FSX Windows 7

[MAHLER]

I have the following system:- Intel i7 2600K SandyBridge 3.4Ghz, Motherboard Gigabyte Z68X-UD4-B3, Seagate iTB Hard Disk, Memory Corsair8GB Vengeance 1600Mhz,.

A few months ago I replaced the dying Graphics card with a Ge Force GTX1060 3Gb,and at the same time enhanced the memory further with 2X 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3

The weakness of the system is the processor/ motherboard, as I'm inclined to think the new graphics is rather bottlenecking the performance.

I would prefer to stick with windows 7, as that is what FSX was developed for, rather than go to windows10.

I would appreciate any knowledgeable advise on  processor/motherboards  that could make this achievable.

Thanks

Mike

 

[vortex681]

3 hours ago, MAHLER said:

I would prefer to stick with windows 7, as that is what FSX was developed for, rather than go to windows10.

FSX was unveiled at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show, apparently as a gaming showcase for Windows Vista. Windows 7 didn't arrive until about 3 years later. I'm happily running FSX in Windows 10 with no noticeable performance difference compared to Windows 7. If you're considering a system upgrade, I would definitely advise going for Windows 10 as Windows 7 only has a couple of years of security updates left.

With regards to your system, you should be able to comfortably overclock your processor to well over 4GHz - the only requirement may be a better cooler depending on what you currently use. This will give a significant boost to performance in FSX. At the higher clock speed, it's unlikely that the CPU would be a bottleneck for your 1060 graphics card.

What screen resolution are you using? If you overclock your CPU, using 2560x1440 or less should not be a problem for your current system.

[MAHLER]

Hi 

Using a 27" monitor resolution 1980X1024 32bit 

[MAHLER]

Conventional fan in tower

[vortex681]

3 hours ago, MAHLER said:

Using a 27" monitor resolution 1980X1024 32bit 

That shouldn't really overload your CPU as it stands now - still worth overclocking, though. You can find any potential bottleneck by installing MSI Afterburner (https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner - you don't need an MSI graphics card). You can set it to monitor many system parameters including GPU load, temperature and fan speed, CPU load and temperature and memory usage. It gives a graphical readout of the data over about a 10-minute period. If you get it, make sure that you monitor all of the individual CPU cores (CPU1, CPU2 etc.) rather than just using the CPU setting which gives a misleading average of all cores. Anything running regularly at, or near 100% would indicate a potential performance limiter. Another useful function it offers is the ability to set a custom fan curve for your graphics card so you can have the fans stopped when the GPU is at idle.

3 hours ago, MAHLER said:

Conventional fan in tower

If it's just a generic cooler, it's worth getting something better if you decide to overclock. Look for something like a Noctua NH-D15S or a decent all-in-one liquid cooler. Neither are particularly cheap but they should be easily transferable to any future system making them good value in the long term.

[MAHLER]

Many thanks for your constructive comments Vortex, will certainly look into the overclocking ,though I've never tackled it before.

Mike