Hello,

 

I am thinking of getting into this business of building a FSX/Video Editing computer for myself and as a result I am doing some research on which components could be best to get the job done.

 

Okay, my planned budget for the rig is $1,300 dollars and I only plan to have FSX, Sony Vegas, and Microsoft Office as the major programs for my computer. I am not much of a gamer outside of Microsoft Flight Simulator. My mindset for the computer is getting the best bang for the buck in terms of FSX and Sony Vegas performance. 

 

My initial research has led me to pick the following hardware components.

 

1. AMD FX8350 Processor Clocked at 4.0 GHz (TurboCore up to 4.2GHz)
2. AsRock 970 Extreme4 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI
3. EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti with 2GB of Video Memory
4. Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB 240-pin DDR3 1600 RAM
5. Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 60GB SSD (for Windows 8 installation)
6. Seagate 1TB 7200rpm Drive (FSX, Office, and Sony Vegas will go here, may buy additional HDD for Sony Vegas use exclusively if warranted).
7. Windows 8 64bit
8. LG BluRay Drive
9. Corsair HX750 750-Watt Power Supply

 

Before finishing this write-up, I would like to explain why I went with AMD. Part of the reason is economics, I found very little difference between the AMD 8350 processor versus the Core i5K edition to justify the latter's retail price, and given AMD's reputation of being a good over clocker compared to Intel which open the door for expandability (I know that I will need an aftermarket cooler if I decide to over clock). The second reason for my initial AMD decision is that Video Editors like a lot of Cores to do rendering, I find that the AMD 8350 seems to be a good processor for that given its sheer core advantage over Intel's current generation solutions. 

 

Given that AMD is under a bad rap recently in the tech world, I would like to ask about the experience that other members of the AVSIM community have had with the AMD FX-Series processors and FSX and if I should expect to run FSX a High Settings (I know Maximum Settings in FSX is next to impossible even in current systems  :( ) Also, I wonder if the NVIDIA video card will suffice for FSX?

 

One last thing, I am not ruling out using FS9 on this computer as well given that this particular simulator is still going on strong even 10 years after its general availability.

 

Thanks again for your assistance!

Obviously the majority of folks here are using Intel rigs so any encouragement to go the AMD route will be limited, but there are some happy AMD & FSX users on the forums and a few recent relevent threads within this section where they give some positive feedback.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/404212-upgrade-with-decent-results-for-fsx/

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/402239-amd-fx8350-8-core-processor-my-fsx-review-performance/

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/403773-i7-3770k-or-amd-8350fx/

 

Personally I think at some point you will kick yourself for not getting a larger SSD. I originally bought a 128GB drive for Windows and program files including FSX but in less than a year had to upgrade to a 256GB drive, this is in addition to a mechanical drive that I use for user profiles, documents and media.

I would change for intel. FSX can not take advantage of all 8 of those amd cores. 

Obviously the majority of folks here are using Intel rigs so any encouragement to go the AMD route will be limited, but there are some happy AMD & FSX users on the forums and a few recent relevent threads within this section where they give some positive feedback.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/404212-upgrade-with-decent-results-for-fsx/

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/402239-amd-fx8350-8-core-processor-my-fsx-review-performance/

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/403773-i7-3770k-or-amd-8350fx/

 

Personally I think at some point you will kick yourself for not getting a larger SSD. I originally bought a 128GB drive for Windows and program files including FSX but in less than a year had to upgrade to a 256GB drive, this is in addition to a mechanical drive that I use for user profiles, documents and media.

I've read over the posts and it seems that the AMD FX-8350 is not a bad processor when it comes to FSX. My thinking is that this arises from the fact of the processor's high clock speeds (4GHz) something that all versions of MS Flight Simulator like. I see that each of the users from this processor are happy with their results so I find my initial interest on the AMD processor encouraging.

 

Besides this research, I have been all over YouTube watching reviews of the FX-8350 processor. Most reviews are positive yet some of the reviewers say that Intel has a better processor according to the benchmarks yet in daily use and in real world applications the 8350 is a more than capable processor and for the price it offers a reasonable bang for the buck.

 

One of the postings that you shared seems to validate the thesis exposed in my previous paragraph.

 

I would change for intel. FSX can not take advantage of all 8 of those amd cores. 

True to some extent. Doesn't FSX with Service Pack 2 allows for the program to offload some tasks to secondary cores in the processor. Also, I know that this can be improved by tweaking the FSX.cfg file. 

 

The problem that I see with the Intel offerings, is that for the price of the FX-8350 the best I can get is a 3rd-Gen Core i5 processor and it has fewer cores. Aside from that I find that Intel Motherboards are also slightly more expensive than their AMD counterparts (those with the AMD+3 socket). 

 

Does Intel offer something else other than TurboBoost (AMD has TurboCore which is a similar feature on the FX-8350) that could make FSX run better on this processor?

 

 

Thanks for all the responses!

I love the specs.

 

I have the Intel i3770K and that usually costs $360.. There is a computer store called "Microcenter" where in Dallas and they have the intel for $230 so I bought that and the Corsair H100i

thus cooling my CPU and overclocking it  to whatever I want but currently I have it set to 4ghz. 

As you've seen from the benchmarks you've been looking at AMD is on the back foot when it comes to outright performance and so have had to increase the speed and number of physical cores of their CPUs in order to compete with their equivalent Intel offerings. This is especially true with games that are CPU Intensive but other than FSX you have said that this is not an area that bothers you, with your video editing I think performance would be better matched as the 8350 has 8 physical cores compared to the 3770s 4 physical and 4 virtual. Given this and the number of folks that are happy with their 8350s and FSX performance and that you've already identified the AMD system as offering the best cost/performance ratio for your budget I would be inclined to stick with your original plan.

 

Stating that FSX can not take advantage of 8 cores is misleading as in fact it can, but whether you will want it to is a different matter. The main sim engine only runs on a single core but since SP1 it will pass on texture and autogen processing to as many other cores that are available to it. Each additional core used for textures will make the sim smoother but at the cost of a few FPS so you will probably want to do some testing to find out the smoothness/speed compromise that suits you best. As you state you can use fsx.cfg to define the number of cores utilised by FSX, using the AffinityMask setting.

 

 

 

Does Intel offer something else other than TurboBoost (AMD has TurboCore which is a similar feature on the FX-8350) that could make FSX run better on this processor?

 

FSX is going to run much better on an I5 3570K. And if you overclock, on par with an 8 core AMD FX for multithreaded apps like video edition

FSX is going to run much better on an I5 3570K. And if you overclock, on par with an 8 core AMD FX for multithreaded apps like video edition

 

You can also overclock the 8350 to ~5GHz at which point it is allegedly "neck and neck with the i7-3770k (not overclcocked) in-terms of gaming performance." - http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/20/overclocking-amds-fx-8350/

You can also overclock the 8350 to ~5GHz at which point it is allegedly "neck and neck with the i7-3770k (not overclcocked) in-terms of gaming performance." - http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/20/overclocking-amds-fx-8350/

 

What I meant is if you compare both overclocked (assuming they both clock more or less the same, which they do) then the I5 is as fast in most multithreaded applications as the FX8350. Keep in mind the FX 8350 is 600MHz faster at stock clocks.

 

It all boils down to what the OP's priority is. If its FSX, then he should defo go with an I5. If it's video edition, an AMD FX is better value, but IMO an I5 is a much better all around chip for not too much more money