Hi friends.

I have saved a little "upgrade" money and would really appreciate some sound advice on what I should spend the money on.

I fly exclusively the PMDG products and have many add ons for airports and Traffic.

The obvious goal is to get a smooth running set up with as many FPS as possible.

So I have $1,500 -$2,000 to spend. Here are my current specs. for you to see what I should replace and what I can keep.

Thanks very much for your time and thoughts in advance.

 

Gigabyte X58-UD3R SKT1366 INTEL X58+

EVGA GTXX480 1536MB

INTEL X250M 160G GEN2

VELOCIRAPTOR SATA II 10000RPM 600G

THERMALTAKE TRX 1000M MODULAR PSU

INTEL I7-960 QC 3.2 8M

1TB CAVIAR SATA 6 GB/S

12G 6GB KIT 3X2GB 1333MHZ DDR3 (WHAT EVER THIS MEANS?)

MS WINDOWS 7 PRO 64 BIT

COOLMASTER CASE

 

Best regards.

David Bell

fly exclusively the PMDG products and have many add ons for airports and Traffic.

Wait for intel's highest performing platform: socket 1150, i7-4770K, ddr3 3000/3200 MHz

 

HLJAMES

Wait for intel's highest performing platform: socket 1150, i7-4770K, ddr3 3000/3200 MHz

 

Agreed, the release date for Haswell is end of May beginning of June. Considering you have a fairly decent rig upgrading now would I feel be the wrong decision. Use the time to save up a little more so you have more options available.

socket 1150, i7-4770K, ddr3 3000/3200 MHz

 

I also agree... Wait for the next gen Intel CPUs.

I suggest you get a good CPU cooler and overclock your i7 960 to at least 4.0. 4.2 would be better. That way for less than $50 you can get a big bump for your money. Then, as the others have suggested, save your money until the new CPU's have arrived. By then you you'll have enough saved for the new rig.

Wait for intel's highest performing platform: socket 1150, i7-4770K, ddr3 3000/3200 MHz

 

HLJAMES

Thanks for the responses. I will defiantly take your advice.

I have a couple of questions regarding the rest of the rig...

1) Should I do and changing to the GPU? If so, what would be complimentary to the new CPU?

2) Will my Motherboard be able to be over clocked?, and would you recommend that?

 

Thanks in advance.

Just my two cents and nothing more but in the world of computers, there is always something "later and greater" right around the corner. I remember all the hype around the i7 3960k until real world fsx testing showed almost no performance boost between it and the 3770k at a 1/3 of the price. The fact of the matter is that fsx is a dated platform that is only viable now because of 3rd party support. It doesn't take advantage of multiple cores so a six or an 8 core cpu has almost no benefits over a 4 core one such as the i7 2500/2600/2700 or the Ivy bridge cpu's like the 3570 or 3770. It wont make use of any more than 4 gigs of ram so 8 gb is plenty. Just built my 4th Fsx dedicated rig and have it running smoothly using bojote's and Word Not Allowed's tweaks (good read by the way). spent around $1750 .The only time I see less than 30 FPS is when I'm running a complex payware aircraft such as PMDG into somewhere like KJFK or EGLL(heathrow) on final approach with a payware airport scenery, etc and a traffic program like traffic 360. It will dip into the low 20's ( still smooth). always get the "K" version of whatever processor you choose as overclocking is almost a requirement for the performance you want. My specs are as follows:

 

I7 3770K CPU OC'd to 4.5 GHZ

NVIDIA EVGA 670 FTW 2gb GPU

ASUS Z77 pro mobo

2 Samsung 256 GB 840 pro SSD's

8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866 MHZ RAM

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU heatsink

Cooler Master HAF LAN test box case

 

Final thoughts. Beware of anyone who claims to be able to run fsx with all sliders maxed out. Almost anyone can get good FPS using default aircraft at 30,000 ft with no addons. Also Fsx should be installed on its own hard drive in its own folder created by yourself, not the default x86 path suggested in the installer. Didn't mean to get too off topic but hope this helps.

1) Should I do and changing to the GPU? If so, what would be complimentary to the new CPU?

2) Will my Motherboard be able to be over clocked?, and would you recommend that?

 

1) It depends on how much of your budget you have left over once you have upgraded your Motherboard, CPU, Cooler and RAM. As a guide the NVidia GTX670 seems to be considered the best option for FSX in terms of price & performance.

 

2) Overclocking is always recomended for FSX as the faster your CPU the better your FSX performance.

The NVIDIA 670 FTW shares the same basic architecture with the 680GTX and has only slightly less performance specs at around $100 cheaper. I think its a good value. Some people will say that the graphics card isn't very important for fsx. It becomes very important if running very high resolution payware such as PMDG or REX clouds and for multiple monitor setups.

Just my two cents and nothing more but in the world of computers, there is always something "later and greater" right around the corner.

 

I would agree with your arguments more if we were looking at someone who was actually upgrading from a low to mid end AMD / i3 rig, to a high end i7 setup, as the performance benefits would be immediately obvious. This situation is different though as we are essentailly looking at a like for like swapout of old for new technology on a high end i7 rig which is why it would seem a waste to spend money on current technology now that will be redundant in a few weeks time. Remember we're not just talking about the CPU, the motherboard will be newer tech also.

I would agree with your arguments more if we were looking at someone who was actually upgrading from a low to mid end AMD / i3 rig, to a high end i7 setup, as the performance benefits would be immediately obvious. This situation is different though as we are essentailly looking at a like for like swapout of old for new technology on a high end i7 rig which is why it would seem a waste to spend money on current technology now that will be redundant in a few weeks time. Remember we're not just talking about the CPU, the motherboard will be newer tech also.

 

I agree with your statement in principal. However, Fsx and the code it runs on is stuck in 2006 and always will be. Microsoft no longer supports it. It simply will not take advantage of the newer technology as no one is developing hardware with Fsx in mind. Fsx is almost unique in terms of its requirements. With that said, I have been following P3D with great interest as it appears that Lockheed Martin has "picked up the torch" so to speak and are trying to revise/update the old Fsx code. P3D has the potential to finally take advantage of later technologies.

We have seen as good as hardware to optimise FSX performance as we will ever see. Anything in the future will be a "maybe" and "well it seems to me" and spend a 1000 dollar on the latest hardware to get a miniscule result in performance.

Wow! Thanks. Loads of information for me to digest. I truly appreciate all of your advice and input.

Keep it coming if there is anything to add.

Does it seem that I will be needing to make a change of the Motherboard, GPU, Cooling and CPU as well as RAM?

Everything but the case? B)

If I spend more than $2,500.00. My beautiful young bride will leave me.

The price I quoted in my earlier post was for the entire set-up, case and all. I probably saved at least $500 building it myself. Cyberpower PC will custom build almost anything and their "configurator" tool is very user-friendly. I had an AMD quad core Phenom OC'd to 3.8 GHz and a NVIDIA 480GT and the performance gain was huge. I'd say that going from 3.2 GHz to something around 4.5 should be similarly as impressive. Good luck!!