Hi,

 

I am about to build a new PC around September, October this year and as I want to begin with FSX there are some questions I would like to get answers for.

 

I want to use some add ons like Carenado Cessna 172, Aerosoft Diamond Katana, Aerosoft Dimona H36, VFR Germany, REX, maybe UTX to get a nice simulation of GA.

 

CPU will most probably be some i7 4770k without overclocking.

Question is, do I really have to stick with a GTX 780 to get things going or will it run sufficiently with a smaller video card?

RAM will be 16 Gb, SSD will be available.

 

Anybody having experience with some Radeon R9 280x or R9 290 cards?

 

Thing is, a R9 280x will cost half of a GTX 780...

 

Thank you very much for your advise!

 

All the best,

aeru

I'm using the Asus R9 270X 2GB OC card and I have no problems with the aircraft you intend to use, indeed PMDG 737NGX and AXE 320 run well  with my setup and I'm only using an AMD A10-6800X CPU, averaging about 30fps, yours is far better. I'd say the 280X GPU would be suitable.

Good news, I am asking because I was checking the web and everywhere it says AMD will not work - especially in dark or severe weather conditions.

Which resolution and settings are you using?

I recommend a GTX770.

 

There is no need for a 780 unless you are planning to go P3D or XPLANE down the road.

 

You should not get a 4770k but wait for the haswell refresh that should be out by the time you are planning on building.

 

You should also most definitely get a 3rd party cooler and over clock as much as you are comfortable with, as the processor clock is the single most important thing for FSX.

I have the settings maxed with the sliders to the right, res is 1920x1080. I use the settings as recommended by the Avsim tweak guide, when I installed the GPU, I deleted my the fsx cfg file and let it rebuild from scratch then applied the extra entries. I also overclock the GPU with no issues rearing their ugly head.

I like the gtx770 as well but the AMD cards are better value - a lot of people run FSX and report no issues. I run gtx570 myself.

 

Whatever card you get get one with 4GB of video ram - both P3D and XP10 will gobble that up

 

Also note if you you plan to dabble in XP it uses a lot of RAM - so get 16 as a minimum.