Hi,Basically I'm on a very modest setup which would not handle default fsx, so I am going to have to buy a new rig. THe big question is when? Right after release, or wait a while? IF the latter, then how long are u going to wait? Six months, a year? If you're someone in my situation, it's a long time to wait untill I eventually get my hands on fsx and the cool addons. But on the other hand, I don't want to buy a machine straight away which would be outdated quickly. I want a machine that can handle the complex VC of cool addon aircraft later down the track, plus keeping the the scenery/autogen sliders turned up. SO buying a system right after release might not yield the best FSX performance in the longterm. CheersTristan

This is easy. You wait for the DX10 patch and dual core 2GB DX10 graphics cards, then upgrade. It could be a good idea to skip the 1st generation of DX10 cards, its up to you..

Unfortunately, the decision, to me, doesn't seem that easy. DX10 is only a consideration if one is also planning to "upgrade" to Vista. And that's a much more important decision than worrying about DX9c vs. DX10. There are many, many reasons why one may not want to, or be able to, replace WinXP with Vista at an early date. For those of us who are going to be using WinXP/DX9c for the next 18-24 months the hardware choices, and hardware costs, are much different than for those who are going to go with Vista/DX10 at the onset. Doug

Tristan, I am in the same boat as you. I USED to upgrade every year until the P4 3.0Ghz came out. I've got 2 P4 3.0 systems which have stayed the same for the last 3 years, one is my main system with Radeon 9800 Pro and the other is a backup/rendering system with an nvidia 5600. The MAIN things for me is to get a dual core system to run 64 Bit OS and of course a DirectX 10 video card. I did some research and you will most likely not see decent priced DirectX 10 cards until the middle of next year. In both of our cases, we want to run FSX with good frames so I put together a system NOW for a relatively inexpensive price. And in my case I do Photography/Video for a living so I'd like a faster workstation as well.Processor ($130):Take a look at this article along with knowing the wait time of the DX 10 cards prompted me to put this together now. Also, having some favorable financing I have some time to pay it off:http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/10/dual_41_ghz_cores/That CPU is a dual core which can be run faster than the fastest stock processor out right now. I recommend a water cooling system which I purchased the Corsair Nautilus 500 for $150 and a speed of 3.8Ghz on this processor is fast enough.Video Card ($310 - $30 rebate):nvidia released their G71 processor in the 7900xx series cards. I picked up the PCIe XFX 7900 GT with VIVO which is already clocked faster than stock by default. This card is a litte faster than the older 7800 GTX champ series for less money.Motherboard ($200):Abit & Asus both have motherboards which are "SUPPOSEDLY" Conroe ready. I picked up the AW8D offering from ABIT which has the 975X chipset and touts ATI Crossfire SLI compatibility as well which I have no interest in doing.Memory ($160):This motherboard works with Dual Channel DDR2 memory so I opted for 1GB of the lowest latency DDR2-800 Ram in the $150 price range.Case/Power Supply ($100):I needed a new case and a new power supply with plenty of power so I picked up a decent case and 500 Watt Power Supply with Dual 12V/24 pin.Hard Drive ($100):Wanting plenty of space on SATA device for low cost I got a 300GB drive which I plan on buying 2 more configured as RAID.DVD+-Dual Layer Burner ($40):Need a way to install software so I opted for my favorite Benq 16X Dual Layer DVD+-Burner.I didn't get a sound card right now but I plan on picking up the Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty since I use the optical audio IN/OUT in the break out box on my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum for recording. Also want to pick up the Creative 7.1 Gigaworks speaker system to replace my 5.1. The motherboard has built in 7.1 sound already.So, approximately $1100 later you've got a pretty nice system and in 18 months, I can upgrade the video card offering to DX10.Carmine http://forums.avsim.net/images/wave.gifhttp://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7118/phoenixtp8mg.jpg

If it were me I would wait until after FSX is out for a while, before building the new rig. I would do that irregardless of whether or not I was going to go with Vista or not.In my case, barring any unforeseen circustances, I am going to to wait until late 07 to upgrade my San Diego, 2 gigs ram, 7800GT system.Rhett

If you can wait a while until FS-X has been out a little longer. reaad the posts about performance and take time to figure out what hardware it performs on.I didn't have that patience so I went for a setup that runs FS9 as good as possible. In Europe we will probably get FS-X a little later than the US so I will look on the boards how the first experiences are. If they are reasonable I will buy FS-X for the current setup and wait 2 - 3 years before upgrading OS and hardware. I caneasily hold out on FS9 + add-ons on my current setup. There are so much quality add-on aircraft and super detailed scenery area's I find it hard to see improvements in what FS-X offers ('just' higher quality visuals and SFX might not win me over)

I suspect, by the time DX10 and Vista matures, FSXI would be announced:)Manny

first of all...fsx is supposed to be released BEFORE Vista, not after. Secondly, everyone is going to want to eventually move to dx10 as well as Vista most likely, which means big hardware changes...the 3 most important to note will be power supply of at least 1,000w-1,200w, then a very fast dual core conroe from intel or multicore amd will help to not bottleneck the dx10 gpu, and finally...since vista requires not only more horsepower but also memory youre really going to need 3-4 gigs of DDR2 memory for a gaming machine.Vista has already been benchmarked on some games, now albeit its only in beta2 as of right now its a total and complete pig of an OS which is cutting fps in half almost as compared to winxp...so theres a long way to go before vista is going to be the gamers choice.That being said...i think it may be a good idea to only do a cheap upgrade now thatll hold you over for another 6-12 months. That should give enough time to figure out exactly whatll work best with both Vista AND dx10 as far as gaming is concerned. Then go ahead and build a monster by all means :-)Dave

Good advice Dave. It will be interesting to see the RC1 benchmarkings. That's the one that will really tell the tale as far as game performance goes. There is so much riding on the corporate implementation (and the concerns of Dell and the other OEM's) that, with all the other problems Vista has right now, one has to wonder just how much emphasis is being put on the gamning side.Doug

I remember being pretty impressed when FS9 came out that it seemed to run better than FS2002 did, if you stripped out some of the new graphics settings like the new clouds for starters. Since MS has said that GPUs will handle more of the load and threading will be more aggresive, I'd be willing to bet that if you stripped out things like the new car traffic, you'd probably get better performance with FSX than FS9 on your current system. There will certainly be new things (like car traffic) that will kill performance and make us yearn for a faster system but I plan to wait until I just can't take it anymore so I'll probably fly FSX with my current P4 3.0GHz system for a while and then make the jump to 64-bit (I know FSX is only 32 bit but why not be prepared for other things, maybe FSXI will be 64-bit) Vista system with dual (quad?) core, DX10 GPU and all the bells and whistles I can afford. I'm already saving up for it so by early 2007, I'll have a fair amount of money to plunk down.