Hi, all. I'm wanting to get some opinions on a very nice system that I had built up in 2009, but unfortunately have never used. At the time I was looking at this for FSX and I'm wondering if it well still hold up pretty well for that sim or should I just use it for FS9? The system is as follows:

 

i7 965 3.2GHz., 8MB L3 Cache processor

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Heatsink

ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard (I didn't want to get into over-clocking, but this board would allow for it)

6GB (I think) of Mushkin PC3-1600 DDR3 memory

PC Power and Cooling 750 Watt PSU

GeForce GTX280 w/1G DDR3

Vista Home Premium 64-Bit OS

I don't remember the exact harddrive setup, but as I recall it had 2 500G SATA drives.

 

CH Products Yoke, Pro Pedals, and Throttle Quadrant

 

Any help with this would really be appreciated as I want to get back into simming again. I don't plan to make it my life, if you know what I mean, but would still want to enjoy the experience.

 

Thanks,

Jeff Smith

You have a system that was near top of the line a few years ago. It will still do just about everything you want FSX to do. I have a couple of suggestions. You have a good CPU and a cooler that should easily overclock to 4.2gHz, do it. Combine that with an upgraded graphics card (take a look at a GTX 650). Your GTX280 is a good card but when I upgraded from a 275 to my 580, the difference in smoothness was amazing. You should see a big difference in FPS and smoothness. Also, make sure you have your memory timed correctly. Mushkin made some of the best DDR3 sticks. You can probably get 6-8-6-24 1T out of those sticks. Take a look at the Hardware and Software Guide here: http://forum.avsim.net/fsx_guide.pdf

 

My system is similar to yours. I routinely run the F1 Mustang, know to be an FPS killer, at a locked 30FPS, with sliders on the high side, no problem.

 

There's lots of good info available if you search google for overclocking.

 

good luck

Superglide, thanks for the reply. I'm going tonight to pick up an EVGA GTX 650 Ti 2G Superclocked video card. Also, I noticed you are using Windows 7 Pro. Is there a very noticeable difference between that and Vista which I already have installed? If 7 is significantly better, I don't know whether I should install 7 over Vista or should clean the drive and start over. Other than starting the computer I've done nothing else with it.

 

Thanks for your help with this.

 

Jeff

I can't address the difference between Vista and Win7 as to FSX. I have always run FSX on Win7 64B. It seems to be the preferred OS for FSX.

Thanks. I just purchased Windows 7 and will be installing it on a clean drive. May as well do it the best way if I'm going to do it.

 

Jeff