25 minutes ago, simmerhead said:

I appreciate all the new graphic eye candy in P3D, but just wish we had hardware to fully enjoy it - and that is not meant as a critique of P3D. It is just frustrating knowing that even a $10000 computer can't make P3D fly with all the eye candy in combination with the premium scenery, airport and aircraft add-ons. I've got the money to spend, but I chose not to, until there is hardware that can really take advantage of what P3D has to offer. 

This has been true since the early days of FSX...

The good news is, that FSX got better and better as new hardware came along...

Who says that P3D v4 might not also benefit from newer and faster hardware over time..

Save your money for now, you may need it later  

24 minutes ago, simmerhead said:

but just wish we had hardware to fully enjoy it

I understand the frustration ... for DL and SSAA and 4K that's all GPU bound.  This is actually a good thing because GPUs still have headroom and continue to get significantly better.  But for the CPU side, Intel/AMD just aren't pushing for higher frequency, they're going the opposite direction with lower frequency and more cores.

64bit provided about 25% FPS gain due to better threading performance inherent in the architecture which also has more registers.

There are optimization methods that can certainly help GPU bound, DX12 EMA mode with SFR support and multiple GPUs ... but that's really only going to help with tasks that are GPU bound (like DL, SSAA, 4K or 5K or 8k).  But "progress" is happening, slowly, but it is happening ... I look back at XP10 compared to XP11 and go wow what a difference ... same with P3D V4.x looking back and FSX or P3D V1.x and go wow what a difference.  Progress is happening, but development teams for flight simulators are MUCH smaller these days ... fortunately the 3rd party content provider market seems to be getting much larger ... who knows, maybe a time will come when most 3rd party content providers don't need a regular day job and can work full time on FS products?

I remain the eternal optimist.

Cheers, Rob.

Yep, progress is happening for sure. P3D v4 is the most significant release since FSX IMHO. It's not just 64-bit, but also as you say, a very significant performance improvement - very noticeable on my low end system.

GPU seems to be the way forward as of now, and in many ways have replaced the CPU as the core component of the PC. What NVidia is doing in terms of AI and deep learning is a good example of that. Who knows, maybe we can rule out Intel of the equation in a few years with computers based around monster GPUs.