oh boy   I was  in the  same  boat  held  off  from  going  to fsx to  p3dv4,  did  my  pc  upgrade  and  went  to p3dv4   and  should  have  done  this  long  time  ago,  so  much  difference  from  a  32  to  a 64  bit  system

4 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Going from FSX to P3Dv4 is not going from 32 big to 32. It’s going from 32 bit to 64 bit which is what P3Dv4 is.

I was never motivated to go to p3d *before* v4 because p3d v's 1, 2, and 3 are 32 bit. Now that 4 is out and is 64 bit, I plan to upgrade at some point.

My next computer build will be done with P3D v4 in mind.  A stock install of FSX works just fine in a 32-bit environment, but when you start adding on highly detailed aircraft and scenery, plus weather, plus AI, it can quickly run out of addressable RAM.  64-bit is the way to go, X-plane has gone that way, P3D has gone that way and it is a brighter future for flight simulation.

Well, the bottleneck that I assumed was something in software was indeed a bottleneck in hardware. I upgraded to a Ryzen 2700x after you guys pointed out the core usage vs. overall usage problem.

 

Holding off on the vid card because I expect prices to drop some more soon because of the new cards about to release, but even with the old card the performance is awesome. Really smooth even with all the graphics sliders at full, with the PMDG 747v3, in San Francisco.

I wasn't even sure that was possible under FSX. Really, everyone, thanks very much for the guidance. This really woke my sim up and made my weekend.