How does FSX profit from new hardware?

[chatman 29]

Hi!With FSX the idea to upgrade my system has obviously become stronger.My sys now:AMD X2 4800ATI X800 (256 MB)2GB DDR 400A nice system would be:Intel C2D 6600 (or even quad)Geforce 88002GB DDR2 1066the question is: is it worth it?OK, the processer upgrade will bring some extra fps but how about graphics? FS9 was very processor limited. A new card often made no difference. Does FSX make more use of a better graphic card?Has anybody made an upgrade similar to this one and can post their experience?thx!

[Guest unitedpilot36]

Well, it's my understanding that the 8800 series cards have 16X anti aliasing which provides a beautifully crisp flying experience while not taking away fps. SP1 supposedly hands more of the workload to the gpu but I think we can all agree that it's still very cpu oriented. The 6600 is a winner and I'd bet my bottom dollar that you would be pretty satisfied with it. So yes, I'd say go for it, it'll most likely give you some pretty satisfying results.

[chatman 29]

Thanks Chris.Still: if anybody made a similar upgrade please post your results before/after.Thx!Martin

[Guest]

>Well, it's my understanding that the 8800 series cards have>16X anti aliasing which provides a beautifully crisp flying>experience while not taking away fps.Well, that depends... If the game runs supersmooth, as most game do with this card, you can set AA pretty high because there is more overhead. But with a game like FSX, that needs everything you've got, setting AA will certainly have an impact.BTW I run FSX on a widescreen 1680x1050 with the 8800GTX and have AA set on 4. Looks beautifully crisp. ;) I've tried 8x and 8xQ but couldn't really see the difference because with 4x it's very good already. And because I like every fps I can get, I gave AA on 4x!BTW 2: I do have an E6600 and a 8800GTX plus 2 Gb ram and I do get VERY nice results in OTHER games (for instance, the new demo of Colin McRae Dirt seems to run VERY bad on most computers, but on mine it's silky smooth with EVERYTHING at high! So is for instance Rainbow Six Vegas: WOW!) FSX however gives me 20-30 fps now, but I had to settle for Autogen at Normal. Anything higher will drop fps to 10-13. The result is pretty nice in the end, although I do get blurries... But hey, it will be better than on a AMD X2 4800, ATI X800 (256 MB), but just don't expect miracles... ;)

[Guest bass299]

Hi Chatman, I've just done a simlar upgrade specifically for fsx.old: amd64 3500+, x800xtpe-256mb, 1Gb ddr400.new: c2d6600, 8800gts-640mb, 2Gb ddr2-800. (The 6600 I have running at 3Ghz without any problems in fsx. Ram @ 5-5-5-15 2.1v).fsx's performance boost over the 3500+, which I was running stock, is as high as 300% at times. On the old system it was impossible to fly out of my home port of Sydney even on low settings due to single digit fps. The new box does it at 20-30fps. I'm very happy with it obviously.Having said that, if money is tight, you might want to consider holding off upgrading now as the quad cores are set for a big price drop in just under 2 months. From what I've read, you will be able to pickup a quad at the current e6600 price before the end of July.Hope that helps.Chris

[Guest jshyluk]

That and there ought to be more choices of DX10 cards by Christmas, depending on how DX10 gets implemented. Jeff ShylukAvsim Product Reviewer

[Guest Adrian Wainer]

I have an AMD Athlon 64 4800 socket 939 Toledo dualcore with 2 7600GT graphics cards 256MB in SLI, 2 Gigs of DDR RAM, 4 x 320MB Hitach in RAID 0+1and a AMD Athlon 64 3200 socket 754 with a 6800GS 512MB graphics card 1.5 gigabytes RAM [ hard drives currently being replaced ] given that your rig has a decent processor, and that Conroe whilst an excelent processor with even the lesser spec Conroe being superior even to AMD's flagship high-end offerings in AMD Athlon 64 840 AM2 socket, my suggestion would be that [ since FSX is such a resource hog that even stretches Conroe to the limit and beyond], that you wait for the next generation of CPUs from Intel and AMD, which are probably only months away and which will be likely [ at least in Intel's case, AMD? ] to cope easily with FSX's demands. Since your graphics card is somewhat under-powered as compared to the rest of your hardware, my advice would be to replace your current graphics card with a Directx 10 high end card, and you could transfer this card to a new rig later on. Best and Warm RegardsAdrian Wainer

[yellowjack 28]

I have an 8800GTX driven by an AMD 6000. Using 16AA and 8AF makes no difference to my frame rate whatever neither does turning on water 2.x. because FSX is still limited by the CPU. However one can use the spare graphics capacity to provide a very good high quality image with no impact on frame rates. No stutters, no blurries it just works. I have most config elements turned way up except bloom which I leave off by preference. Buying a new processor and graphics card is buying into the future and there is no "right time" to do it because as soon as you get on the leading edge you are on an inevitable slippery slope to the trailing edge. Its just a cost of doing business.There is no substitute for horsepower.John