Hi, just getting back into FSim after a 5 year lay-off. Loaded up FSX and remembered why I hate it (maybe I dont have enuff disc space at 120gb ?). Anyway I stripped it out and reloaded FS9 which the rig runs very competently at ultra settings. I just bought X plane 11 and want to try it.

Obviously I need to add a hard-drive as my present drive is just an SSD 850 Evo 120gb ATA. If I want to try FSX again and XP 11 -

do I need to buy one drive for each ? Or just the one ?

what size and what speed should I get ?

I have two cards which will give me the best performance Geforce GTX 970 or a Radeon Rx470 ?

i5 4670 3.4Ghz, 120gb HD, 4.00 GB ram Windows 7 - 64 bit home, triple benq monitors

Douglas DC-3 Pilot and Co-pilot seats, PFC throttle quad, CH Yoke and pedals

There's no advantage to having a separate drive for each simulator as you'll be running both at once. An Xplane11 install is much bigger than FSX owing to the way the scenery is done; whilst FSX will live fairly happily with some addons on 128 GB, I think XP11 uses near that for just a base install! Therefore I'd say you want at least 400 GB (480GB is a common size) assuming just the flight sims (i.e. no OS) is living on that drive. I've got a Crucial MX300 which struck a good balance of value, reliability and performance, Samsung Evo 860 are also good.

The GTX970 is much faster than the Rx470, nVidia tends to play better with FSX too. But if you game with all 3 monitors at 1080p I don't think you'll see particularly great framerates in either sim.

For Xplane11 you will need more RAM as it's 64 bit. In fact even for 32 bit FSX having RAM in excess of 4 GB would be useful (since FSX can then have a full 4 GB of VAS to itself without needing to share it with other apps and the OS). Upgrade to a total of at least 8GB, ideally 16GB RAM.

Edited June 22, 20187 yr by ckyliu

970 with 4gig ram will do ok on  low setting in XPLane , be fine for FSX, far better off with 8gig 1070 not much diff between that and the 1080 as far as xplane is concerned. Also 16gig ram is best bet 500Gig hard drive is enough for both simms. Havxe xplane with no ortho on a 220gig ssd and still has 160 gig free space.

If you are using HDD's for X-Plane, then get a new large capacity drive 1TB are about £30, 

- even SSD's are dropping in price, but I recommend to stay with the Samsung Evo drives if using SSD

 

7 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

970 with 4gig ram will do ok on  low setting in XPLane

Even my 2 GB GTX950M does the job at high object levels, minimal reflections, HDR and FXAA. 30 FPS with a bit of tweaking, so "low settings" is a bit of an understatement.

My 6 GB GTX1060 manges maximum objects, minimal reflections, HDR and 2xSSAA at a constant 60 FPS.

 

Unless we're talking taking more than a single monitor into account, then things might look differently.

 

12 hours ago, Alastair McLeod said:

what size and what speed should I get ?

As big as possible and of course a SSD.

I think usable 500 GB SSDs retail for around $100 to $120 at the moment.

 

Oh, and get more RAM. As much as you can afford.

Thanks for your replies chaps. Ill go for that 1Tb job and more Ram and see what it does with the GeForce card. Looks like Id best get a Triplehead2Go for the multi monitors.

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 6:55 PM, Bjoern said:

Even my 2 GB GTX950M does the job at high object levels, minimal reflections, HDR and FXAA. 30 FPS with a bit of tweaking, so "low settings" is a bit of an understatement.

My 6 GB GTX1060 manges maximum objects, minimal reflections, HDR and 2xSSAA at a constant 60 FPS.

 

Unless we're talking taking more than a single monitor into account, then things might look differently.

 

As big as possible and of course a SSD.

I think usable 500 GB SSDs retail for around $100 to $120 at the moment.

 

Oh, and get more RAM. As much as you can afford.

Im running two sticks of DDR3 1600Mhz 4GB RAM already so that should be enuff methinks. I will probably go along with the 500 GB SSD rather than a 3.5" 1TB as you advise mate.

On 6/22/2018 at 6:46 PM, Alastair McLeod said:

Thanks for your replies chaps. Ill go for that 1Tb job and more Ram and see what it does with the GeForce card. Looks like Id best get a Triplehead2Go for the multi monitors.

Why waste the money on this (triplehead2go)?  Current video cards have output and support 4 montiors.

Edited June 26, 20187 yr by bgpearce01

On 6/24/2018 at 6:30 PM, Alastair McLeod said:

Im running two sticks of DDR3 1600Mhz 4GB RAM already so that should be enuff methinks. I will probably go along with the 500 GB SSD rather than a 3.5" 1TB as you advise mate.

Get as much memory as your Motherboard can take. 16GB is a bare minimum for X-Plane, really (unless you only fly between islands or in the desert). I know coming from FSX, this seems outrageous amount of memory, but X-Plane will take what it can get, and then some.

The SSD will only speed up your loading times, nothing else. Preloading of adjacent tiles is done on another core. Memory is key here.
If you want to go Ortho, 2TB is filled up in a wink. You will find 1TB is barely enough.

Really drop the SSD unless you have the money for both drives.

Get a Geforce 1060 or higher, if your motherboard/power combo can take it. Again, X-Plane will take what there is. A geforce 970 is awfull, because the last .5GB of VRAM is handicapped (out of the 3.5GB). X-Plane will try to use it, and your FPS plumets.

Just my 2 cents.

Check Laminar Research recommended Hardware recommendations:
https://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-11-system-requirements/

11 minutes ago, jh71 said:

Get a Geforce 1060 or higher, if your motherboard/power combo can take it. Again, X-Plane will take what there is. A geforce 970 is awfull, because the last .5GB of VRAM is handicapped (out of the 3.5GB). X-Plane will try to use it, and your FPS plumets.

I don't think that's how the GTX970 works. My understanding is that yes, the last half-gig of VRAM is too slow, but X-Plane just ignores it and treats it like a 3.5 GB VRAM card. It doesn't try to use the full amount and then drop the frame rate.

I'm using a GTX970 with objects set to maximum world objects, reflections at minimal, visual effects at High/HDR, texture quality High, Antialiasing at 2X SSAA+FXAA.

With those settings I'm consistently above 35 fps and often flying at 40-45 fps. Now, that's with a single 1920x1200 monitor. Trying this card with those settings on higher resolution or multiple monitors will obviously drop performance. The GTX970 is basically a single monitor, "reasonable resolution" card for X-Plane. My next upgrade will be a 1080 or 1080ti when prices stabilize, because I'd like to bump the settings and eventually try VR.

I do agree about 8 GB system RAM is the bare minimum, and X-Plane will be happier with 16 GB or more (for the HD and UHD mesh options). 

I run HD Mesh v4 with 8 GB RAM on two devices and do not experience any adverse effects. It's true that X-Plane grabs what memory it can get, if onyl virtually, but a large page file (10-20 GB) on a fast drive should be buffer enough if physical RAM runs out during loading.

12 hours ago, Bjoern said:

I run HD Mesh v4 with 8 GB RAM on two devices and do not experience any adverse effects. It's true that X-Plane grabs what memory it can get, if onyl virtually, but a large page file (10-20 GB) on a fast drive should be buffer enough if physical RAM runs out during loading.

This is not possible, it will depend on the region you are flying, but when swapping between memory and the hard drive  starts seriously  you will grind to a halt. With SSD it might be a bit better but you risk to use it up early.

Personally I find 24GB the sweet spot.

9 hours ago, jh71 said:

This is not possible, it will depend on the region you are flying, but when swapping between memory and the hard drive  starts seriously  you will grind to a halt. With SSD it might be a bit better but you risk to use it up early.

Took the Zibo from Northern to southern Europe with HD Mesh X-Europe and other add-ons (no otho though) enabled and did not experience any slowdowns at all with my 8 GB RAM.

Unless you are using the UHD mesh (which is only available for certain, rather small regions), X-Plane 11 will never exceed 16GB. Anyone who denies this simply doesn't know what he's talking about.

ok boys, I want a nice clean fight, no spitting, no biting and no punches below the belt ! 😂😂😂

well on Tuesday morning I bought a 1Tb hard drive (£159) and a second hand Triplehead2go digital (£70) for starters. I will run the front three 24" screens on my TH2go and try running flight instruments and engines on two smaller screens directly from the card.

Ill stick with FSX and Fs9 for the time being even though I love the flight dynamics of XP.  

Thanks so much for all your input gentlemen - it's much appreciated.