Years ago I had a Packard Bell pc with a 386SX processor. DOS 4.0. It had an ATI gpu and when I upgraded I bought an nVidia product. That machine WOULD NOT accept that nVidia card! No matter what I did it was locked out. word not allowed me off big time! Who the hell they think they are? Ever since then I've been an nVidia man. Ya I know self interest rules the world but still!

You can see my specs. Dollar for dollar, it's hard to beat. I get 30 to 50 fps everywhere in Ultra MSFS settings, DLSS Quality, both LOD's at 150. Notice my modest power supply 650 watts. For a 3090 I would use a 750 watt.  I'm doing 1440p monitor.

I also can reset the 1440p monitor to HD (1920 x 1080) and then run 2 monitors side by side at good fps too, hardly any difference than running 1 screen at 1440p. (2 monitors is 3840 x 1080). (Actually 3891 x1080 because I'm using an extra 51 for bezel correction. Bezel correction is an available option in Nvidia Surround screen of Nividia Control Panel). 

B450A motherboards are dirt cheap ($100), and so is 5600X cpu ($175). 

 

 

7 hours ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

FSX has probably sold more hardware than any other game. 

sp

Huh? not even close, not even in the 40 years of MS flight sim franchise.

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by jbdbow1970

12 hours ago, LCAir said:

I was reading a thread concerning performance of an RTX4090 and it brought up a question. At present I have an i7-8700K on an ASUS Z370 motherboard running Win10/64 on 32Gb of RAM. With 3 SSDs one for the OS, one solely for MSFS and the third for bulk storage. I built this several years ago and it is still more than adequate for my needs. I recently upgraded to a 34" 3440x1440 165 Hz monitor. My next step will be to replace my antiquated GTX 1060 6Gb with a 3000 series nVidia GPU and a 1000 watt PSU. I was thinking 3090(for futureproofing too) but that may be too much being bottlenecked by the i7. All settings in MSFS are very low atm but it still looks good to me, so anything I go to will be a huge improvement. The question: how much is too much? Will I be so overloaded GPU-wise that such a card can't attain optimum performance? I could search to see what newer CPU my motherboard will support but the 8700K should be good according to requirements stated by Microsoft. I did get the K model but overclocking it is over my head. FYI I have a Hyper 212 CPU cooler- which barely turns over under any load I have given it. I appreciate any thoughts on this matter.

Get the best CPU you can first  which is 5800x3d hands down at this time. Or wait for the next gen 7800x3d/7900x3d or the new intels and see how the performance stacks up vs the 5800x3d.  I myself will wait for the 7800x3d and then upgrade to Am5 motherboard and ddr5 ram which will be supported by amd for at least 3 or 4 gens. Then I will decide which GPU to pair it w (i have 3080 which is doing just fine in 4)

This thread has CPU upgrade written all over it. Not my money to spend though, no more to add.

The best computer don't make the best MSFS engineer !

One way of improving performance of any simulator is to limit frame rates instead of pushing the CPU / GPU to their limits.

A native 30Hz monitor with VSync enabled will allow higher sim settings. If the OP has a monitor with a minimum refresh rate of 60Hz that will be far more taxing.

Something to consider when looking for a new monitor.

Hi  Ray hope your well. Is mouse lag still an issue when running monitor at 30 , it was a breaker before for  me ?

2 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

Hi  Ray hope your well. Is mouse lag still an issue when running monitor at 30 , it was a breaker before for  me ?

I’ve got used to it. Panning in the VC isn’t smooth but I don’t do that much. The benefits of 30Hz outweigh the disadvantages for me.

22 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ve got used to it. Panning in the VC isn’t smooth but I don’t do that much. The benefits of 30Hz outweigh the disadvantages for me.

did this a while back and never been smoother. still a few stutters here and there on ground or takeoff but cant complain overall. 

7 minutes ago, wiler said:

did this a while back and never been smoother. still a few stutters here and there on ground or takeoff but cant complain overall. 

Every sim will have stutters on occasions. The OS could be responsible. Glad you like the improvement. 👍

9 hours ago, turbomax said:

and this guy started on an APPLE II in b&w, or green on black, line graphics. Commodore 64 was much improved, had sound & color.

and this guy of 69 started with an AIM-65 ...

I'm still quite happy with my 5 year old self build Z370-A,  i5-8600k, GTX1070Ti, 16 Gb of ram, Samsung NVMe SSD 970 Evo 1TB M.2 and a 34 inch UWD 3440x1440 monitor.

I can run MSFS with PMDG 737-800 smooth at 30fps.

I've learned with all the Sims I've got that lowering your settings is key. Don't expect quantum leaps from a new cpu or gpu.

 

 

3 minutes ago, kiek said:

and this guy of 69 started with an AIM-65 ...

and this guy started with a programmable calculator, which like the AIM65, had no graphics and no flightsimulator. and before that, this guy started with paper airplanes. flight model was bad, but 100% realistic.😊

15 hours ago, LCAir said:

The question: how much is too much? Will I be so overloaded GPU-wise that such a card can't attain optimum performance? I could search to see what newer CPU my motherboard will support but the 8700K should be good according to requirements stated by Microsoft. I did get the K model but overclocking it is over my head. FYI I have a Hyper 212 CPU cooler- which barely turns over under any load I have given it. I appreciate any thoughts on this matter.

Back to your original question and picking out a few answers from the suggestions above:

- Flight Simulators are generally very sensitive to the CPU clock speed

- For a major boost in performance, you do not have to buy a new CPU.  Your present CPU is running at 3.7GHz and is designed to be able to run at up to 4.7GHz and it sounds like your cooler can cope with a little more heat from the CPU chip.

- I can understand that you don't want to delve into the dark arts of overclocking yourself - but your CPU is designed specifically to be safely overclocked...so get a PC support shop do it for you.  They will be able to check what speed would be optimum for your particular rig at the same time (probably around 4.5GHz)

 

The issue is that the CPU affects the performance of the GPU and the GPU affects the performance of the CPU and so upgrades are usually best done by optimising what you have, then assessing which part needs more.  And to help you decide that, MSFS has a very comprehensive information block that becomes visible simply by turning 'Developer Mode' in the General Settings to 'On'. 

The information then shown, amongst other things, will tell you - live and at the settings you are using - whether MSFS performance is CPU-bound or GPU bound.  To turn this info panel off again, simply turn 'Developer Mode' back to 'Off' (I'm happy to post some screen shots if you are unsure how to do this)

If that information panel is telling you that you are generally CPU-bound, then yes, consider upgrading the CPU (but remember it is clockspeed that is more critical than the number of cores).  If it is telling you that you are generally GPU-bound, then yes, it is worth considering optimising or upgrading the GPU.

 

There is no point in spending money on a new GPU until you are getting at least the level of performance out of your CPU that it is designed to give.  How do I know? Been there, done that 😉

   

Very useful information ie the Developer Mode thank you. But I can be confident the GTX 1060 is the bind atm. I'm just wondering how far to upgrade without getting into futility. From what everyone has said it appears the 3090 is just too much with this cpu overclocked or not. At this point I am leaning to the 3080, turning the settings up and then using Developer Mode and the naked eye to see where I'm at. I'm confident I'll be satisfied but overclocking the cpu is still there as an option.