I upgraded from a 4TB WD Black.  Loads WAY faster. I didn't time it, but I could go make cocoa while it was loading from the HD, now its < 1 min.  And I have tons of sceneries.

My OS is still on a 1TB WD Black, it seems OK for that.  My second M.2 has my Steam folder on it and if I decide to try out X-Plane it will go on the second one, too.  (both are 1TB Samsung EVO Pro). :)

6 minutes ago, Buffy Foster said:

I upgraded from a 4TB WD Black.  Loads WAY faster. I didn't time it, but I could go make cocoa while it was loading from the HD, now its < 1 min.  And I have tons of sceneries.

My OS is still on a 1TB WD Black, it seems OK for that.  My second M.2 has my Steam folder on it and if I decide to try out X-Plane it will go on the second one, too.  (both are 1TB Samsung EVO Pro). 🙂

Any upgrade from a mechanical Hard drive will be a huge upgrade.  I still use a mechanical for xplane with loads of ortho on it.  I can go mow my lawn before it’s done loading

3 hours ago, mpw8679 said:

Since that card is 8gb I think your locked 7700 is really going to hold u back even if u did upgrade your GPU.

For a $500 budget look into a z390 mobo and a 9600K.  I upgraded from a 5ghz 7700K to a 4.9ghz 9600K and had a pretty noticeable improvement.  Very small gain in FPS but scenery and texture loading were much improved.

Thanks Matt, that's an interesting idea. I'll have to chew on that. Silly question here...is the GPU capable of being overclocked and would it even be worth the effort? Thanks

Brian

1 minute ago, Starlifter60 said:

Thanks Matt, that's an interesting idea. I'll have to chew on that. Silly question here...is the GPU capable of being overclocked and would it even be worth the effort? Thanks

Brian

U can overclock your GPU.  How much depends on what specific card u have and the headroom it offers.  Myself I don’t go thru the trouble.

3 hours ago, mpw8679 said:

Technically no.  What is the current RAM?

From Speccy (I know, I know...)

16.0GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1066MHz (15-15-15-36)  DDR4

Edited December 25, 20187 yr by Starlifter60

36 minutes ago, Starlifter60 said:

From Speccy (I know, I know...)

16.0GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1066MHz (15-15-15-36)  DDR4

I would pull a stick out and see what it is exactly.  It could be faster memory just running at default bios settings.  Do u have a XMP profile option in your BIOS?  If Speccy is correct that would be 2133mhz RAM.  If that’s the case I would definitely upgrade to at least 3000mhz memory with similar timings to what u currently have.