Tino

Update: Parts came in and it’s all been put together. Windows 10, Drivers & updates are all installed. The i5-7600 is performing very well. Temps stay cool with the OEM heat-sink. It varies between 45c idle and 65c at full load. Ram has been overclocked to take advantage of the full 2400Mhz. The BIOS on the B250i is very easy to navigate and use. Initial 3dMark11 test scored 10,654. This was better than I originally thought. I’ve installed the latest version of P3D and ran some initial tests. Below are a rundown of the settings currently being used. Graphics: FXAA – 4X MSAA – 8X Samples Texture Filtering – 4X Texture Resolution – 2048 x 2048 Screen Resolution – 1920x1080 VSync – On with triple buffering selected Target Frame Rate – Unlimited Hardware Tessellation – On Scenery: LOD Radius – High Tessellation Factor – High Mesh Resolution – 10m Texture Resolution: 7cm Scenery Objects – All on dense Water & bathymetry – All on high. Cloud, UV and SO shadows selected Special Effects – High Lighting: HDR – On Brightness – 0.65 Bloom – 0.91 Saturation – 0.75 Dynamic Reflections – High Shadow Quality – Ultra Terrain Shadow Cast Distance – 10,000m Cloud Shadow Cast Distance – 10,000m Object Shadow Cast Distance – 6,000m Object Type – Internal\external Vehicle, Sim Objects are Cast & Receive Addon’s used for testing: Flightbeam KSFO FlyTampa CYYZ (With all options checked within the configurator). Aerosoft Airbus A320X Series. Default Weather (haven't installed Active Sky yet). So far, I have been getting a steady 45 to 65 frames and butter smooth. I’ve tested with hard weather scenarios and never see my frames below 40. The system is performing better than I expected. I will post another update once I get my other addon’s installed. So far, this is turning out to be a great budget build for those looking to enjoy P3D. Cheers.

Just as Mike said, you'd be happier with the 6700. Cheers.

EDIT: Sorry, I Miss-read your post. Option Number 2 would be better with the higher clock speed. SSD is also a bonus. Also depends on how much more expensive the 2nd option is, compared to the first. Are you building this yourself? Or is it a selection of two pre-built PC's? Cheers.

Hello all, I’ve recently purchased a new budget build for FSX\P3D. Being from Canada, our dollar is not doing so well. So, with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to see what I could get out of a (1000$CAD - 750$ USD) system. The whole point of this build, is to see if you could get acceptable performance, without having to break the bank. I wanted to share this build in case someone else was looking for a similar price point. List of parts ordered: Intel Core i5-7600 3.5GHz - 4.2GHz Turbo Quad-Core Processor $299.99 MSI B250I GAMING PRO AC Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard $144.99 Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory $88.02 MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Video Card $209.99 BitFenix Neos ATX Mid Tower Case $44.99 Corsair CXM 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply $84.98 LG GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer $24.98 Western Digital 500GB HDD. (From another PC) Intel 250GB SSD (From another PC) Total: $1005.70 (CAD) Inc Tax. Initially, I was going to order the N200 Mini ITX Case but, they were back ordered. (Latest estimate was 4 weeks). So, I decided to grab the BitFenix instead. (Still a great case). With regards to OS, I would prefer Win 7 but, thanks to Microsoft, that wont be happening. I have Win 10 from a previous system, thankfully! I was split between two paths. First path was an i5-7600k with a AsRock Pro4 ATX Board and a EVGA 1050ti. Unfortunately, it ended up being over budget by 150$ I was very keen on keeping it under 1000$ So, I ended up with the above list. The i5-7600 is still a great performing Quad Core. Might not be able to overclock but, still has a max turbo frequency of 4.2 GHz. I will be posting some results in the next few weeks to show how it performs. Cheers,

I wonder if the Red Bull Air Race would have any interest. ;)

With regards to the latest CPU’s, our hobby is a niche area when it comes to the latest and greatest. I personally found that older chips still hold up to the current ESP standards. As you may already know, our beloved 32bit platform only utilizes single cores. So when we look at the previous 5 generations of intel chips, the single core performance hasn’t really improved that much. Of all the chips to come out, I believe the biggest jump was the (2500K/3770K) era of chipsets. Still a great chips for FSX & P3D use. Has a great single core clock and can still hold up very well. The main reason for upgrading the CPU is to keep up with recent technical aspects (GPU, DDR5, DDR4 RAM, etc). Since P3D v3, the use of GPU’s have improved a little with X11 but, still not enough to warrant a massive system upgrade (In my personal opinion). Would the latest and greatest still be better performance wise? Well, sure but, by how much? Is it worth the upgrade? That’s the real question. The only time a significant upgrade would matter is if we get a 64bit platform that can utilize all cores and every aspect of current hardware. I’m still not even sure if P3D 64bit will allow that. Heck, It may only let us 70% of our system potential at first. That capability may come after that. I’m still running an older CPU and get great performance out of my chip and hardware. It’s all about the settings. It always has been. With the latest and greatest hardware, there is no reason why you shouldn’t able to achieve great frames and performance, as long as you are being conservative with your settings. By setting the “I want everything on max, in 4K and with 100FPS” expectation ahead of time, you will always end up being disappointed. It’s hard to take in sometimes. I should know, I’ve been there! Once I’ve got my settings to a conservative level, I’ve never been happier. For example, What type of flying are you after? (Airliners? General Aviation? Fighters?) For me, it’s Airliners. I have a list of settings for flying my PMDG 777\ NGX and different settings for my occasional GA flights. With that, you can determine which settings you can turn down and some that are actually necessary. Below are the settings I use. For Airliner Flights: LOD Radius of Large Texture Resolution of 1024 within my .CFG Mesh Complexity of 100 Mesh Resolution of 10m (Helps with conflicting with aircraft at certain airports near water). Texture Resolution of 7cm Water Effects are set to 0. When you are flying at 37,000 Feet, You don’t need to see the details of individual waves. I set that to zero. As long as it looks blue, you won’t notice a difference. AI Traffic? None. I utilize my own custom traffic for Vatsim (Via Vpilot). Scenery Complexity set to Normal. Most developers will create their airports with this setting in mind. Normal setting will show 100% of the custom objects within a detailed payware scenery. (90% of the time). You should always refer to the manual for recommended settings but, I haven’t run into any issues on this setting. Autogen is set to sparse. Just enough to show some trees and general autogen. AS2016 with 256 or 512 textures for clouds. You can even use 1024. No reason to run 2K or 4K. There is little visual difference. I have never run into any performance issues or CTD’s with those settings. I am running a very low end PC compared to the newer stuff out there. It’s all about being frugal with your settings and trying to determine what your goal is, within your sim. Cheers.

Nice pictures! She's been coming to YVR a lot, lately. It's a very nice paint job. Cheers,

I would also check out this little tool available on avsim: https://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=194150 It's a VAS monitor that I tend to open once in a while, in order to see what my system has consumed. It's a little easier to read since, it shows the amount of VAS that's consumed and amount that's remaining. Cheers,

I agree, I tend to press the "Q" key every so often. This usually solves my issue. This happens with non-PMDG products as well, most likely a FSX\P3D issue.

Simularly, I thought of it as: 1) DC-6 2) 748i 3) 748f Excited for the DC-6. Once you've heard a radial fire up in front of you, it becomes an instant favorite.

Very nice setup! Question, what kind of throttle are you using? You must be a very happy 777 pilot. ;)

Beautiful shots Philippe! Your sim looks great. Cheers,

Taking a browse through the list, seems like there are a lot of liveries out there! One I hope to see is Asiana 747-400M. They still have 2 flying along side the regular 747-400's. Can't wait to get my hands on the queen soon. Cheers,

That flight desk shot is amazing!

That makes three of us! Can't wait to grab the Queen later this week. The aircraft looks amazing.

Especially your repaints, Mr. Tavendale! :smile: I exclusively fly with your works of art!

Flew on a UA 747 last year from NRT to SFO. Still very outdated lol. I spent most of the flight staring out the window watching the magnificent queen do her thing.

Make sure you don't "slew" when the 777 is loading up. I did that and had a bunch of warnings from the tire pressures\brakes overheating. As for the freezing, I couldn't really help you without more details. The only time I had the screens or FMC freeze is when I change to Spot view over the ocean. Upon entering back into the VC, the screens are frozen. This is fixed by right clicking and selecting the view manually to unfreeze the screens. A little more detail might let people assist you better. Cheers,

I was just going to mention that. Looks incredible!

Great set of shots. I'll have to pick up the Airbus sometime soon. Cheers!

The modeling technique used on the engines is superb! Just look at the fan blades\cowlings in the first picture...amazing! The color tones of the blades themselves make them look very realistic. Sure gives it that "depth perception".

Not sure if this would help but, I'll explain what I do within the sim: I usually set the MCP ALT to the first "fix" on the approach chart. For example: If I'm landing ILS 08L at CYVR, I would set 3000' since EMKAM is the first fix on that approach. (This is only if I am flying offline "Vatsim" and have no ATC restrictions. I dont usually fly with the default ATC). All of this is setup before reaching T/D. Once I reach T/D, The aircraft will manage the decent on it's own. The 777 calculates the speed restrictions properly as well. I rarely have to intervene with speed brakes, unless I have a strong tail wind. If the PFD is showing [HOLD] mode, I use the throttle to manually adjust the speed when required. Once I reach EMKAM, The aircraft will maintain 3000' until glide-slope is captured with APP mode enabled. Another tip: I usually set a 7nm ring by entering the arrival ICAO within the FIX page of the FMC. This gives me a distance marker of when I should have the aircraft fully configured for landing. I've always had great landings once I started doing that. I guess the main thing is, try to be "ahead" of the aircraft and everything else will follow. It may not be "real world" at all but, it does help with what I have to accomplish. Hope this helps. Cheers,

Thanks Max, I'll take a look and reply back with any questions I have. Much appreciated!

Well, that's a relief. I always thought onboard audio wasn't as good as a dedicated sound card. I guess i'll give it a try and purchase a card afterwards if I feel it's not performing well enough. Thanks for the information.

Thanks for your reply Glynn. Are these replaceable for a cheaper option? I'm looking to get 7.1 Audio and require a wireless network card. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you.