Hi folks,

 

Just one question really; I intend putting together a new rig for FSX and XP10. Money is no object to the build and I have no real preferences to brands etc. That said, I have always used (and liked) ATI cards and gigabyte boards. I live in the UK.

 

All suggestions on components  / cooling and anything else are most welcome.

 

Cheers

I would go for the i7 2700k and a Titan

Seems nVidia cards give better results with FSX, from what I've heard. I've been relatively happy with my Radeon though.

I also was very happy with my ATI, but I had the 9600 Pro and X850XT back in the day. I've had Nvidia ever since. 

 

I think it's a toss-up between i5 and i7. I'm running a new Alienware (specs in sig) that is OC'd @ 4.7 and I love it. If I was building, I'd go with an i5 due to costs, but if you buy like I did and an i7 is your only option, then so be it. No complaints from me about my i7.

Hi folks,

 

Just one question really; I intend putting together a new rig for FSX and XP10. Money is no object to the build and I have no real preferences to brands etc. That said, I have always used (and liked) ATI cards and gigabyte boards. I live in the UK.

 

All suggestions on components / cooling and anything else are most welcome.

 

Cheers

I'm slowly preparing for my next build, and money is no object as well. I have decided to focus more on selecting components for an optimized XP10 rather than FSX. Here's why...

 

FSX is highly limited in exploiting multithreading, multicore, and benefits mostly from clock speed and an 'adequate' GPU. We have not seen much in the way of improving overclockability for many years now. Once Sandy Bridge came along you have not seen big increases in clock speed. Indeed, w/ Ivy Bridge & its heat issues, you really if anything saw minor decreases in clock speed and quite similar performance as w/ SB practically speaking. Haswell's greatest strengths are lower power draw, greater on board graphics performance, and unknown effects from onboard voltage regulation, etc. The big question w/ Haswell is: did they improve the thermal performance by reverting back to fluxless solder as was used in processors leading up to but excluding IB? They have hinted that their might be some marketing towards the dwindling enthusiast market, but that remains to be seen. So really, whether you use SB, IB or Haswell, isn't going to have very significant differences in FSX performance per se: emphasis on 'very significant', to help quell the inevitable responses from those who care about 5-10% performance changes, which I will always argue are not material in any meaningful (to me) way.

 

XP10, OTOH, is a different story. This, from LR's website, highlights why:

 

Try setting the number of planes to 20 in X-Plane 10 and see how fast it runs. The difference is that X-Plane 10 has each airplane as it’s own object, and each object running on a different CPU, all at the same time. Multiply this by the ever-growing forest (the trees have to be planted in front of you as you fly… You do not have the ram to memorize them all) animals, cars, air traffic controller, boats, ever-changing weather, and you start to see why it will take a lot of CPUs to run this whole world.

 

They have advanced XPlane to be more an more able to exploit parallel processing, whereas FSX is over and done in that regard. Therefore, I'm aiming at the very least at a 6-core SB-E processor, but may even go to dual Xeon E5-2876 8-core CPUs, for a total of 20 threads per CPU, 16 core, etc. It turbos to 3.8Ghz and is not overclockable beyond that. Will FSX run well on a 3.8Ghz dual CPU Xeon box? Well, it should run considerably better than on my 5 y/o Core 2 Quad at 3.72Ghz, so for FSX, I think it may be good enough. No, it won't compare favorably against SB-E for FSX, but bring in XPlane 10 or 11, and watch out! Xeon doesn't dedicate any units for graphics. Methinks the box will run w/o the need for loud air cooling, and won't need water cooling either, and should last many many years since it will be running essentially stock everything. A decent compromise still will be SB-E though, and at a ton less $$. Get your wallet out for the dual Xeon system: $4K just for the two processors, another $1K for a GTX Titan (or $2K if there is a mainboard that can support dual Titans in SLI which I'm not sure is the case for Xeon), a 512Gb SATA3 SSD, and before you know it you're looking at $8K--ouch!

Thanks a lot for taking the trouble to reply guys - much appreciated. You certainly have given me lots to consider.

 

Take care