Hi All,

I have been a fan of flight sim for many years.

 

I am in the process of bringing my PC into the 21st century..

 

My current pc specs are as follows.

 

Windows 8.1

 

I7 3770 @ 3.40 GHZ

 

16g Dual Channel DDR3 @ 798 MHTZ

 

NVidia GT545 1.5GIG graphics card.

 

Lenovo Mother board.

 

The pc is about 3 yrs. old, I feel the bottle neck is the graphics' card and ram when today you can get DDR at 2.5GHTZ, I know there is DDR4 but from what I have read FSX really relies on CPU power ( please correct me if I am wrong as I am not a PC Guru)

 

What I am thinking of getting is the following, please feel free to tell me if this is really overkill.

 

I7 6700 4GHZ Quad Core

Gigabyte Z170 HD3 DDR3 Mother Board

NVidia GTX970 4 Gig card

New case and power unit

32 Gig DDR3 1600mhtz

 

With the above upgrades would it be better to get the DDR4 version m other board, as I have heard DDR4 is over kill and has latency issues ? - google info can be harmful lol.

 

I am running FSX standard edition with SP1 and 2, Vatsim, Active Sky, GSX, Aerosoft Air Bus Extended, plus other add ons from the file library.

I have also just added but not installed FS Global.. I am currently getting anything from 50FPS then it drops to 7 or 8 then back up to 30 etc..

 

I apologise now if this in the wrong forum, I did look through them all and did not notice a specific thread or section for upgrades/Ideal system for FSX.

 

Many thanks for any help or advice you can offer.

 

Matt

Hey Matt, you're on the right track. You could improve your current setup if on a tight budget, with say, some faster DDR3 and a GTX900 series gpu. Also, what you posted would perform well, I just have a couple recommendations if you're looking for "ideal"

My recommendation would be to go with a 6700K or 6600K and be able to overclock. I'm not sure how comfortable you are with overclocking but it's very simple now on some motherboards. Paying the extra ~$30 is worth it in my opinion. In my case, running 4.6ghz is 118% of the turbo boost speed of a 6600K, and for FSX that means 18% higher FPS and/or overhead room for computation. A second note on the 6700K/6600K: Unless you need the hyperthreading from the 6700K for other games/software, there isn't much need because FSX can't take advantage of the 4 extra threads. There is some debate here on the forums and internet in general about running hyperthreading and if it helps or hurts performance in flight sims. I believe there are a few posts down in the hardware section of the avsim forums.

Another recommendation: I haven't found any direct study on DDR3 vs DDR4 specifically for FSX, but DDR4 is what's going to be used from now on with new computers. I've heard that it could account for as much as 5-10% performance increase in FSX but I can't confirm it. Yesterday, I watched a video on youtube by jayztwocents where the higher speeds of ram made a GPU unnecessary to run Battlefield 4 at acceptable levels. He tested different speed sticks (1600/1866/2133) and 1600 produced around 35 fps on average whereas 2133 would see around 60-80 fps. Now, obviously BF4 is coded differently and Jay used DDR3 not DDR4, but it shows that ram speed can have a noticeable impact.

If you go with DDR4 and a compatible motherboard, you'll be set for future upgrades. And if you go with an overclocking cpu, you can definitely maximize your FSX performance for just slightly more $. If you look at my specs in my signature, that's essentially what I'd recommend if you're going for ideal FSX performance. I lock my fps at 30 and with the right v-sync settings it's butter smooth, pretty much all addons imaginable. In theory, if you go for a 6600K you can use the saved $ towards DDR4 (16gb is good enough for FSX, but also dependent on other programs you're running) and a motherboard with good overclocking features.

I know that's a lot, sorry. A 6700 based system like you laid out would run FSX very well, but if you want next level, then there you go haha

 

*edit* : I have not run into any issues with latency or anything actually with my G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4. It's been flawless, all that you have to do is make sure that the ram and motherboard are compatible according to the qualified vendors lists. Not sure about the overkill, but sooner or later programs will catch up to the headroom that DDR4 currently has

thank you very much for your informative post.

 

I followed the suggestions and have now got a great system..

 

I am now umming and arring wether to get rid of FSX and switch over P3D...