it could be due to the fact that that price includes a retail version of Windows costing about 50 more penny's. I'm wondering whether or not to get bog standard ram so th no heatsink and get 16th for the same price, the bottom line is if I got the i3 then I would probably include a few extras to boost the performance as much as possible, such as an ssd for windows and fsx. What would the performance difference be between the i3 and i5 be when using Rex.
January 24, 201313 yr What would the performance difference be between the i3 and i5 be when using Rex. I believe REX does not affect performance too significantly when appropriate resolution settings are selected (e.g., not using high-definition clouds or water). I know it is a bit early to think about it, but when do you plan to upgrade next (i.e., after this upgrade)? One year? Four years? If you are able to upgrade soon, then you could consider using the cheaper option as a stepping stone to the upcoming computers powered by the next generation of Intel processors. If not, I would probably go with the more-expensive option, as FSX will use all of the additional computing power.
January 24, 201313 yr On a budget I would consider a Dell refurbished machine - http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandid=1&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh they have i7-3770 machines with 8GB of RAM for ~£450 (XPS8500), you'd have enough left over to upgrade the graphics if you wanted (1GB Ati 7570).
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